After months of speculation sparked by documents released pursuant to a FOIA request in January, the federal government has officially awarded a $529 million contract to open a new ICE detention facility in Hudson, Colorado, northeast of Denver. The contract was awarded to the private prison company the GEO Group last Wednesday, and authorizes the company to operate the Hudson facility as a migrant detention center through 2031. The GEO Group, which has faced serious allegations of human rights violations and trafficking, also operates the agency’s migrant detention facility in Aurora.
Donald Trump
BRIEF: Crank Agrees with Trump That Iran War Was Necessary Because Iran Was ‘Preparing an Attack’ on U.S. Military Personnel
Earlier this month, when asked by KOA talk radio host Mandy Connell for his thoughts on the war in Iran, Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) responded, “I was with the president, and look, I’ve seen some intelligence. We can’t get too much into that, but I can say this. I think the president acted to stop an attack that was being planned on U.S. service personnel within the region. We have many military installations where our service members are serving in that region that are vulnerable to ballistic missile attacks from Iran.”
Our Billboard Reads, ‘Newspaper Seeks Betrayed Trump Voters.” Here Are Some Responses.
Do you think Trump voters would respond to a billboard that states, “Newspaper Seeks Betrayed Trump Voters. Contact [email protected]?”
DAVIS: Nonvoters Matter as Much as Voters. Who Are They?
On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2026, most Americans will not vote. In the coverage of the upcoming election, between now and then, that fact will not garner many mentions. Nor will it garner many mentions in the after-the-fact reporting once the election has come and gone, or in the after-action assessments produced by whichever of the two major parties loses the midterms. It’s a glaring political blindspot in a system where elections are determined every bit as much by who stays home as by who turns out.
DAVIS: Free and Fair? Experts Say Not So Fast
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.
DAVIS: Can Trump Rig the 2026 Midterms?
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.”
Boebert Plans To Get ‘Swampy’ Following Trump’s Veto
Following President Donald Trump’s veto of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act” bill at the end of December and the subsequent failed vote in the House of Representatives to overturn his decision on Jan. 8, the congresswoman representing Colorado’s fourth congressional district has made it clear that this won’t be the end of her fight for the legislation.
DAVIS: Venezuela, Manifest Destiny, and the Farce of Christian Nationalist Foreign Policy
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.
Trump Says He’ll Void Any Law Signed by Biden With An Autopen
By Jennifer Shutt — President Donald Trump said Friday he will try to reverse any law, pardon or still-in-effect executive order that former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, though it wasn’t immediately clear how that would work or whether it would be legal.
DAVIS: What Do We Do Now?
There’s this kind of frightening but flattering thing that happens when you do the work that I do, when you spend a lot of time writing and reading about and working against the forces undermining a better society, when your friends and loved ones are aware that you are hopelessly impaled upon a fascination with the beliefs and mechanisms which are constantly creating and destroying our world. People ask you questions they might not have ever asked out loud before. Questions like, “is it really as bad as it seems?” and “is there any way out of this?” and “for the love of god, what do we do?”