Today is May 12, 2023 and here is what you need to know:

Brace yourself.

Ballots go out in a matter of days for Denver’s mayoral runoff, and it’s a safe bet that at least a smidgeon of mud will start to hit the fan as ballots begin hitting voters’ mailboxes.

Since none of the 16 first-round candidates won a majority of the vote in the April 4 election, the top two finishers – former state Sen. Mike Johnston and former chamber of commerce chief Kelly Brough – face off in the final round, with ballots due on June 6.

It’s the first race for an open seat in a dozen years, since term-limited Mayor Michael Hancock won the first of his three elections.

Partly for that reason – there’s no margin in gaining a reputation as the attack dog in a crowded field when the object is to motivate enough of your supporters to make the runoff – the candidates mostly treated each other respectfully in the first stage of the campaign. After all, the pair of runoff-bound survivors didn’t get enough votes to win outright, so have to win over voters who backed their former rivals, a difficult proposition if their attacks kept a voter’s favorite from advancing.

In its most forceful statement yet on the surge of immigrants at the U.S. border with Mexico – a crisis that has been spilling to America’s interior in cities, such as Denver – the Biden administration said those who crossed into the U.S. illegally won’t be eligible for asylum.

“Starting tonight, people who arrive at the border without using a lawful pathway will be presumed ineligible for asylum,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement.

“We are ready to humanely process and remove people without a legal basis to remain in the U.S,” he said.

It’s not immediately clear what Mayorkas’ statement means in terms of stopping the surge of people from crossing the border.   

The U.S. is putting new restrictions into place at its southern border to try to to stop migrants from crossing illegally and encourage them instead to apply for asylum online through a new process.

The changes come with the end of coronavirus restrictions on asylum that have allowed the U.S. to quickly turn back migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border for the past three years. Those restrictions are known as Title 42, because the authority comes from Title 42 of a 1944 public health law allowing curbs on migration in the name of protecting public health.

Disinformation has swirled and confusion has set in during the transition. A look at the new rules (and the old ones).

President Joe Biden’s latest nominee to be a federal trial judge in Colorado, S. Kato Crews, advanced out of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday with a party-line vote of 11-10.

The committee acted on Crews’ nomination only after U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., returned to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday following an extended absence. The 89-year-old Feinstein was hospitalized for shingles in February and arrived more than an hour late to the committee meeting, where she received a standing ovation from her colleagues.

Prior to the vote, some Republican senators indicated they did not believe Crews, who has served as a federal magistrate judge since 2018, was qualified for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. District Court. Their criticism stemmed from an exchange at Crews’ March confirmation hearing in which he was unable to recall the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, which obligates prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to the defense.

When Madonna announced her 40th anniversary world tour this year, ticket prices on numerous reselling websites quickly climbed into the thousands of dollars – though the original tickets had not yet gone on sale. 

This is a common practice in the event ticket industry known as “speculative ticketing,” in which companies resell tickets they do not yet own and customers are often not guaranteed to receive the tickets they purchase.

In Colorado, speculative ticketing and other ticket sale practices could soon be prohibited and classified as “deceptive trade practices” under Senate Bill 60.

The Colorado legislature passed the bill last week, sending it to Gov. Jared Polis for final consideration. 

“Nearly everyone I talk to has had a difficult, if not impossible, experience purchasing online tickets for a concert, sporting event or show,” said bill sponsor Sen. Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver. “We must do a better job of eliminating deceptive resale practices and improve transparency for consumers.”