Last week, I received the kind of text message I love the most. “I have something you might be interested in,” it read, “but can you keep my name out of it?” I agreed, source confidentiality being a cornerstone of journalism, and was sent a document which did, in fact, interest me: it was a letter of engagement between the state’s 10th largest school district and a controversial law firm I have covered at length.
The Heritage Foundation is back with a new plan for remaking America in its own image. The think tank which masterminded Project 2025 released a new issue paper last month, this time focused on, as the title puts it, “Saving America by Saving the Family.” Where Project 2025 focused on dismantling and rebuilding public structures and government institutions in a bid to strengthen conservative, Christian nationalist political power, the group’s new initiative establishes a roadmap for remaking a more personal institution: the family.
Twenty-seven members of the Colorado General Assembly are currently committing a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of between $1,000 and $5,000, though it’s unlikely any of them will be charged for it. After all, it’s a misdemeanor which a certain portion of the legislature commits annually and, to my knowledge, no one has ever faced a single consequence for it. What’s the crime? Failing to file their annual personal financial disclosures (PFDs) as mandated by the law.
Will the November midterm elections be free and fair? That’s the question I asked a number of political scientists over the last week, and their answers did not necessarily make me feel better. And, to be clear, even asking the question gives me heartburn. Half a decade ago, a lot of my work revolved around understanding and explaining exactly why the Republican conspiracy theories about a stolen election were false. Now, in another reality, I find myself trying to understand and explain how America’s vaunted electoral system might not be as resilient as we should hope.
Now, I won’t say, ‘Cancel the election. They should cancel the election,’ because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’” That’s what president Donald Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers last week. Republicans have been so successful, the president said, that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
On January 7 in Minneapolis, a 37-year-old mother named Renee Nicole Good was executed in broad daylight by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent named Jonathan Ross. Her children, who had already lost their father, were orphaned when Ross fired three rounds into Good’s SUV and body. In the five days since her killing, I am not sure what has disturbed me more: the footage itself, which from every angle shows an unjust execution, or the hordes of sociopaths celebrating it online.
As fighter jets screeched through the sky above Caracas on the third night of the year, raining munitions on residential buildings, the clouds of destruction took on the shape of a Rorschach test for American audiences. In my eyes, those clouds resolved into the image of a bloody history, an image of the dozens of other times the United States has wrought chaos in Latin America for national resources. In the eyes of many, the rubble-made Rorschach blot took on a complex character, one strongman chaotically removing another. The nation’s growing cohort of Christian nationalists saw something else, though; something no one with a passing knowledge of politics, international relations, or Venezuela is capable of seeing: revival.
Education has always been of particular interest to our team at the Colorado Times Recorder. With more than 170 school districts in the state, much of the activism, advocacy, and political machinations to reshape education in the state fly under the radar, completely unreported. Each year, we do our best to find important education stories — stories which might otherwise be overlooked — and shine what light we can.
This year, the Colorado Times Recorder team focused a lot of our efforts on one of the biggest problems plaguing American democracy: the presence of dark money in politics. Whether it’s anonymous funds from billionaires, funds funnelled through a dozen national orgs until the source has been lost, or the unaccountable fortunes flowing into lobbying and influence efforts, the flood of unaccountable dark money is deteriorating our politics.
During the 2024 presidential race, it was difficult to consume much political news without coming across a reference to Project 2025: the right-wing establishment’s plan to use a second Trump administration to usher in a fundamental reorganization of American public life. Since Trump took office in January and the authoritarian project officially got underway, though, coverage of the initiative has fallen off. According to online journalism archive Newsbank, which tracks more than 12,000 outlets around the globe, Project 2025 was mentioned more than 50,000 times in 2024. Though one might expect mentions to increase as the project steadily becomes reality, journalistic references to Project 2025 have declined by more than 30% this year.
