Latest news with #DafnaMichaelsonJenet
Axios
28-04-2025
- Health
- Axios
Healthy school meals program in jeopardy
Colorado offers every student a free breakfast and lunch at school — a two-year-old initiative so popular that it's now running short on money. Why it matters:"Kids who are hungry are also more likely to struggle with academic performance due to irritability, depression, anxiety and difficulty with concentration," Sandra Hoyt Stenmark, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said in a statement. By the numbers: The state is serving 194,000 breakfasts and 451,000 lunches at 1,805 sites a year, according to the Colorado Department of Education, which oversees the Healthy School Meals for All Program. The number of breakfasts and lunches served grew at least 30% last year and continues to rise. The latest: To keep the program alive, state lawmakers crafted two November ballot measures that ask voters for more money. One seeks voters' permission to keep $12.4 million state tax revenue that exceeded initial estimates, which otherwise must be refunded under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, TABOR. The second ballot question expands the program by curtailing tax deductions for those making more than $300,000 a year. It's expected to generate more than $95 million a year to make the program solvent. Friction point: If the referendums fail, authorities plan to shrink its scope and offer it to only the neediest schools. Catch up quick: Colorado voters approved Proposition FF in the 2022 election, making permanent a pandemic-era program. The program is powered by a tax hike on those who make $300,000 or more a year. It tallied a deficit in its first two years and expects to fall $42 million short next year. The tight budget year meant lawmakers couldn't cover the gap as they succeeded in doing the first two years. What they're saying: In an interview, state Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet (D-Commerce City) touted the program's popularity and how it has "completely changed lunch culture. … There's no more lunch shaming."
CBS News
24-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Colorado lawmakers unanimously approve resolution for Holocaust Day of Remembrance
State lawmakers unanimously approved a resolution for the Colorado Holocaust Day of Remembrance on Wednesday. The day commemorates the lives of six million Jewish people murdered between 1933 and 1945. Senator Dafna Michaelson Jenet discussed her trip to Treblinka and Auschwitz when she was 17 years old. Treblinka is considered to be the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. "It became such a part of me, I couldn't help but feel like I had been there. I had been in that camp," said Jenet. Members of the Jewish community and a Holocaust survivor attended the event at the Colorado State Capitol on Wednesday.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Religious belief shouldn't justify a practice that harms Colorado kids
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday March 20, 2024. (Danielle Prokop/Source NM) Conversion therapy hurts kids. There's no legitimate disagreement about that. And the harm it causes is the one fact above all others that should anchor any discussion about the practice, especially in context of the law, and even more when supposed religious rights threaten to muddle moral clarity. Let's state this clearly at the outset: The right of a person to exercise religious faith does not confer special child-harming privileges. That principle should be easy enough for most people to accept without hesitation, but it comes in for challenge in a Colorado case whose outcome now rests with the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. The case involves a Christian therapist from Colorado Springs who claims a state ban on conversion therapy infringes on her First Amendment rights. Lower courts have correctly rejected her argument, but, as the therapist no doubt knows, several MAGA-aligned justices are eager to take a closer look. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Conversion therapy involves efforts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. In practice it's invariably an attempt to coerce LGBTQ+ people into straight, cisgender lifestyles. The fundamental flaw in the practice is the false premise that a nonconforming sexual orientation or gender identity is an illness subject to 'therapy.' Mainstream mental health professionals have long acknowledged LGBTQ+ expressions as normal and healthy, and, conversely, they have rejected efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity as harmful, since those efforts can lead to suicidal behavior, depression and other serious symptoms. That's why Colorado in 2019 passed a law that banned doctors and mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy for minors. As of today at least 22 states and the District of Columbia have passed similar bans. One of the sponsors of the Colorado bill, state Senate President Pro Tempore Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat, said, 'We heard gut-wrenching testimony as well as research and data about the lifelong consequences of conversion therapy and even stories of suicide. The evidence was overwhelming: conversion therapy is deeply and often permanently harmful to youth.' But Kaley Chiles wants to elevate her Christian faith over research and evidence. A licensed professional counselor at Deeper Stories Counseling in Colorado Springs, Chiles sued the state in federal district court over its conversion therapy ban, claiming it violated her constitutional guarantee of free speech and free exercise of religion. The district court rejected her claim, and the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling. Those courts found that the state was properly regulating conduct, not speech, to protect residents. They determined that any restriction on speech was incidental and that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy, being neutral and applicable to everyone, does not unconstitutionally abridge Chiles' right to freely exercise religion. Crucially, as the 10th Circuit opinion noted, Chiles never substantially challenged the medical consensus that conversion therapy is ineffective and harmful. The U.S. Supreme Court announced this week that it will review Chiles' case during its next term, which starts in October. The legal matter before the Supreme Court is limited to the free speech question, but Chiles herself makes clear in her appeal to the justices that her case is about religion. Her petition at the outset says, 'A practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God's design, including their biological sex.' In other words, she believes gay and transgender people can't flourish, because her church says so, and the church knows better than medical professionals. This posture of 'God told me this, so I have a right to hurt people like that' shows up in other cultures, and it's revealing to consider one of those examples, since many Americans are desensitized to Western cases like conversion therapy. Many Muslim groups, especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, practice genital mutilation on young girls. Most Americans, and most Western Christians, likely recoil in horror at the thought of this barbaric tradition. Unlike conversion therapy, genital mutilation inflicts immediate, grievous physical damage, but the same principle of faith-justified-harm is at work, and there is no doubt in the medical literature that conversion therapy can lead to serious damage, even death. The only humane response is to recoil at the practice of conversion therapy. Religion itself is not the problem. Many believers flourish mainly because of their faith, and their personal practice of religion should not be begrudged or infringed. Furthermore, there is plenty of legal room for Chiles to discuss faith with her clients in a professional setting. But she does not have a right, legally or ethically, to engage in the child-harming practice of conversion therapy. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
