Purplish

In this bonus episode, we talk to voters about the primary race for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat, between John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff, and review the candidates’ records.

The legislature is on its final sprint to adjournment and we’ll catch you up on everything they’ve done, and are still trying to do.

Last week lawmakers were laying aside even the most popular bills to make room to focus on the pandemic. But the past week of protests have pushed a new issue to the top of the agenda: police reform.

Lawmakers returned to work Tuesday in a changed world. The first order of business was to start laying aside most of their bills from the first half of session. The second order of business was to argue passionately about how they’ll work from here on out. And the third was to set a new, pandemic-driven agenda. We discuss it all on this week’s Purplish.

…But that doesn’t mean candidates won’t try it in this, the most unusual of election seasons.

Lawmakers have a lot of decisions to make before they return to work at the end of May. Those are as big as cutting three billion dollars from the budget, and as small as where people will sit to achieve social distancing.

Remember the start of the legislative session, when all talk was about paid family leave, the public option, and how Jared Polis might use his power as governor in the […]

What happens to the right to a speedy trial when the court system is shut down during a pandemic? Can testing every last person in a small Western Colorado county yield new insights into the spread of coronavirus? What will life in Colorado look like the day after the “stay home” order lifts? And how much, really, will lawmakers actually try to push through once they’re allowed back in the state capitol? Hosts Bente Birkeland and Andrew Kenney tackle those questions and more with CPR’s Justice reporter, Allison Sherry.