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Yahoo
2 hours ago
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Boulder attack suspect appears in federal court on hate crime charge
The Byron G. Rogers U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver is pictured on Jan. 21, 2021. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) The man accused of injuring more than a dozen people in a firebombing attack on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall appeared on Friday in Denver for the first time in federal court, where he faces a hate crime charge. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian citizen, has been charged in connection with the attack on participants in the Boulder chapter of Run For Their Lives, a group that aims to raise awareness of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. An arrest warrant alleges that he told investigators after the attack that he had targeted the group because he wanted to 'kill all Zionist people.' The federal hearing came one day after the defendant was formally charged on 118 criminal counts in state court in Boulder County, including dozens of charges of attempted murder and the use of incendiary devices. If convicted on those state-level charges, he faces a combined sentence of hundreds of years in prison. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The U.S. attorney's office in Denver separately charged the suspect with one count of 'a hate crime offense involving the actual or perceived race, religion, or national origin,' as part of what acting U.S. Attorney J. Bishop Grewell called a 'message to the community that no acts of anti-Semitism are going to be tolerated.' Grewell suggested earlier this week that additional federal charges may be forthcoming. The suspect was escorted into the courtroom Friday afternoon by U.S. marshals for an administrative hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. Speaking through an Arabic-language interpreter, he gave short affirmative answers to a series of questions from Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O'Hara regarding his rights as a criminal defendant. He will be represented by an attorney from the Office of the Federal Public Defender. O'Hara set a preliminary hearing in the federal case for June 18. Federal authorities say the suspect, a Colorado Springs resident, was living in the U.S. unlawfully after overstaying a visa that expired in 2023. A federal judge in Denver has temporarily blocked the deportation of his wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, after the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had taken them into custody and was 'processing (them) for removal proceedings from the U.S.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Republicans defend spending bill, which could strip Medicaid from 200K Coloradans
Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton, center, spoke about the GOP's budget bill in a press conference at the Colorado State Capitol on May 29, 2025. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) Speaking over heckling chants from a nearby crowd of protesters, two of Colorado's top Republicans stood outside the state Capitol on Thursday, defending their party's sweeping federal budget bill in a press conference that leaned heavily on a series of misleading claims about Medicaid and immigration. U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert of Windsor and Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton were among the 215 House Republicans who voted last week to approve the bill, which includes many of President Donald Trump's key domestic policy priorities. Despite deep cuts to social programs, headlined by the largest-ever reduction in Medicaid spending, the bill's tax cuts and new funding for the military and border security mean it would add an estimated $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. 'This is a victory for our values, for our communities and for our American way of life,' Boebert told reporters. 'It's about cutting wasteful spending — the waste, the fraud, the abuse, the illegal aliens who are receiving taxpayer benefits.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'We are protecting Medicaid for the people that need it most,' Evans said. 'We are removing 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the taxpayer-funded rolls of Medicaid.' Immigrants in the U.S. unlawfully are not eligible for federal Medicaid benefits. Republicans' budget bill would enact multibillion-dollar penalties for 14 states, including Colorado, that choose to cover some undocumented immigrants using state funds. But regardless of how states respond to those new rules, the vast majority of the funding cuts and insurance coverage losses projected to result from the bill will fall on citizens and lawful residents. Under a program that went into effect this year, income-eligible pregnant people and children can receive some benefits from Colorado's state-administered Medicaid program regardless of their immigration status. The state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing estimates the program will cover about 15,000 undocumented individuals in 2025, at a cost of $50.8 million. Those figures represent a small fraction of the annual loss of roughly $1 billion the state faces under the GOP bill's Medicaid changes, and of the 124,000 to 207,000 current enrollees who are projected to lose coverage, according to the nonprofit KFF. Most of the coverage losses would result from the bill's rollback of Biden-era rules aimed at streamlining enrollment and renewal, and enactment of new obstacles in the form of more frequent eligibility checks and work requirements for able-bodied adults without children. Many health care advocates say those new hurdles will tie up Medicaid programs in red tape and deny coverage to millions of eligible Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are already employed, and nearly all the rest are caregivers, students and people with disabilities. Studies have shown that state-level Medicaid work requirements, like one enacted in Arkansas, result in substantial losses of coverage and higher administrative costs, but no change in the rate of employment. 'Without Medicaid, people die,' Sara Loflin, executive director of the advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado, said in a statement Thursday. 'Evans wants voters to believe that the people who will lose coverage don't deserve health care, but thousands of Coloradans will fall through the cracks, and some of them will die as a result of Evans' vote.' Evans and Boebert were joined at Thursday's press conference by GOP state Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling, Rep. Carlos Barron of Fort Lupton and Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams. The group spoke for about 45 minutes as a few dozen activists from ProgressNow and other left-leaning groups, separated from the press conference by a few yards and a loose cordon of Colorado State Patrol officers, shouted in protest — especially of Evans, the first-term representative from Colorado's battleground 8th Congressional District. Despite representing one of the nation's most evenly divided districts, Evans, a former state lawmaker who won his seat by fewer than 2,500 votes last year, has done little to distance himself from Trump or House Republican leadership during his first five months in Congress. Demonstrators chanted and held signs urging Evans to hold in-person town hall events to hear from his constituents, something he has so far refused to do. 'It's really unfortunate, as a mother of four boys and a grandmother, that I see more order in my home with children than I do with radical leftists,' Boebert said of the demonstrators. 'We want to have a conversation. We want to be able to answer questions, but the tolerant left doesn't seem very tolerant.' Evans, noting that projected Medicaid spending would still see year-over-year increases under the GOP plan, at one point claimed flatly that 'Medicaid is not being cut,' eliciting howls of derision from the protesters. At nearly 10% of total projected spending, the bill's $625 billion in total cuts to Medicaid spending over the next decade would be the largest reduction in the program's 50-year history. Nationwide, a total of 10.3 million people would lose access to Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Asked repeatedly how many of his constituents, nearly 1 in 3 of whom are enrolled in Medicaid, would become uninsured under the GOP plan, Evans did not answer, and instead twice recited the 'categories of people who lose coverage.' Statewide, Colorado Medicaid enrollment would shrink by between 11% and 18%, according to KFF. 'Do you not know the number?' asked a reporter. 'I'm telling you the number right now,' said Evans, who did not say a number. 'You may not like the answer, but that's the answer. Next question.' Republicans in the U.S. Senate are expected to pass their own budget reconciliation bill that differs significantly from the House's version, a process that could extend well into the summer. Alongside the Medicaid cuts, other key components of the bill include extensions of broad-based income and business tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term, and hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for border security, law enforcement and the military. Evans said claims that the bill amounted to 'taking from the poor and giving to the rich' were 'patently false.' But the benefits of the GOP plan's tax cuts are heavily skewed towards people with higher incomes: The top 1% of earners would see their after-tax incomes rise by over 4%, while incomes for the bottom 20% of earners would rise by just 0.6%, or an average of $90 a year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The nonpartisan CBO found those meager tax savings for low-income people would be more than offset by the bill's cuts to Medicaid and other social programs, causing household resources for the lowest income decile to drop 4% by 2033 while rising for higher-income households. 'When you see your bill getting more and more unpopular as people learn the truth about it, you lie more,' said Wynn Howell, state director of the Colorado Working Families Party, after Thursday's press conference. 'When all you have is lies and scapegoats, you have a problem with your bill.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Colorado officials plan Denver-Fort Collins rail service by 2029
An RTD train departs the Westminster light-rail station as Gov. Jared Polis and state energy and transportation officials speak on Feb. 26, 2024. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) About $40 million a year in state funding from new transportation fees could be the key to getting a short passenger rail line from Denver to Fort Collins up and running in the next four years, Colorado officials said last week. The project, spearheaded by Gov. Jared Polis and some of his top advisers, envisions a 'joint service' between the Front Range Passenger Rail District, which eventually plans to serve cities as far south as Pueblo, and the Denver-area Regional Transportation District, which has struggled to complete a commuter line from Denver to Boulder that voters first approved more than 20 years ago. 'What we have in Colorado is a population who very much supports transit and rail, and would like to see an expansion of transit and rail, but they really need to see to believe,' Lisa Kaufmann, a senior strategic adviser to Polis, told members of the state's Transportation Commission last week. 'I think that we have a history of overpromising and not delivering rail projects in Colorado that looms large in all these conversations.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The service would initially run three times a day between Denver and Fort Collins, with potential stops in Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Boulder, Longmont and Loveland. The total price tag, including operating costs and debt payments for projected capital expenditures, is estimated at $83 million a year beginning in 2029, and about half that total would be covered by dedicated revenue from the state's new fees on rental cars and oil and gas production. RTD sales tax revenue could cover the other half, state officials said. An intergovernmental agreement between RTD, FRPR and the Colorado Department of Transportation is being drafted and will be presented to each agency's governing board this summer, Kaufmann said. A joint committee will then start formal negotiations with BNSF, the railroad that owns the track the service will use, over an access agreement. The railroad giant's price tag for the use of their tracks was a crucial factor that derailed RTD's plans for its commuter rail line to Boulder, which voters approved as part of the FasTracks plan in 2004. Agency officials had estimated that a lease would cost $66 million, but BNSF — one half of a duopoly, with Union Pacific, that owns virtually all U.S. railroads west of the Mississippi — quoted an upfront cost of $535 million in 2011, setting the project's timeline back by decades. Capital costs for any passenger rail service in BNSF's rail corridor account for station infrastructure and safety mechanisms, including a so-called positive train control system, that are not required for the freight traffic that currently uses the Denver-to-Fort Collins segment. The state's initial financial estimates, prepared by engineering consultancy HNTB, include $198 million in expenditures on signaling and communications upgrades, $124 million for vehicles and $92 million for station infrastructure. 'They want to work with us to make this possible, but of course, they are a business that they are running, and they want to do it in a way that's mutually beneficial,' Kaufmann told commissioners about BNSF. 'In our private conversations with them, they believe that there is more cost savings to be had, once we get into real negotiations with them, than even what we've priced out through our study,' she added. State officials hope the launch of the northern Front Range route will follow on the heels of a separate 'mountain rail' service planned to begin daily round trips from Denver to Granby by the end of 2026. They announced earlier this month that they had negotiated an access agreement with Union Pacific in exchange for the railroad's continued use of the state-owned Moffat Tunnel, which crosses under the Continental Divide and serves as the only link between the eastern and western halves of the state's rail network. The year-round mountain rail route, which could eventually extend as far as Steamboat Springs, Hayden and Craig, will aim to build on the success of the Winter Park Express, a seasonal route that takes passengers from Denver to the Winter Park ski resort and back. Operated by Amtrak, the route was revived in 2017 and reached a new high in ridership during the 2025 ski season, state officials announced Friday. Trains averaged 89% full throughout the line's three and a half months of operation, serving a total of 43,919 riders. 'We believe that increased ridership at this level is helping to take cars off congested roadways and make everyone safer,' Sally Chafee, CDOT's acting director, said in a press release. 'It also means much lower emissions per passenger mile, so there's a huge environmental benefit here.' Meanwhile, officials at the Front Range Passenger Rail District are moving forward with long-term plans for service between Pueblo and Fort Collins, with a vote on a district-wide sales tax hike to fund the project coming as soon as 2026. While the Denver-to-Fort Collins 'starter service' could begin by 2029, a 'full build' may still be decades away. The district last week launched a virtual open house to invite Coloradans to give feedback on its service development plan, which it will complete by the end of this year. Out of five different alternatives studied by CDOT and FRPR staff, the district is recommending a plan that envisions a 'full build' of 10 daily round trips along the proposed line by 2045. Members of the public are invited to share their thoughts on the alternatives analysis before June 15. 'This is an opportunity to better understand the recommended alternative and ask questions about the Service Development Plan,' said Chrissy Breit, FRPR's interim general manager. 'Community input is vital to shaping a transportation solution that reflects the region's needs and priorities.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Landmark oil and gas reform in Colorado is failing
Members of the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission listened to public comments from opponents of a major oil and gas drilling plan on the state-owned Lowry Ranch property in Arapahoe County during a hearing on May 16, 2024. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) A recent study provided further evidence that living near oil and gas wells in Colorado isn't safe. The study, led by Dr. Lisa McKenzie of the Colorado School of Public Health, demonstrated that children who were diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer, were more likely than children without cancer to live within 8 miles of a well site. The finding aligned with earlier studies that have shown that the risk of cancer is much greater for people who live near oil and gas operations. It also added weight to a conclusion that is increasingly unavoidable: A landmark state law adopted in 2019 that was supposed to protect the public from oil and gas development is failing. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The law brought about a long overdue mission change to oil and gas regulation in Colorado. The state's previous official position was that its role was to 'foster' oil and gas development. But, with the passage of Senate Bill 19-181, its new position was that its role is to 'regulate' oil and gas development 'in a manner that protects public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources.' This was supposed to be an official pledge to protect residents who are at risk of illness or death due to exposure to emissions, who live near operations where spills and other accidents might occur, and against environmental degradation, including from climate change. Colorado was supposed to take the side of residents, not a polluting industry. It was supposed to serve the people, not corporations, and protect the environment, not profits. The state has not fulfilled that commitment. 'Unfortunately, not a lot has changed,' said Micah Parkin, executive director of 350 Colorado, which works for climate solutions and environmental justice. 'They're still fracking right by and underneath communities.' She pointed to the recent approval, by regulators on the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission, of a plan for an enormous, 156-well oil and gas development in Arapahoe County adjacent to neighborhoods, schools and the Aurora Reservoir, a drinking water supply. Community members organized intense, persistent protests against the plan, but the ECMC was unswayed. This is a pattern. There are already more than 46,000 producing wells in the state, and every year Colorado regulators grant permits for many hundreds more. Denials are rare. The rate of oil and natural gas production has remained roughly steady since 181's passage, and there's every reason to believe — given apparent regulatory capture at the state level, the existence of untapped resources in Colorado, and industry rhetoric — that production will only increase in the coming years. Oil and gas production is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado, according to state data. How is any of this protective of public health and the environment? I mean, it just seems like common sense. You don't keep digging the hole when you're already deep in it. – Micah Parkin, of 350 Colorado As industry has steamrolled new regulatory provisions, emissions have increasingly exposed Coloradans to health risks. The Front Range region has failed to meet Environmental Protection Agency ozone standards for decades, and ozone pollution — which is linked to asthma, lung disease, bronchitis, congestive heart failure and other conditions — is now so bad the state is officially in 'severe nonattainment' of the standards. Oil and gas production is one of the state's top contributors of ozone 'precursors.' It's also a major source of benzene pollution. Benzene, associated with a higher risk of cancer and other adverse health effects, was recently found in concentrations that were 10 times above federal standards miles away from the site of a well blowout in Weld County last month. The biggest threat of all — to Colorado and the world — is climate change, which is caused largely by combustion of fossil fuels like those being pumped out of the Colorado ground. It wasn't until last year that state regulators got around to considering oil and gas rules that might account for the industry's 'cumulative impacts,' including on the climate. But the final rule fell far short of meaningful new protections. As oil and gas production increasingly threatens Coloradans, residents might wonder how regulators can justify the approval of even a single new permit to drill. 'If their mission truly had changed, and they were considering public health, safety, welfare and the environment and prioritizing those things, they wouldn't be permitting any more until we were on track to meet our climate goals, and we were on track to not be in nonattainment for ozone,' Parkin said. 'I mean, it just seems like common sense. You don't keep digging the hole when you're already deep in it.' Yes, that's the view of an environmental advocate. But it's also a view that's implied by the plain language of state law. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Colorado plans daily ‘mountain rail' service by 2026 as part of Moffat Tunnel lease agreement
The East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel near Tolland is pictured on June 26, 2023. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) Colorado will continue to lease a crucial piece of state-owned infrastructure to the Union Pacific railroad for the next 25 years in exchange for help with its plans to expand passenger rail service to several mountain communities, under an agreement signed Monday. The deal, signed by Gov. Jared Polis and Union Pacific president Beth Whited at the governor's residence in Denver, extends the railroad giant's lease of the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel, which crosses under the Continental Divide between Winter Park and Rollinsville. The state owns the tunnel, which was completed in 1926 and leased to Union Pacific for a term of 99 years. A short-term agreement had previously extended the lease for four months following its expiration in December 2024 while the new terms were finalized. 'Moffat Tunnel represents an important part of Colorado's history, as well as a bright part of our future,' Polis said in a press release. 'With this work, we are showing the country a new model for pursuing passenger rail through collaboration with the railroad.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Following the 1997 decommissioning of the Tennessee Pass line near Leadville, the Moffat Tunnel route is the only way for trains to travel between Colorado's Western Slope and the Front Range. In addition to regular freight traffic, the tunnel is used by Amtrak's long-haul California Zephyr passenger line, which makes several stops in Colorado on its route between Chicago and San Francisco, and the seasonal Winter Park Express, which offers service to the Winter Park ski resort from December to March. The core of the new lease agreement is a state license for three daily round trips, or up to 506,000 train miles annually, for a new passenger rail service between Denver and mountain communities to the northwest. The mountain route, plans for which have been floated by Colorado transportation officials for the last several years, would complement the state's separate efforts to reestablish north-south passenger service along the Front Range, still a decade or more away. The state promised Monday that passenger rail to the mountains will be operational much sooner than that, with daily, year-round service between Denver and Granby beginning by 2026, and 'flexibility for the state to expand service in future phases' as far as Steamboat Springs, Craig and Hayden. That expansion will depend on 'needed capital improvements completed that are identified in the access agreement,' the state says. 'Today's agreement will offer residents and visitors throughout Colorado new opportunities and choices to get where they're going,' said Sally Chafee, chief of staff for the Colorado Department of Transportation. 'More passenger rail trips between the Front Range and mountain communities in Winter Park, Granby, and beyond will offer an option in addition to the drive over Berthoud Pass.' The new lease agreement also includes provisions finalizing Union Pacific's sale to CDOT of the Burnham Lead Line, railroad track easement near the disused Burnham Yard in central Denver. The acquisition will help facilitate the planned redevelopment of the 60-acre former rail yard site. 'Union Pacific is proud of the hard work and spirit of collaboration that went into this agreement with the State of Colorado,' Withed said. 'We came together as true partners and the result is an agreement that benefits the citizens of Colorado and the businesses and people who rely upon Union Pacific to deliver the goods and material vital to today's economy.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
