Today is May 20, 2024, and here’s what you need to know:

Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicks off petition drive to get on Colorado ballot at Aurora rally

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters at a rally in Aurora on Sunday that his candidacy can unite a deeply divided country by focusing on what unites Americans.

“Do you want a president who’s going to make Americans forget that they’re Democrats and forget that they’re Republicans, and remember that we are all Americans?” Kennedy asked a cheering crowd of more than a thousan people, who packed a converted airplane hangar at Stanley Marketplace. “That’s why you’re here today. I’m going to do that for this country.”

The environmental attorney and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families said that reelecting either President Joe Biden or former President Trump to another term won’t bring the change he said voters have told him they want since he launched his campaign a year ago.

How Democrats' failure at the ballot box led to bipartisan successes in the Colorado legislature

The seeds of the bipartisan cooperation that yielded major policy successes — notably in taxation — this year began in a major failure last year.

Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pointed to the failure of Proposition HH, the property tax measure that voters rejected by 20 percentage points last year, as leaving Democrats stinging from the defeat and Republicans chomping at the bit to figure out something else.

Democrats and Republicans alike worried about soaring home valuations — with some counties reporting increases as high as 60%, although that isn’t necessarily how much the property taxes will go up — and how, without their action, it would hammer Colorado residents hard.  

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar speaks to Colorado lawyers about SCOTUS arguments, stakes of cases

Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the Biden administration’s solicitor general who is responsible for arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, spoke to an audience of Colorado attorneys on Saturday about the challenges of trying to persuade a conservative-majority court to adopt the federal government’s view of the law in high-stakes cases.

Prelogar acknowledged she has argued positions that faced “tremendous headwinds,” including in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where the Supreme Court overturned longstanding federal protections for abortion, and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which curtailed colleges’ ability to account for race in admissions decisions.

Those losses were “really just devastating on a personal level, and on a level of looking at our society and constitutional structure,” she said. “But I have never argued a case where I thought it was entirely hopeless and there was no room for effective advocacy.”

Gov. Jared Polis vetoes 6 bills dealing with 'white bagging,' youth sports and more

Gov. Jared Polis’ office announced late Friday evening that the governor has rejected six bills, including measures that deal with employee discipline, construction wages and the treatment of energy derived from burning solid waste. 

It’s the governor’s first vetoes of bills passed in this year’s legislative session, when lawmakers sent more than 500 bills of the 705 introduced to Polis’ desk. As for Friday night, Polis was still working through more than 300 bills that needed his action.

Ballot initiatives seek to ban biological boys in girls' sports, require schools to notify parents over 'gender incongruence'

A parent who sued the Wellington School District over an LGBTQ middle-high school club is seeking to put a measure in front of voters in November that would require schools to notify parents when their child expresses “gender incongruence.”

Another ballot initiative would prohibit biological males from participating in girls’ sports at the K-12 level.

The group collecting petition signatures for the two measures is called “Protect Kids Colorado,” which is led by former state Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, and Erin Lee, a Fort Collins parent who earlier said her 12-year-old daughter was invited by an art teacher to an after-school art club that was really about gender and sexuality.