Colorado

DENVER — A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking the Trump administration from proceeding with a pilot program that would have required Colorado to recertify 100,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients within 30 days, ruling the state is likely to succeed on the merits of its case.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's December 2025 directive targeted five metro area Colorado counties: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Douglas and Jefferson. It demanded that they reverify all SNAP participants or face potential sanctions and loss of funding. The program assists low-income families with food purchases, providing an average of $300 per month in benefits.

"This is an extraordinary power grab, if you could essentially impose one set of rules for states that you don't like and another set of rules for the states that you do," David Moskowitz argued on behalf of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

The judge found the state would likely suffer irreparable harm in terms of human and economic costs, that some recipient households would lose benefits in the rush to comply, and that the threat of federal sanctions was itself causing irreparable harm to the state.

Denver Health // Google Maps

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It’s a new year but a familiar refrain for Colorado’s transgender youth. For the second time in a row, trans minors seeking gender-affirming care at Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado have rung in the new year with a devastating tug-of-war over their life-saving medical treatments.

On one side sits science-based standards of care. On the other is a political regime hellbent on terrorizing trans children, their families, and their doctors; and some of Colorado’s premiere health care institutions appear to be capitulating to the latter. Last week, both hospitals announced that they would close their doors to transgender minors seeking puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgery.

“This is the latest in several years of what we’d call ‘pre-compliance’ or ‘overcompliance’— providers feeling threatened into stopping care even before they legally have to,” said Adam Polaski, communications director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, in a statement to Erin in the Morning.

It is not illegal to provide transgender youth with gender-affirming care in Colorado, but that hasn’t stopped the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Donald Trump from targeting the practice anyway. The White House and its underlings have threatened to strip hospitals of critical funding via Medicaid and Medicare if they provide such care to trans kids in need.

“These closures will surely be a significant blow to access and I don’t want to minimize that,” Polaski said. “We also know that there are providers all over the country doubling down on keeping their doors open, staffing up, expanding hours.”

Implicit in Trump’s threats are costly and draining legal battles. But in abandoning the duty to provide equal access to care for everyone, cisgender and transgender patients alike, these same health systems put untold lives at risk.

Denver Health, for its part, branded the care stoppage as “necessary.” Children’s Colorado has painted it as the inevitable product of threats wielded by the HHS, arguing that keeping its gender clinic doors open to trans youth would be “risking care for hundreds of thousands of children.”

Spokespersons for the hospitals emphasized that psychiatric care will continue, but for many trans youth, that simply isn’t enough. Such Faustian bargains tend to accrue interest. If trans kids’ care is deemed acceptable collateral—even in the interim as court proceedings play out—it begs the question of who will be on the chopping block next.

Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado made headlines in February last year under similar circumstances. They stopped certain kinds of gender-affirming care for trans youth after Trump threatened to pull federal funding. However, the hospitals reinstated such care following favorable court proceedings.

This time around, the programs shuttered following a Dec. 30 tweet from Mike Stuart, the general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He says he “referred” the Children’s Hospital Colorado “for investigation” at the HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG)—this despite the fact that state law protects if not compels hospitals to provide equal access to both cisgender and trans people’s care.

The office usually focuses on investigating claims of fraud and professional misconduct, but like many government bureaucracies, the Trump regime has turned the oversight body into a political spectacle in hopes of drumming vitriol from its base and inciting fear from its political enemies—in this case, transgender children.

Rachel See, who spent over a decade as a senior attorney in the federal government in senior enforcement and management roles, told Erin in the Morning that Stuart’s social media declaration was “unusual,” but that general counsel does not determine the results of an investigation. At the same time, Trump has been known to oust Investigator Generals whose findings don’t adhere to his agenda.

The bottom line: “This is the Trump Administration, through HHS, opening up yet another front in its campaign against trans healthcare,” See said. “It is another shot that is intended to—and likely will—make institutional healthcare providers feel that providing trans healthcare puts them at risk, legally.”

Private clinics as well as initiatives like the Trans Youth Emergency Project have cropped up in hopes of softening the blow of such care cuts, but inevitably, diminishing treatment options from Colorado’s largest providers is bound to see many trans kids, especially those from low-income families, fall through systemic cracks.

These capitulations mark a grave turning point for a state once touted as a progressive “haven” for trans youth—in a region of the country otherwise hostile towards their existence.

In December, the HHS announced a proposed rule change to defund hospitals that “perform sex-rejecting procedures” on minors, the latest rhetorical creation of the same party that arbitrarily redefines sex and gender on a routine basis.

“The idea that Robert Kennedy and Dr. Oz, who have no medical expertise and have been discredited, are questioning and condemning the judgment of real medical providers and families is disgusting,” said Mardi Moore, chief executive officer at Rocky Mountain Equality, when news of that proposal first broke.

“They don’t know what they are talking about.”

The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order late Tuesday to keep an aging Colorado coal plant open, just one day before it was slated to close.

The plant — Unit 1, part of Craig Station, in Moffat County — is now required to keep running until March 30, 2026. The order can also be extended.

The move drew a furious response from the governor’s office and environmental groups, who contest whether an emergency even exists that would require the plant to stay open.

DENVER — A licensed taco truck that says it has operated in the same location for more than a decade is being told it must relocate if it wants to continue operating, after the City of Denver discovered it should never have been permitted to park there in the first place.

Tacos y Tortas El Peluche has been parked in a law firm's parking lot on Federal Boulevard since 2013, renewing its city license annually without issue. But when owner Martin Salvador applied for his permit renewal this year, the city denied the application, informing him that the location's zoning does not allow food trucks on private property.

"The guy that I talked to [with the City of Denver], I told him I've been here for 11-12 years, and I've never heard about this," Salvador said. "He's like, yeah, I don't know why nobody caught this before. I'm sorry."

As the co-chairs of the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Advisory Board, we hear all the time from residents of Denver requesting something as simple as a crosswalk next to their child’s school to make crossing the street safer. The reality is that we have to tell them the vast majority of the time that it won’t happen because Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration doesn’t prioritize transportation safety.

We’ve seen it in West Wash Park, where a highly supported street safety project along Alameda Avenue, five years in the making, was rolled back after the final construction notice was sent out. Some of the wealthiest families in the state, including Jill Anschutz, hired a lobbyist and complained to the mayor. During this latest budget crunch, when DOTI staff members were being laid off and safety projects went unfunded, the city found nearly $100,000 to replace a thoroughly vetted design to accommodate influential residents.

After decades of planning and four years of work, construction at the Chimney Hollow Reservoir, just west of Loveland, is now on pause. That’s after Northern Water, the operator of the project, discovered uranium in the granite used to build the dam.

“We determined that the source of the uranium was the granite rock at the site, which had been quarried to provide material to build the (dam) embankment,” she said. “Meaning the embankment is now filled with these granite rocks that contain uranium.”

Paywall Bypass Link https://archive.is/cvaf3

A federal judge in Denver on Tuesday ordered federal immigration officers to stop making arrests in Colorado without a warrant, unless the detainee posed a flight risk, the latest in a string of lower-court decisions rebuking President Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics.

The ruling by Judge R. Brooke Jackson could be put on hold once the administration appeals, just as earlier rulings in Los Angeles and Illinois limiting immigration agents’ powers were quickly blocked by higher courts.

In Colorado, Judge Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that immigration agents had acted unlawfully by arresting and detaining immigrants — some for as long as 100 days — without showing the required probable cause that they posed a threat of fleeing.

Max Walker-Silverman’s new film, “Rebuilding,” is set in the San Luis Valley. It was also shot in the San Luis Valley.

That might not sound like a big deal, but when New Mexico is offering up to 40 percent in refundable tax credits, it’s hard to justify shooting something in Southern Colorado that could just as easily be shot south of the state line.

“I'm so on the fringes of ‘the biz,’ if I can even call it that,” 32-year-old director Walker-Silverman joked, “but I think as much as possible, movies should be shot where they take place. And this movie took place in Colorado, and I'm really grateful to work with producers and financiers who were willing to support that.”

The state’s Independent Ethics Commission will investigate complaints against Democratic lawmakers who attended a weekend retreat with lobbyists in Vail last month paid for, at least in part, by a dark money group.

Commissioners Daniel Wolf, Lori Laske and Cyril Vidergar voted Tuesday in favor of deeming the complaints “nonfrivolous” and allowing them to move forward after discussing them out of public view. Commissioner Sarah Mercer, who chairs the group, recused herself and did not provide a reason for her recusal.

Two Denver-area Catholic parishes asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to reconsider a lower court decision that said parish preschools participating in Colorado’s state-funded preschool program couldn’t deny admission to LGBTQ children or children from LGBTQ families.

The appeal to the Supreme Court comes about six weeks after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Catholic parishes, which had argued that enrolling children from LGBTQ families would conflict with their religious beliefs.

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