Today is Dec. 4, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

With fewer than 100 days remaining until Colorado’s Super Tuesday presidential primary and statewide precinct caucuses kick off the 2024 election year, the key races that will dominate the ballot and vie for voters’ attention are taking shape.

Coloradans will have the opportunity to cast votes three times through the year – first in the March 5 presidential primary, then in the June 25 state-level primary, and finally in the Nov. 5 general election.

The main event in 2024 will be the race for the White House, with a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump looking increasingly likely, though Colorado’s increasingly Democratic electorate – Biden beat Trump in the state by more than 13 percentage points in 2020 – means the state probably won’t be seriously contested by either campaign, with a handful of swing states gobbling up resources and attention.

While there will be only two contests on the statewide ballot next year – for the presidency and an at-large seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents – Colorado is already host to a record-shattering U.S. House race that’s drawn national attention and could determine which party controls the chamber after the election as Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert bids for another term.

A Colorado lawyer has received a suspension for using artificial intelligence to generate fake case citations in a legal brief and then lying about it.

The presiding disciplinary judge’s imposition of punishment on Zachariah C. Crabill is apparently the first to implicate the improper use of AI. The head of Colorado’s attorney regulation office, Jessica E. Yates, told Colorado Politics she was unaware of any similar cases in the state.

The state Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on the legal and professional dilemmas of AI, but earlier this year, Justice Melissa Hart acknowledged during a panel discussion that the court has an obligation to educate itself about emerging technology.

“We need to be thinking about how we change our rules to accommodate that and think about what lawyers need to be doing,” she said. “But also we will have cases that will present these questions and we are going to have briefs written to us that are written by artificial intelligence. … It will be effectively operating as an associate to the lawyer.”

Founded in 1901 to promote the return of Jews to Israel, the Jewish National Fund is famous for its fundraising efforts centered around planting trees in Israel.

Its annual conference typically plays to feel-good stories about innovative start-up enterprises and charitable projects that are part of the Israeli narrative.

Organizers of the global conference, who picked Denver as the venue this year, envisioned another such event – successful, vibrant, but certainly not the target of protests.

All of that changed on Oct. 7, when a surprise attack by Hamas into southern Israel killed 1,200 Israelis. The group, which the U.S. government lists as a terrorist organization, also kidnapped more than 200 people, including Americans and citizens of other countries. 

And when the 2,600 conferees from around the U.S. and from Israel entered the Colorado Convention Center on Thursday night, they passed security barricades surrounding the complex and saw a streetscape dotted with concrete barriers.

Michael B. Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. during the early Obama administration, said President Joe Biden’s support for the Jewish state in the wake of the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel is deeply appreciated, but he now senses a wavering in that backing.

Oren on Friday gave a brief interview to The Denver Gazette as he signed copies of his new book, 2048: The Rejuvenated State, for attendees at the Jewish National Fund-USA’s global conference at Colorado Convention Center.

“It’s an existential crisis,” Oren told The Denver Gazette. “We’ve never had crises that were close to existential.

“The Yom Kippur War was close, the intifada was close,” Oren continued.

Republican congressional candidate Scott James, a Weld County commissioner, this week unveiled endorsements from 21 of his fellow county commissioners.

“We recognize all very much the similar thing, that our constituents are the ones that matter, not the nonsense that goes on in Washington, D.C.,” James said in a campaign video, flanked by more than a dozen commissioners.

“The legislature tends to argue, procrastinate, bloviate and eventually waste the time of the constituents they represent,” he said. “Meanwhile, local government gets it done.”