[ Local ]

• Colorado Senate Republicans block a measure that would have allowed child sexual abuse victims to sue their abusers past the current statute of limitations
• Elizabeth School District decides to replace Scholastic Book Fair with a conservative book group, citing concerns about LGBTQ+ stories, Critical Race Theory, and “dark magic”
• GreenLatinos celebrate their 15-year anniversary advocating for safer communities, cleaner transit, and racial equity
• Paramedic who injected the lethal dose of Ketamine that killed Elijah McClain avoids jail time and is sentenced to 14 months of work release and probation instead
• Colorado ranchers are upset after newly released wild wolves killed a handful of calves, the Ranchers will be compensated for their losses. Wolves are key in maintaining balance in the ecosystem

[ National ]

• Protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations against the Israeli war in Gaza rock multiple campuses across the nation, sparked by Columbia University students, with authorities responding variously from mass arrests to apathy
• News organization NPR is in the news themselves following a scathing op-ed by a former editor, and a NYT piece on the supposed left-wing bias and internal division of the newsroom
• Trump is ruled in contempt of court, threatened with jail time, by the judge during his current Supreme Court trial after Trump refused to stop posting comments about the ongoing trial on social media
• Arizona lawmakers vote to repeal Civil-War era abortion ban, with some Republicans breaking party lines to vote with Democrats to advance the measure after state court previously upheld the ban
• O.J. Simpson passes away, ending his life-long search for Nicole Brown’s killer

[ International ]

• Israel and Iran exchanged missile, drone attacks prompting a brief scare that the war would widen, however tensions seemed to have calmed after both strikes supposedly caused minimal damage
• Haiti forms a transitional government looking to rebuild major institutions after a massive collapse in power and take-over by numerous warring violent groups
• Trials for international money laundering by the mega-wealthy stemming from the Panama Papers investigation began earlier this month, nearly a decade after the secret off-shore accounts were first revealed
• Wanna-be strongman Erdogan is voted out in Türkiye (Turkey) following latest election results in a positive sign for the nation straddling Europe and the Middle East

Quotes

“I take firearm safety very seriously. This is a humbling experience and I will reaffirm my commitment to responsible handling procedures” – CO State Rep. Don Wilson (R) on leaving his loaded handgun in a Capitol building restroom

“I’ll give you the truth why I’m not Speaker, It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old” – Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the reason he was ousted earlier this year

“People have to stop having such thin skins… What’s more is we also believe that being offended is a sufficient reason for attacking something — but actually, everything offends somebody, always” Salman Rushdie during his appearance on the Daily Show, talking about the person who attacked him

By the Numbers

2 Feet

More accurate measure of sea-level chops an average of 2 feet off of Colorado’s 14k+ foot peaks

81, 89

Colorado Ammendment  81 — an abortion ban — fails to gather enough signatures, while 89 enshrining abortion access, is successful at getting on the ballot for this November

55,000

Residents near Boulder who had their power cut by Excel Energy without proper notice for a pre-planned outage in early April

$96 Billion

Amount in latest military aid approved by the US to send to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan

116°

Temperatures soar to unbearable heights in the Philippines. Southeast Asia is expected to see already life-threatening temperatures rise in the coming decades