Today is Aug. 16, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

The Colorado Libertarian Party is asking Republicans who want the third party to stand down in competitive congressional districts next year to sign a pledge agreeing to oppose American defense aid to Ukraine and work to abolish U.S. intelligence agencies.

Republicans running for toss-up legislative seats can avoid worrying about potentially splitting the vote with Libertarian nominees if they agree to vote to eliminate the state income tax and support the legal right of Coloradans to purchase unpasteurized milk.

The state Libertarians this month released lengthy pledges for Republican candidates to sign as part of a plan announced in June between the Colorado GOP and the state’s Libertarians.

The unprecedented pact is part of the Colorado Republicans’ attempts to regain ground the party has lost in recent elections, which have left Democrats holding every statewide office and historic majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.

The life of an appellate judge revolves around reading and writing, but some members of Colorado’s state and federal courts have published their musings off the bench in recent years, expanding upon the issues and initiatives they confront in their day jobs.

Colorado Politics located five journal articles published in 2022 and 2023 whose authors sit on either the state Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over federal cases arising in Colorado. The topics ranged from Colorado-specific case law and the treatment of civil rights claims to the behind-the-scenes workings of the judiciary.

The Colorado Supreme Court has joined an apparent minority of its peers across the country in laying down a written transition plan for chief justices, who are executive leaders of the judicial branch in addition to their roles deciding cases.

A “chief justice onboarding” document, drafted in 2022, outlines the duties of incoming Colorado chief justices three to four months before their swearing-in date, and lists their obligations throughout the first two years of their term.

The to-do list includes meetings with high-ranking officials, being looped into “any unusual issues,” learning about the judiciary’s interactions with the legislature, and discussing personnel and open records processes.

“The plan contains a number of things that were done in previous transitions, but many items in the plan have not been a formal part of previous transitions,” said Jon Sarché, deputy public information officer for the judicial branch. He added the plan is a “living document” that will undergo further modifications.

Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of President Donald Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, a new poll shows, with about half saying his alleged attempt to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote count was illegal.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted before Monday’s charges in the Georgia case, also shows that about half of Americans – 53% – approve of the Justice Department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election.

The poll finds 85% of Democrats approve of the criminal charges brought Aug. 2 by Special Counsel Jack Smith, compared with 47% of independents and just 16% of Republicans. Overall, 3 in 10 Americans disapprove, including about two-thirds of Republicans.

The survey suggests that the unprecedented indictments of a former president have done little to shake up a fundamental divide in the electorate: The majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, but he remains popular within the GOP.

A Denver program that funds college scholarships for low-income students accumulated millions of dollars in revenue but only distributed less than half of those funds in the last five years, even as its administrative expense stood at nearly $2 million, a city audit said.   

City auditors, who looked into the voter-approved college scholarship fund, found the program collected $46.4 million in revenue from a sales tax hike as of September 2022, but, of that amount, it paid out only about $20.9 million or 45% of the money.

In the meantime, the program has stockpiled nearly $30 million in cash.   

Auditors said they found other problems, notably the lack of oversight by the city agency of the nonprofit that administers the fund.