Protect Kids Colorado, an organization formed last year to promote ballot initiatives that would negatively impact the rights of Colorado’s transgender community, is gearing up once again to submit initiatives to the Title Board in an effort to get on the 2026 ballot.
This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s first few weeks in office, during which he signed executive orders intended to bar trans women from participating in women’s sports and to cut off federal funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors. Despite Colorado’s ostensibly strong LGBTQ protections, this initial assault has bypassed many of those safeguards; following Trump’s orders, multiple Colorado clinics have stopped offering gender-affirming medical treatments for youth.
In at least one case, the Trump administration may be working in tandem with Colorado’s anti-trans activists. Lori Gimelshteyn, director of Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN), said her organization is working with the federal Office of Civil Rights to pursue action against schools with LGBTQ-inclusive policies.
“I’m really excited about the executive orders that have come down. And that will be implemented over the next 60 to 120 days in public schools, losing federal funding if they’re implementing any diversity, equity, inclusion or gender ideology into the classroom. So we’re really excited about that,” said Gimelshteyn on KLZ Radio’s Kim Monson Show last week.
She continued, “We want to let people know that if this is happening in your children’s school, your grandkids’ school, you can submit an incident report. We are connected with Craig Traynor over at the Office of Civil Rights, who’s the assistant secretary helping to put together cases for review.”
Traynor is technically the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights under Trump. He is currently involved in a federal investigation into Denver Public Schools, which alleges that East High School, by converting a girls’ restroom into a gender-neutral restroom, has discriminated against female students.
While Gimelshteyn praised the impact of Trump’s federal policy, she and other members of Protect Kids Colorado are not content to rest on their laurels.
“I’m so excited and so grateful for the executive orders that President Trump is issuing,” Gimelshteyn said. “But I think it’s really important to caution people, you know, executive orders are temporary. And these need to be put into law.”
Gimelshteyn is one member of a broad coalition of activists, many coming from the Christian right, who teamed up last year in an attempt to get Protect Kids Colorado’s initiatives on the ballot. Two of those initiatives mirrored Trump’s executive orders: one would have banned all gender-affirming care for those under 18, and another would have forced trans students to participate in sports according to the sex they were assigned as at birth. Another would have mandated that public schools must out transgender students to their parents.
All but two of the initiatives they submitted last year were struck down as ineligible by the Title Board, in some cases after multiple rounds of review. The two that survived failed to qualify for the ballot, as Protect Kids Colorado’s all-volunteer petition effort could not come up with the required number of signatures.
While it did not employ professional signature gatherers, Protect Kids Colorado enjoyed widespread support from Colorado conservatives. The Colorado Republican Party endorsed its initiatives, with director of special initiatives Darcy Schoening – now a contender for party chair – collaborating with the group directly. Right-wing Christian groups such as the Colorado Catholic Church and Woodland Park-based Truth and Liberty, also lent their support to the initiatives.
With Democrats continuing to hold a trifecta in Colorado’s government, ballot initiatives are one of the few remaining ways for conservatives to pass their agenda statewide. That has not stopped Republican lawmakers from introducing anti-trans bills. Last week, members of Protect Kids Colorado showed up to advocate for one of these doomed bills, HB25-1068 “Malpractice Insurers Gender-Affirming Care Minors” at its committee hearing. The bill, which failed at the hearing along party lines, would enable insurance companies to take away insurance from doctors offering gender-affirming care.
Rich Guggenheim, leader of the Colorado chapter of the anti-trans activist group Gays Against Groomers, began his testimony to the House Health & Human Services Committee by introducing himself as “Dr. Rich Guggenheim.” He then spoke about supposed medical dangers, invoking his “doctor” status as authoritative.
“Vote yes on 1068,” said Guggenheim. “This bill has already been inaccurately reported as anti-trans and a gender-affirming care ban. I assure you, these are lies. The reality is that, as a doctor, I can tell you, every intervention comes with some sort of risk and side effect. Even taking aspirin has risk. Gender-affirming care as a medical intervention comes with risks for potentially serious complications and side effects. The known effects of Lupron, which is used off-label as a puberty blocker, include the risk of cancer heart disease, depression, anxiety, and death, to name only few. … This bill protects transgender people. It creates accountability among medical professionals by allowing insurance providers to take adverse action against those who may have caused harm to their patients seeking gender-affirming care.”
Guggenheim’s statement strongly implies that he is speaking from the perspective of a medical doctor. He is not. He works for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, and while he has a Ph.D., his degree is in plant science. He is not licensed to practice medicine.
Guggenheim has a history of statements that are often as dubious as they are inflammatory. Last year, while promoting Protect Kids Colorado’s ballot initiatives on the radio, he repeated the apocryphal claim that “furries” were overrunning Colorado public schools.
Guggenheim’s credibility, particularly when testifying to elected officials is also tempered by his own criminal record. In 2022 he pled guilty to committing voter fraud during the 2020 election, a felony conviction for which, according to court records, he is still on unsupervised probation.
Speaking about the hearing on KOA Radio’s Mandy Connell show last week, Guggenheim, a former Democrat precinct organizer who joined the Republican party last year, lambasted Republican legislators at the hearing for what he saw as apathy towards the conservative culture war against transgender people.
“I just have to ask, you know, if these are the Republicans and they aren’t going to step up to fight to protect children, then why are we wasting our time in Colorado?” Guggenheim said on air. “These people were elected to represent us and they aren’t even doing that. They are putting in the bare minimum. And these are the Republicans in solid, safe, red districts doing the bare minimum in these committee hearings. And it’s embarrassing and it’s offensive.”
While Guggenheim also praised Trump’s executive orders, he reiterated Gimelshteyn’s call for Colorado to follow the president’s lead.
“Donald Trump has opened the door. He’s holding it open for us to walk through. And it’s up to the states to walk through the door that he’s holding open,” Guggenheim said. “And Colorado is falling flat on its face right now.”
At least one of the ballot initiatives – the trans sports ban – is officially being resuscitated. Guggenheim, along with activists Erin Lee and Jennifer Sey, will fundraise for the measure at an event in Cherry Creek next week, Feb. 19.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter here:
