The news never stops, does it?

This week, after our insider panel had packed up and gone home, the rumored story that's been going around for weeks came to be true this morning on a beautiful Colorado day in Denver's city park, Senator Michael Bennet announced that he is indeed running to be the next governor of Colorado.

Bennet has talked before about the brokenness of Washington, D.C., and he said this morning business as usual is simply not enough.

And that is why I'm running to be the next governor of Colorado.

Bennet will face Attorney General Phil Weiser in the Democratic primary, and I'm sure there'll be many others when we get to that point.

And then eventually the 44th governor of Colorado will be sworn into office in January of 2027.

Now, let's get to the rest of what Colorado is talking about on this week's Colorado Inside Out, Hi, everyone.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

Let me get right to introduce you to this week's insider panel.

We have Patty Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword.

David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute.

Eric Solomon, columnist with Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette.

And Luigi Del Puerto, editor at the Colorado Politics and Denver Gazette.

Thank you all for joining us.

It has been a week of tariff pivots, reversals or delays on some of the tariffs, except for those on China, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data.

China is Colorado's second largest import source, providing a $1.8 billion worth of goods to the Centennial State last year.

And so we are seeing two very different members of our congressional delegation supporting legislation to kind of rein in the president's ability to set all these tariff policies.

Corey, I'll start with you.

Well, congratulations to Jeff Hurd, who I have gone back and forth with, not quite as much as Donald Trump has flip flopped on just about everything, but he is one of the ones who is sponsoring the bill to really say tariffs are the responsibility of Congress, not the president.

Not that you could tell that from President Trump's behavior over the last few weeks.

It is absolutely dizzying to watch him flip flop on this tariff thing Right now.

We think it's a 90 day stay for everyone but China, Trump is such a master at keeping his The news cycle is all Trump all the time.

He sends out notices like I've got everyone where I want them.

This is exactly what I had planned.

If this is what he had planned, I would sincerely hope that most of the people who voted for him would have thought twice that maybe this wasn't really a good plan for business, stable stability.

All right, David.

Well, shame on Colorado for buying $1.8 billion of products from a totalitarian slave empire.

But on the question of who can do something about it, according to the U.S. Constitution, the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties and imposts.

The Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.

So the bipartisan Bennet and her bill is a definitely good start, but the country is becoming more and more like the the later stages of the Roman Republic, where a sclerotic Congress delegates away its powers to an executive.

But the funny thing is, Trump isn't even using all those bad laws, the delegated terror power to the president.

He's often using the 1977 economic and Emergency Economic Powers Act.

And that says that if the president declares there's any unusual and extraordinary threat from outside the United States to the economy of the United States, then the president can regulate, prevent or prohibit any importation of any property in which any foreign national thereof has any interest.

Now, this statute has never been used for terrorists before.

You can't suddenly find vast powers of economic and political significance in a vague statute.

Well, of course David's right in terms of Congress.

David described Congress as sclerotic.

I might use words such as dysfunctional and neutered.

Sometimes in terms of this discussion of tariffs, I feel like we've done a time machine travel back to the 1890s or something like that.

When William McKinley was president and tariffs were front and center and, you know, obviously the world is a very different world than it was by then.

The definition of leadership.

I think, almost in any book has to involve steadiness, stability, rationality, borderline baseline competence, etc.. And I think we have seen the absence of all of that out of this White House over the last week.

Well, actually, there can be no doubt about who pays the bills here.

There is not some magic person behind the curtain who ends up paying these tariff bills.

Ultimately, they get paid.

They get passed down.

Corporations don't pay them.

They get passed down and are paid by consumers, consumers in this country, consumers and other country.

Inflation being what it is and what it's been over the last five years.

This is completely contraindicat So Jeff heard in pushing for this proposal, which the president said he's going to veto, too.

I've heard said it wouldn't matter if Trump were in the White House or Kamala Harris or anybody else.

He would have done the same thing.

He wants to retrieve, if you will, this power that Congress has.

Back to Congress.

you know, Trump was elected for certain promises and everything that he's done so far.

If you really look at what he's done, he's done it to pursue those promises that he made to the American public, which he won.

Of course, the question is, is it working?

Is not working?

Is it proper?

Is that proper?

And there's lots of rooms of discussions there.

What you can't accuse the president, I think, is not doing what he campaigned on.

We should just do a quick follow up to a story that we discussed last week when Colorado Congresswoman Brittany Peterson was handed a temporary victory in her push to allow for remote voting for congressional leaders who are new parents.

Well, that was short lived.

The bill she was pushing for got dropped.

She has said everyone that she's going to continue to push for this.

And I don't know if the proxy voting will ever happen as she wants, but she says she's going to start a parent caucus and keep working for it.

What do you think?

It will go anywhere?

I don't know if it'll go anywhere in this particular Congress, but good for Brittany Patterson, Good for sticking to our guns and good.

We need more young parents, both moms and dads, but particularly moms in positions such as she occupies and right under her.

While another young mom who is in a position such as she occupies, you know, in this case, a United States representative for Denver was Representative Patricia Schroeder, elected in 1972.

And she had a kid in her first term and then another one shortly thereafter that and she bought a house in Washington, D.C., and made all the votes in Congress, got it done.

And represented the people of Colorado, in Washington, D.C., In Congress, Let's talk about the Colorado budget.

It continues to be revised and there are what, three and a half weeks left of the session.

And although in the minority, the Republican leaders are very involved with one leader saying she's grateful to be able to start dodging what we don't need in our government.

The budget shortfall is caused when most of all when Governor Hickenlooper on his own say so without a vote of the legislature, expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to vastly drive up the state's Medicaid costs.

Last Sunday, the in legislative debates unusual to have a session on Sunday they invoked rule 16 to cut off debate entirely, to censor speech and take away the voice of all the people who elected or voted for Republicans.

Now, I'm going to say something that under one of these bills, it's going to be illegal in Colorado to say in certain circumstances.

So folks pay attention because they're not going to be able to hear things like this in the future necessarily.

William Thomas is a mediocre male swimmer who cheated at intercollegiate swimming by claiming to be a female and changing his name to Leo That is a true statement and it's going to be illegal in Colorado under the bill sponsored by Representative Lorena Garcia.

And to her, I say one hands off the First Amendment, hands off other people's children, which there's other censorship bills on what parents consider their children and to focus on your own darn family.

To follow David is not all wrong.

I often don't share David's tone, even though we sometimes come to a similar bottom line The current legislature's increasingly looking like it's been completely selected by the People's Republic of Boulder here in terms of where is drifting on some issues.

I think the state has enough challenges that we should focus on those very substantive challenges and not on issues of speech, not on issues of taking away custody of kids from parents because they may have a different philosophy of how to raise those kids who may be going through gender dysphoria, etc..

I think it's time to get back to meat and potatoes in this legislature and not every sidebar social issue that they can address, only because they can because the Democratic votes are there.

So it's such a plethora of Democratic votes.

They can indulge every whim.

Which it's a $44 billion budget that they're working on.

The House just passed it.

It's going to go back to the state Senate.

The state Senate will do their own thing and reconcile the versions.

And then we'll have a budget here at the governor's desk pretty soon.

It's $1.2 billion in deficit.

That's the problem they're trying to solve that they have solved it by making cuts and fund transfers and sweeps.

They've also solved it by providing for a 2.5 increase for state employees.

And my favorite, a per diem increase for the legislators so that some of them will be getting about $3,000 more per year as a result of being present in session this year.

if you really look at, let's just say, the last ten years and if you look at the growth of government and how much we're spending now vis a vis how much we're spending before, it's been significant.

It look how many employees we have now compared to ten years ago.

You look at how many departments we have now compared to ten years ago, The Democrats, of course, will say this Expenses are necessary.

They provide services and they help out, quote unquote, the most vulnerable residents of the state Patty.

Well, it's true.

They've been spending money like drunken sailors.

I think I can still say that like a impinge on sailors and it's got to stop because we are we've lost federal funding.

We're going to lose more federal funding.

The COVID emergency funding is gone.

But no matter how this budget is finally settled, we're going to be in trouble again next year.

And that's why we see we're having the fights that are coming up maybe at the ballot box over the TABOR amendment.

Are we going to be voting to get rid of it, to restrict it?

And so that's going to keep going on, but should also go back to the First Amendment issue.

It's really a shameful measure that was passed by the legislature going to Polis about really restricting the access to public records and the expense that people will have to go to to find out what your government is doing.

No matter who's on your swim team, where is the money going to file for open records is going to be costly.

It's going to be difficult and it is shameful that this legislature is trying to shut down the public's right to know.

Okay.

We have talked about how lawmakers have talked about how there are problems with safety and crime around the Capitol building.

And Luigi's paper wrote a very critical article in the Sunday paper last weekend about the doing business in downtown.

We'll get to that in a minute.

But on Thursday of this week, the downtown Denver partnership came out with its state of downtown.

And we start with you, Eric.

it was the predictable roar.

And I can't comment as much on the report as I can comment on my own experience and perceptions.

I was been downtown twice in the last 48 hours.

I did not leave downtown in a spirit of rah rah.

Everything is wonderful.

Let's have a parade.

Let's have a celebration from 15th Street where I parked and where seemingly half of the psychotic population of North America seems to be hanging out to 16th Street, which is a construction zone.

And all I can say is at the end of this construction period, that mall better be gold plated because of how long this thing has taken and the moneys that are getting spent on it.

You know, I don't necessarily see our articles as necessarily critical.

I think they're more factual.

And it does tell you what what is happening in our city.

Mark Samuelsen wrote this story about the troubles that developers and representatives of the commercial real estate industry say they are having.

And what they're saying is that there is this regulation that's been coming down the pike from two places, one from the state, the other from Denver, and it has to do with large buildings.

The goal of the state and by Denver is to curb carbon emissions.

You know, there are certain benchmarks that they have to meet.

They're saying we are struggling to meet these benchmarks.

They're not practicable, they're not feasible.

It's going to cost a lot of money.

They're also saying the fact that we have these regulations on energy and carbon emissions and goals and what have you, the fact that we have them are causing developers to pause to rethink their plans.

And some of them anecdotally are saying they are pulling out of Denver as a result.

Deregulation issue affects all of Denver.

It's not just downtown.

It's significant trying to meet those regulations, both state and city.

That's a different issue, although it affects people who have businesses downtown.

So let me go to my Aurora corner and deal with that with the Eric.

I, too was on the 16th Street Mall last night.

I parked on 17th Street.

So I think maybe that was your problem because I encountered no one walking down.

Well, except people desperately trying to finish off the mall.

Workers were there at 630, working hard to get to this block.

I was sitting at what used to be Marlo's.

It's now the West Saloon, the waitress could have been a cheerleader for downtown.

She goes, Yeah, business is down.

I mean, this is a block that's blocked off on both sides, but you look ahead and go, they're almost done with the malls.

They're very optimistic, very cheerful.

And I saw lots of tourists wandering around looking fairly happy considering what was going on.

So I have to say, if we can hold our breath and hold on to the bank accounts of the businesses that are definitely struggling until most of the mall is done in the beginning of June, let's see if the partnership and the city can really activate it.

Remind people to come downtown because I think the mall, when done, will be good.

The question is will people go back downtown.

And will we be using the word mall?

we will not, by the way, it will be 16th Street.

16th Street.

Okay, David, that was $100,000.

We didn't have.

To spend one of the many things that's hard on small businesses like retailers on the 16th Street Mall is that is sales tax because that raises the price for the consumer and reduces spending.

But the store doesn't get any of any of that.

In 1960, if you bought something in downtown Denver, you would pay a sales tax of under 3%, about one 1% for Denver and 2% for the state.

Since then, the state sales tax has gone up to 3% and the Denver plus RTD sales tax is over 6%.

Does anybody think that we are getting six times better or more effective government than we did decades ago?

I'd say we're paying more and we're getting less.

Okay, this is uplifting the topic the number of international university students here in Colorado who are having their visas revoked has tripled in just this past week.

At last check, the number was around two dozen.

Both C, U and CSU say they are supporting their students, but they have been very slow to say much more about the students or where they're from, As we've seen play out in other cities, other campuses.

There are some students who are being targeted by ICE and are being detained.

Luigi It doesn't appear that the students are in Colorado.

That's their story.

We're still learning more about it.

But the fact that these numbers are going up is something that's right.

And we don't know much.

We don't know a whole lot about their situation or circumstances.

We only know that there's more than two dozen, maybe 16 in Colorado, last time I checked, that have their visas revoked, presumably and I say this very carefully, presumably it has to do with the protests that happened last summer.

Presumably, the students whose visas had been revoked may might have participated in this protests.

And maybe there's a list somewhere.

Maybe they're known.

Maybe for some reason the US government knows who they are, and maybe that's why their visas have been revoked.

We just don't know if that's the case now.

We don't know.

And we're not going to find out any time soon.

When you hear about the different people who've accidentally been sent to, you know, deported to Venezuela or some other country, it's alarming.

But you begin to see why.

Let's move to younger students, why some students are really scared to go to school, that they're scared that something is going to happen to them or maybe their parents while they're gone.

So what we're seeing is the lack of knowledge is really affecting so many people on so many levels.

whatever is going on, it's not something about international students in general.

So, for example, University of Colorado on its four campuses has over 3800 international students, and 12 of them have had their visas revoked under the Immigration and Nationality Act section 12.

The reason?

Student visas are pretty easy to revoke for many reasons, and that includes fraud in the application, including fraud by omission, ties to terrorist organization, crimes of which include a lot of minor ones or threats to national security.

But again, we don't know the story of any of these particular students.

My gut tells me some of these students are not exactly credits to this country or enriching this country.

And yet at the same time, I say that I will defend their free speech rights.

If we can, the free speech rights of Nazis to march down the streets of Skokie, Illinois, in front of a lot of Holocaust survivors.

We ought to be tough enough to defend free speech rights.

It is easy to defend speech with which you agree.

The challenge is to defend speech with which you disagree.

And that is a challenge we're coming up short on all too often these days.

Before we move on, I want to take a moment to tell everyone about something that was really important that happened in Denver this week.

It was the regional competition of middle schoolers in the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Is Civic B. I was in awe of these Local sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

I was the one who had to ask these really difficult questions.

And these kids were rock stars and they know everything about our U.S. history, how government operates.

These students were fabulous.

And I will say the number one winner was a young girl named Emerson.

She goes by Emmy and she joins us now on Colorado Inside Out and Me in the final round.

After you had answered all the multiple choice questions, you had the opportunity to speak to the judges about an essay you had written to get into the competition.

And it's kind of timely for what we're talking about to everybody, what you write about.

I wrote about an essay how immigration rates in schools are affecting children's education and how it is very unfair for children and families to have to go through this and feel unsafe or unprotected while in schools.

Why was this something that made you want to address?

I first became aware of this when my Little Sisters school district sent home an email addressing how they would help protect their students and help students and families navigate immigration raids in schools and how it was how they would help them.

And I thought that was a very interesting topic and so unfair that children have to go through that.

It means an eighth grade and there were another dozen or so kids just like you who are so aware of what's going on.

So I commend you.

You're off to the state civics bee and hopefully to the federal said it's national championships in the fall.

I'm going to have you stick around.

Okay.

Anyone have a question for her?

Pretty impressive, right?

All right.

This is a time, I mean, where we go down the line and talk about some highs and lows of the week.

We always start on a low note so we can in a high note.

And I start with very.

Well first that an eighth grader puts us to shame.

But what topic I've been talking about for a long time, the election that was rigged back in 2020, remember when also we would just hear about Donald Trump, how the election had been stolen from him here this week when he's flip flopping on tariffs, we get news that the judge, a judge in Maryland, has determined that Newsmax defamed Dominion Voting Systems, which is based here.

When it did its reports in late 2020 on the election.

Eve.

Colorado, has now fallen behind Mississippi in reading education.

Once you adjust for demographics, Mississippi is the top state in the country right now for fourth and eighth grade literacy because the legislature passed a bill that says, hey, we're going to teach with phonics, which is how I learned to read and how a lot of people did and how a lot of people without phonics don't learn to read.

And secondly, if you're in third grade and you can't read, we're not going to socially promote you to fourth grade.

We'll keep you another year so you can learn to read and have a foundation for success.

You talk about that when we have someone here in eighth grade.

Yeah, that's.

We have some very high end eighth graders.

Yes.

No question.

Eric to Colorado politicians, one from each party on the Republican side and Ms.. Boebert Lauren Boebert, who confused at a congressional hearing, Roger Stone and Oliver Stone.

I might say something about dummies rock, but I would that would be unfair.

On the Democratic side, it is a free country.

Jenna griswald can run for whatever she wants and present her record to the public.

But as the secretary of state, if you're going to run for a higher office, you owe it to the voters of colorado to resign that position.

You should not be presiding over your own election to some other office.

Janet Griswold ought to step aside as she pursues her race for attorney general.

Okay.

We well, I don't know if this is necessarily a low thing, but as you know, I'm a homeowner in the great city of Denver.

And I knew long before that the city of Denver is going to collect my recyclable trash every two weeks instead of every week.

And that's created a lot of problems.

So I'm going to say.

Yes, it has.

Okay.

Something positive.

Patti, Another topic I've discussed a lot, the Sand Creek Massacre Monument.

It looks like it's going forward.

It will be put in front of the state capital and the legislature is talking about it right now.

Okay.

Well, since we have a potential national champion sitting with us, let's also think about this weekend when the Denver University pioneers hockey team is competing in the frozen four for another national championship, having already won a record sett As a key Tiger fan, it pains me to say it, but go PIOs here.

I wish them well.

Kathleen Sgamma, we mentioned her on this show a few weeks ago.

I mentioned to her she, just stepped aside from her nomination to run the Bureau of Land Management.

She had been nominated by President Trump.

Clearly, she was forced out of this by the Trump White House because they unearthed some comments she made in the aftermath of January six that were very critical of Trump and Trump's conduct and Trump's incitement on January 6th.

This shows I mean, I don't agree with Kathleen Sgamma on all of the policies she would have brought to BLM, but she would have been a credit to that agency.

She would have carried out the policies of this administration in terms of oil and gas and energy development.

And yet this thing is becoming more of a cold every day.

And you can never question or have a harsh statement against the Dear Leader.

All right.

And, Lloyd, you end with you.

Well, you know, my boy is going turn 14 in a couple of weeks here.

And I just realized that this is probably the last year in which he's still a boy.

Boy, if you know what I mean.

The next year, it's going to be completely different.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

What I really want to say is fly fishing.

Fishing season is started as far as are concerned.

Fish are out there.

We're going to hit those rivers and lakes every Saturday from here on out.

I had a feeling you might talk about that.

My high is me and all the kids whom I met on Wednesday at the Civics Bee and their parents and their teachers who encourage you all to kind of delve a little bit deeper into how things actually work.

So bravo to you.

Best of luck to you.

Thank you, panel, for joining us this week.

A lot to discuss.

Thank you for watching at home or listening along to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I'll see you next week here on PBS 12.

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