Today is August 3, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

Colorado is weighing in on a legal battle against Idaho’s new law restricting a minor’s ability to cross state lines to receive an abortion.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser filed a brief Monday in support of a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s law, which makes it a crime for adults to help minors obtain abortion pills, or for a minor to leave the state for abortion care without parental permission. 

Weiser argued that Idaho’s law is unconstitutional, joining attorneys general from 18 other states and Washington D.C. in the brief. Weiser said Idaho should not be able to criminalize conduct that is legal in other states and urged the U.S. District Court to block Idaho’s law. 

“Idaho’s law is vague and unclear, and it infringes on constitutional rights to travel and speech,” Weiser said. “States cannot prevent their residents from accessing safe abortion care in other states where it is legal nor can they prevent doctors from sharing truthful information with their patients about such lawful care.” 

The brief argues that Idaho’s law endangers the health of minors, punishes other states’ medical providers, and floods Idaho’s neighboring states with residents seeking abortion care. 

Mike Johnston’s administration is moving ahead with its first homeless encampment cleanup scheduled for Friday because of a rat infestation, but Denver’s new mayor acknowledged the city does not yet have a place for the people that must relocate to move into.

“This is the challenge of our current scenario,” Johnston said while speaking to reporters on Wednesday, “which is we don’t yet have units up and ready that we can move them to.”

The predicament demonstrates the need for his long-term plan, Johnston said, which is to amass supportive housing and to shift to a process of “decommissioning” encampments, rather than “sweeping” them. 

His goal, he said, is to end the cycle seen in past years in which Denver’s encampment sweeps merely shuffled homeless residents from one city block to another. Instead, his priority is to simultaneously match people with a housing unit as their encampments shutter.

The mayor promised to personally visit any site the city decides to clean up before any encampment is closed.

Johnston’s administration agreed to clean up the site because of a significant rat infestation.

A former college student in Colorado who alleged he was “cancelled” after fellow students heard allegations that he sexually abused a romantic partner may not shield his identity from the public as he sues his accuser for defamation, a federal judge ruled last month.

“John Doe,” who filed suit in May, sought anonymity in order to prevent “reputational harm” from being associated with the defendant’s alleged lies about his treatment of her. The defendant, “Jane Roe,” opposed Doe’s request, saying she wanted the parties’ names public to draw attention to the plight of sex assault survivors.

On July 17, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang agreed that anonymity is permitted in rare circumstances, but Doe’s defamation lawsuit was not one of those.

“Judges have a responsibility to avoid secrecy in court proceedings because ‘secret court proceedings are anathema to a free society,'” she wrote. To that end, “libel cases concerning sexual assault are routinely brought in plaintiffs’ own names.”

With the Denver Public Schools executive session recording out and the legal battle for releasing it over, how much will the behind-closed-door meeting cost the district to fight?

Roughly $45,000.

That tally includes the outside counsel DPS used to defend the lawsuit as well as the legal costs incurred by the media outlets that brought it.

More than 1,000 Coloradans take their own lives every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. These growing numbers rank the state as the sixth-highest suicide rate in the country.

Between April and May, the Colorado suicide prevention hotline received more than 11,200 calls with 22% going unanswered, according to health policy research group KFF.

Officials from the suicide hotline organization Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners beg to differ. According to their research, only 13.9% of calls went unanswered during said period, with those numbers improving.

As RMCP became Colorado’s 988 center – a suicide and crisis hotline –  in 2022, officials said it has seen drastic improvements in client communication.