Donald Trump

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner says he’s lost 40% of business, welcomes SCOTUS hearing

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – The owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, whose case involving his denial to make a cake for a gay couple was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court Monday after being declined nearly a dozen times, says the lower court’s decision, which will now be argued in front of the nation’s highest court, has caused him to lose business and that he’s received threats.

Jack Phillips spoke with his attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that took up his case, after the Supreme Court decided it would hear oral arguments in his case sometime later this year. Continue reading →

Trump signs ‘historic’ VA oversight bill supported by all of Colorado’s congressional delegation

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – President Donald Trump on Friday signed a bill supported by all of Colorado’s congressional delegation aimed at making it easier to fire bad Veterans Affairs employees and protect whistleblowers after several high-profile scandals over the past several years.

The VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 passed the Senate on June 7 with support from both of Colorado’s senators, Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner.

It passed the House on June 13, with all of Colorado’s House of Representatives members from both sides of the aisle voting in favor of the bill.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., fulfills one of the president’s campaign promises of dismissing employees at the VA “who let our veterans down,” he said at Friday’s bill signing ceremony, promising more VA reform in the future.

“What happened was a national disgrace and yet some of the employees involved in these scandals remained on the payrolls,” Trump said at the signing, according to NPR.

“After multiple scandals at the VA, Congress worked in a bipartisan fashion and passed additional reforms that will have a real impact on our nation’s veterans,” Gardner said Friday.

Gardner, Bennet and Coffman have all lauded the bill in recent weeks.

Bennet said the bill “encourages managers and patients to address poor performance and misconduct of VA employees and grants more oversight of the department.”

He and Gardner last year worked an amendment into the national defense budget that ordered the Government Accountability Office to study the VA’s oversight over construction projects, including the plagued Aurora VA hospital, which is running years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.

The bill also comes three years after several veterans died while waiting for care at the Phoenix VA hospital and other centers across the country as some VA employees covered up the lengthy wait times.

Gardner said upon the Senate’s passage of the bill that he was “thrilled” and that he looked forward to the president signing the bill.

Coffman called the bill’s passage in the House a “significant step in the right direction.”

The bill was the 40th piece of legislation so far signed by President Trump, according to NPR, though the majority of those pieces have repealed Obama administration policies or modified already-existing programs.

Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cory Gardner taking ‘first’ look at health care bill he helped create; Dems slam bill and process

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Thursday that he was taking his first look at the Senate’s version of the replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which he helped craft, and that the bill “deserves serious debate, not knee-jerk reaction.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released the 142-page discussion draft of the Senate’s health care bill, which they have dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, Thursday morning after weeks of anticipation and fervor over what has so far been a secretive process without any open committee hearings. Continue reading →

Gardner calls for full embargo, travel ban on ‘terror sponsor’ N. Korea after ‘murder’ of American

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – The U.S. should consider an absolute embargo and travel ban on North Korea after the “murder” of Otto Warmbier, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said Wednesday.

Gardner has been one of the leading voices in the Senate over the past year in pushing for sanctions against North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, who last month called Gardner a “psychopath” in response to Gardner saying that Kim was a “madman.” Continue reading →

Despite being part of Senate health care work groups, Colorado’s Cory Gardner still hasn’t seen bill

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, who is one of a handful of Senate Republicans working in small groups to craft the Senate’s version of the American Health Care Act, said Wednesday he has still not seen a text version of the bill just a week before the full chamber is set to vote on it. Continue reading →

Hickenlooper: ‘Kind of crazy’ that Senate Republicans are crafting health care bill in secret

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper joined Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich on CNN Monday night to argue that the secretive health care legislation being crafted by a handful of Senate Republicans would be better off with input from both sides of the aisle and from the governors who will have to implement any new health care system in their respective states.

“I’ve never had a good idea in my life that the moment I started talking about it with staff or people around me, that it didn’t suddenly get better,” Hickenlooper told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “And to think that a small number of one party is going to come up with the right solutions is kind of crazy.”

Hickenlooper and Kasich were among a group of seven bipartisan governors who sent a letter to the U.S. Senate’s majority and minority leaders Friday criticizing the House-passed version of the American Health Care Act—the bill Republicans aim use to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

The governors said in the letter that the House-passed version of the bill “calls into question coverage for the vulnerable and fails to provide the necessary resources to ensure that no one is left out, while shifting significant costs to the states” and that provisions in the bill involving hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts were “particularly problematic.”

In their interview with Cooper Monday, both Hickenlooper and Kasich criticized Republicans who have kept the crafting of the Senate’s bill secret from even some of their Republican colleagues.

Cooper asked Kasich if he felt, as a Republican, that the Senate secrecy, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was something he was supportive of.

“No, you think I’m going to say yes, Anderson?” Kasich quipped. “Of course it’s not. I mean they’ve got to let people know what they’re doing. This is like 1/6 of the U.S. economy. They have to do an analysis of this bill and know how many people it affects and how much it costs.”

Reach out to Senate Democrats,” Kasich continued. “Work this thing together. If you don’t, it’s not sustainable and the next administration is going to overturn this, and we never get to the issue of what’s driving up health care costs.”

Hickenlooper said that he and Kasich had been discussing the health care bills, and figured they only disagreed on about 5 percent of the issues.

“We could find compromises on almost everything,” he said.

Hickenlooper also added to Kasich’s call for Republicans, like Colorado’s Republican senator, Cory Gardner, to reach across party lines.

He also suggested that the governors should be more involved in the process, as they will be the ones who actually have to figure out how their states will put in place any changes to the nation’s health care system.

“Not only should Republican senators reach out to Democratic senators, but I would volunteer there are a bunch of governors, who actually have to implement what they come up with, who could give some substantive and meaningful suggestions on how to control costs and how not to have to roll back coverage,” Hickenlooper said.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said Tuesday that McConnell was writing the bill, and that the ongoing working committees Republicans like Gardner have pointed to as crafting the bill weren’t having as much input.

“We can say the budget committee, we can say the health committee, but McConnell is writing the bill.”

Three Democratic senators went on a quest Tuesday morning to find a copy of the secretive bill, paying a visit to the Congressional Budget Office, but coming up empty.

The Republican senators crafting the bill are expected to send it to the CBO to score this week, and McConnell has said he would like a vote on the new bill before the July 4 recess, and possibly as soon as next week.

But McConnell and other Republicans have been widely panned as hypocrites because of their secrecy.

McConnell complained about the process in passing the Affordable Care Act, which had more than three weeks of total floor time and discussion over the months it was put together in open session, in both 2009 and 2010.

“The real bill will soon be cobbled together in a secret conference room somewhere in the Capitol by a handful of Democratic senators,” he said in 2009, before saying just months later that Americans were “tired of giant bills negotiated in secret, then jammed through on a party-line vote in the middle of the night.”

Gardner, who is reportedly one of the 13 senators crafting the Senate version of the bill, hasn’t addressed the transparency concerns despite sharing those same concerns just four months ago.

In February, Gardner himself said, “It’s important to me that this debate be open and that the American people see what’s happening and taking place,” according to a transcript from HuffPost. “I think as this committee hearings and legislation is being drafted, it’s not going to be something behind closed doors. Everybody is going to be a part of it.”

Gardner says he will “continue working with my Senate colleagues on legislation that strengthens Medicaid, protects people with pre-existing conditions, and allows Coloradans to have access to more affordable insurance plans.”

But even some of his Republican Senate colleagues were starting to share the same transparency concerns Gardner and others have been derided over in recent weeks.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lamented that no one had seen the Senate’s version possibly less than 2 weeks before a vote.

“We used to complain like hell when the Democrats ran the Affordable Care Act. Now we’re doing the same thing,” McCain told NBC News.

Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday that Democrats would get to see the bill as soon as Republicans saw it, and McConnell said early Tuesday afternoon he believes a “discussion draft” of the Senate’s bill would be released on Thursday.

Gardner reneges on transparency concerns as Colo. Dems, bipartisan governors call for AHCA changes

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday joined several other Republican and Democratic governors in criticizing the House-passed version of the American Health Care Act, saying it does not adequately protect millions of Americans and needs fixing.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, joined Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), Massachusetts Gov. Charles Baker (R), Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) in signing the letter criticizing the House version of the bill. Continue reading →

Top science journal takes issue with Justice Dept. heads’ ideas on marijuana and health

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – The country’s oldest monthly magazine, Scientific American, slammed the Justice Department’s top two officials for their recent comments on marijuana in a column published Wednesday.

First, Massroots.com on Monday reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to help him undo the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which stopped the DOJ from using federal money to prosecute people inside states with legal medical marijuana programs.

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” Sessions wrote in the letter. “The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.”

The letter went on to ask lawmakers to include language in the next fiscal year’s budget that says marijuana can lead to “significant negative health effects.”

Sessions has left many wondering what the Justice Department will do with states’ medical and recreational marijuana programs, as he has made veiled statements in the past few months. As a congressman, he became well-known in marijuana advocacy circles for his declaration that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

He at one point compared medical marijuana users to opioid users, and has batted down any scientific studies that say medical marijuana may greatly reduce opioid use among abusers trying to get clean.

But it’s unclear if Sessions’ request will hold any water with lawmakers, who have passed the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment in each fiscal year’s budget since it was first introduced. A review of marijuana laws is set to be completed by July, according to Massroots.

And the 2013 Cole Memo from the Justice Department specifically implemented guidelines for how states could avoid interference from federal agents and prosecutors—something Sessions has said was “valuable.”

But on Tuesday, Sessions’ deputy, Rosenstein, told both the House and Senate’s appropriations committees that the Justice Department would continue to keep marijuana as a Schedule I drug—the classification used for the most dangerous drugs.

“It’s illegal, and that is the federal policy with regards to marijuana,” Rosenstein said.

But he also noted that the Cole Memo is in effect, which he called it a “policy which is an effort to balance the conflicting interests with regard to marijuana.”

He also said, like Sessions has in the past, said that “scientists have found that there’s no accepted medical use for” marijuana—a notion that Scientific American shredded in its Wednesday column.

“This epidemic is one of addiction and overdose deaths fueled by opioids—heroin, fentanyl and prescription painkillers—not marijuana,” Scientific American’s Dina Fine Maron wrote. “In fact, places where the U.S. has legalized medical marijuana have lower rates of opioid deaths.”

The author then went on to note several scientific, peer-reviewed studies that seem to contradict both Sessions’ and Rosenstein’s stances.

One of studies was done by University of Michigan researchers and published last year. It found that chronic pain sufferers who used cannabis saw a 64 percent drop in opioid use.

Another study, from the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that yearly overdose deaths involving opioids were close to 25 percent lower in states with medical marijuana programs.

The column also noted that dependency for marijuana users was far lower than users of opioids, tobacco, alcohol and cocaine, and that “it is virtually impossible to lethally overdose on marijuana,” citing the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Attorney General Cynthia Coffman have both been active in finding out how the feds may deal with marijuana under the new administration.

Hickenlooper, along with governors of other states with legal marijuana programs, sent a letter to the Treasury and Justice departments in April asking Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to “engage” them directly before changing any regulations on the federal level.

Hickenlooper also earlier this year said he believed marijuana was a states’ rights issue and that state sovereignty should be respected.

Coffman personally invited Sessions and his staff to come visit Colorado to see its program first-hand, but the Justice Department has so far not made good on her request.