Congress

Denver law group suing DEA over its blanket classification of cannabinoids

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – A Denver-based law firm specializing in cannabis law is suing the Drug Enforcement Agency over its December announcement that it would be applying a Schedule-I classification to extracts with any cannabinoids derived from the cannabis plant.

The Hoban Law Group filed the lawsuit Jan. 13 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in California, on behalf of three of its clients: the Hemp Industries Association, RMH Holdings, LLC and Centuria Natural Foods, Inc. Continue reading →

New poll finds large increase in support for government-backed health care coverage over past year

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows increased nationwide support for government-supported health care and that low-income Republicans have increasingly warmed to the idea of health care coverage for all Americans over the past year.

The report, published Friday, found that 60 percent of Americans support government-backed health care coverage for all Americans – a 9 percent increase from a poll last year and the highest percentage Pew has found since a 2006 Gallup survey.

But the numbers are still widely split between Democrats, 85 percent of whom polled support federal health care coverage, and Republicans, of whom only 32 percent said they supported government-backed health care.

The report also found that 52 percent of Republicans with household incomes of less than $30,000 per year support government-backed health care for all – up from 31 percent nine months ago.

The near-20 percentage point increase was also seen among “middle class” Republicans earning between $20,000 and $74,999 per household each year. Thirty-four percent of those polled said they supported government-backed health care coverage, compared to 14 percent last year.

Just 18 percent of Republicans making more than $75,000 a year said they supported government-backed health care coverage.

The splits in the report mostly boiled down to a family’s income level.  Seventy-four percent of households making less than $30,000 a year support the government backing health care coverage, but only 53 percent of households making above $75,000 a year agreed.

But there were also splits when those surveyed were asked whether they supported a single-payer system or one like the current system set up under the Affordable Care Act in which the government subsidizes people’s plans that they buy through private insurance companies operating on national or state exchanges.

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed said they supported a single-payer, government program; 29 percent said they wanted a mix of government and private programs; 32 percent said the government should not be responsible for ensuring nationwide health care but wanted the government to continue Medicare and Medicaid coverage; and just 5 percent said there should not be any government involvement in health care coverage of any kind.

Congressional Republicans have already passed the initial steps to repealing the ACA, though there is no replacement plan in place despite promises from President-elect Donald Trump and others that they would “repeal and replace” the ACA.

There were rallies held across the country Sunday, including in Denver, to ask that Congress not repeal the ACA, often referred to as Obamacare.

Sunday, Trump said he wanted “health insurance for all” but his spokesman, Sean Spicer, walked those comments back.

Gallup data from December found that some of the counties and states that voted for Trump in November also saw the highest enrollments in the Affordable Care Act coverage last month.

The Pew Research Center poll was based on telephone interviews of 1,502 adults in all 50 states and was conducted Jan. 4-9.

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All four of Colorado’s Congressional Democrats say they will attend Trump’s inauguration

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – As handfuls of Democratic Congressional representatives say they plan to boycott Donald Trump’s inauguration, Colorado’s all say they will be attending.

Many Democratic members of Congress started saying over the weekend that they wouldn’t attend the inaugural ceremony, which is a tradition but not a requirement, after a spat between Georgia Rep. John Lewis and the president-elect.

Rep. Lewis said in an interview late last week he wouldn’t attend the inauguration after he questioned Trump’s legitimacy as president in an interview with NBC News. He said in the interview that he doesn’t believe Trump is a “legitimate” president because of the allegations Russia intervened in the General Election.

After Trump saw the interview, he tweeted out that Lewis was “all talk” and “no action,” saying Lewis should instead focus on his own district, which Trump called “crime infested” and “burning.”

Many Congressional Democrats took issue with Trump’s words, calling it an attack on Lewis, who had a large part in the civil rights actions in the 1960s. He marched in Selma and was an ally of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s.

The Congressional Black Caucus led the boycott of the inauguration, but many Democrats followed suit Monday in saying they would also boycott the event.

However, when asked Monday if they would attend, Colorado’s four Congressional Democrats all said they would be there.

Sen. Michael Bennet, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Rep. Diana DeGette and Rep. Jared Polis all confirmed with Denver7’s Marc Stewart that they would attend Trump’s inauguration. The state’s Republican members of Congress all said they plan to attend as well.

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Colorado GOP pushes bill to repeal state health care exchange, but governor will fight

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – Two of the first bills filed in the Republican-controlled Colorado Senate aim to make huge changes in state health care – one that would repeal the state’s health exchange and one that would require state Medicaid recipients to enter into a written agreement if they use a non-enrolled provider.

Both bills are being pushed by new Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City. Senate Republican Leader Chris Holbert, R-Parker, affirmed the party’s opposition to the state exchange Thursday. Continue reading →

Declassified intel report finds Putin, Russia meddled in US election to undermine faith, help Trump

Posted on by Blair Miller

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A declassified version of a report by the three top U.S. intelligence agencies on possible Russian meddling into the 2016 General Election says Russia and President Vladimir Putin aimed specifically to undermine faith in the American electoral process and discredit Hillary Clinton in favor of Donald Trump.

The report (click to read in full) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and national Security Agency (NSA) “is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment,” according to the document, but its findings are “identical” to the classified version. Continue reading →

President-elect Trump feuds over Russia reports, attacks magazine that wrote negative article

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – President-elect Donald Trump again took to Twitter Thursday morning to feud with U.S. intelligence agencies over allegations that Russia interfered with the General Election, and to again denigrate a magazine that wrote an unfavorable story about one of his properties.

As national news outlets continue to publish stories citing unnamed government sources who point to Russian interference in the election and possible hacks by agents with Russian ties, Trump continued – as he has in recent weeks – to question their findings.

“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Trump tweeted.

His tweet, however, is mostly false – just as it was when he said news of the hacks “wasn’t…brought up before [the] election” on Dec. 12.

The Obama Administration blamed the Russian government for hacking the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Oct. 7.

“We believe…that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement with the Department of Homeland Security that day.

But a Washington Post story and analysis by cyber-firm Crowdstrike published mid-June were the first to raise the flag that Russia may have been behind security breaches.

Only July 25, the FBI announced it was investigating the DNC breach.

Trump even raised the idea that Russia could have been behind the breach and suggested they release Clinton’s emails in his last news conference – held July 27 – though he said the next day he was being sarcastic. Yet on Oct. 9 he suggested at the second presidential debate that “maybe there is no hacking.”

Election Day was Nov. 8, and since then, more actions have been taken by the White House.

President Obama ordered a review of the alleged hacking on Dec. 9, and asked it be ready and on his desk by the time he leaves office.

And on Dec. 12, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested Trump benefited from the alleged Russian meddling directly since he had praised Russian President Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail as a “strong leader.”

Earnest said Thursday at the daily press briefing it was “obvious” that Trump knew during the campaign Russia was trying to interfere in the election and added that Trump should be supporting an investigation rather than questioning it.

But the hacking allegations weren’t the president-elect’s only point of focus Thursday morning.

He started off by criticizing Vanity Fair, a longtime target of Trump’s that has also feuded with the business magnate in its pages, which published a story a day earlier with the headline “Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America.”

“Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of Vanity Fair Magazine,” he wrote. “Way down, big trouble, dead! [Owner] Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!”

He has a habit of taking to Twitter to attack people or news outlets that have been critical of him or his policies. Since Dec. 3, he has gone after an Indiana steel union president, Boeing, China, NBC News, CNN, the Green Party, Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin on the social media outlet.

Just four minutes after he criticized Vanity Fair on Twitter, he thanked Time Magazine and the Financial Times for naming him “person of the year,” which he said was “a great honor!”

And before tweeting about Russia, Trump fired off another tweet disparaging his favorite target: “the media,” which has rightfully scrutinized his business dealings and connections as they pertain to his soon-to-be presidency.

“The media tries so hard to make my move to the White House, as it pertains to my business, so complex – when actually it isn’t!”

But the communications director for Trump’s transition team, Jason Miller, said just hours later that Trump’s finances were indeed complex.

Trump also canceled a news conference scheduled for this week – his first since July 27 — in which he was to discuss his business dealings and how they will be handled in his transition to the presidency, but only hours later took to Twitter to discuss the matter without taking questions.

He said he would be leaving his businesses and that his sons, Don and Eric, as well as other executives would manage them. He said “no new deals” would be done while he is in office.

Trump has made Twitter his main soapbox for making statements, most-often in lieu of speaking through traditional media outlets he does not trust. But he also failed to invite Twitter to a technology roundtable Wednesday that featured many top U.S. tech companies. Surrogates said the company was “not big enough.”

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More than 20K ballots in Colorado not counted because of signature discrepancies, ID problems

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – More than 21,000 General Election ballots in Colorado weren’t counted because voters either failed to verify discrepancies in their signatures, didn’t sign their ballots or didn’t verify their registration with a form of identification.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office certified the state’s election results late last week.

The certified results show 2,859,216 ballots were cast – a number that differed from a spreadsheet released by the office Dec. 5 – before the results were certified – that showed more than 2.88 million ballots had been counted.

The 2016 General Election was the first presidential election in which Colorado used a mail-in ballot system. Registered voters were mailed a ballot weeks before Election Day and had to either mail them back or drop them off at their county clerk’s office or drop-off locations.

Each ballot required a signature that matched the signature on the person’s voter registration form in order to minimize any possible voter fraud. If there were discrepancies, those people had eight days to verify their signatures with their local county clerk after Election Day, lest their ballot not count.

Lynn Bartels, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office, said there were a total of 21,408 ballots that were mailed in or dropped off that weren’t counted because of the various discrepancies.

Ballots with signature discrepancies amounted to the largest group that weren’t counted; 16,209 ballots had signatures that weren’t verified.

A total of 2,606 ballots weren’t signed at all, and Bartels said 2,593 ballots weren’t counted because no identification to verify a person’s registration was provided.

Many of the ballots not counted because a person’s identity wasn’t verified likely came from people who registered through voter registration drives or who registered late and needed to provide a copy of a U.S. or Colorado ID in order for their vote to count.

The Secretary of State’s Office turns over the ballots whose signatures weren’t verified to local district attorneys across the state. It is up to them to pursue any possible voter fraud cases, though none have so far been announced.

Despite the somewhat large number of ballots not counted, Colorado still saw a voter turnout of 74.5 percent – up from just under 71 percent in the 2012 presidential election.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has already signed off on the presidential election results and the U.S. Senate race won by Michael Bennet, and has 30 days from Dec. 8 to sign off on the rest of the results. If he fails to do so, the measures passed by voters will become law automatically after the 30-day period.

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Colo. Sen. Cory Gardner calls for permanent cybersecurity committee amid Russian hacking allegations

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER – Colorado Senator Cory Gardner is among more than a dozen Republicans calling for the U.S. government to probe the possible influence of Russian hackers on the General Election, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s denials that Russia is involved.

Gardner, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy, issued a news release Monday again calling on the Senate to create a permanent committee on cybersecurity.

His call for the creation of the committee comes on the heels of a report by The Washington Post in which anonymous sources told the paper the CIA had concluded Russia intervened in the election in order to help Donald Trump win the presidency, and that people connected to the Kremlin provided WikiLeaks with emails hacked or phished from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

On the same day as The Post’s report went to print, President Barack Obama ordered an intelligence review be conducted and delivered to his desk by the end of his term that investigates Russian hacking allegations.

At least a dozen other intelligence agencies and several House and Senate committees have come to the same, or similar conclusions.

“Recent reports from our intelligence community concluded that Russia attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election, serving as yet another reminder of the hose of emerging threats in cyberspace,” Gardner said in Monday’s new release. “These allegations must be thoroughly investigated, and I will continue to work with my colleagues to address the sanctioning of Russian and specifically, bad actors identified following an investigation.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday said that “Russians are not our friends” and condemned the actions by the allegedly Russian-linked hackers. He said the Senate Intelligence Committee will be investigating.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also said the House Intelligence Committee will investigate the alleged hacking, but said the investigation “should not cast doubt on the clear and decisive outcome of this election” or involve “partisan” politics. Ryan said any Russian intervention into the U.S. election would be “especially problematic.”

President-elect Donald Trump, however, continued to deny and downplay any alleged involvement by the Russians, calling the allegations “ridiculous.”

He took to his soapbox of choice, Twitter, Monday morning to say “it’s very hard to determine who was doing the hacking” unless the hackers are caught in the act, though forensic analysts are often able to determine the source of hacks long after they are done.

He also continued to chastise Hillary Clinton in regards to the hacks. “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card,” Trump tweeted. “It would be called conspiracy theory!”

When The Post’s story published Friday, Trump’s team dismissed the CIA assessment in a news release, saying it was from “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

Gardner was among the first Hill Republicans to call for inquiries into and consequences for any alleged Russian hacking in October, when the U.S. first officially blamed Russia for the hacks.

At that time, Gardner said he wanted to introduce legislation to impose sanctions on Russia for its cyber activities, though he at the time pointed to the Obama Administration as being partially at fault, saying it failed “to take the cyber threat seriously.”

He also called for the creating of a cyber threat committee in July 2015 in regards to Chinese hacking.

Though no new legislation has been introduced yet, his office said he is continuing to work with committee members and other senators to do so.

Powerful Senate Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham have both joined the Senate’s investigation.

One of Colorado’s electors joined a host of others Monday in calling for a full intelligence briefing on the alleged Russian hacking before they cast their votes Dec. 19.

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Donald Trump’s criticism of union leader on Twitter leads to question of his social media influence

Posted on by Blair Miller

DENVER — President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Wednesday night to slam the Indiana union leader who criticized him over what he called the “dog and pony show” deal to keep hundreds of Carrier Corporation jobs from moving to Mexico.

“Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers,” Trump tweeted. Jones represents union members who work at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant.

He sent another tweet minutes later saying the union would have kept the jobs in Indiana if the union “was any good” and that it should “spend more time working-less time talking.”

Jones told The Washington Post Tuesday that Trump “lied his ass off” about the deal, which has been in the making for months.

Trump originally said his deal, which gives the company a $7 million tax break from Indiana over the next 10 years, would save 1,100 jobs. But Jones said the truth was that only 730 jobs were saved and that more than 1,200 were still going to Mexico.

OTHER TRUMP BUSINESS TWEETS THAT HAD EFFECTS

He also previously, and falsely, accused Ford Motor Company of moving to Mexico, though it said it was only planning to move a single production line.

The president-elect’s recent business-related tweets have led many to question their effects on deals in the business world.

On Dec. 6, Trump claimed that a Boeing contract to build updated Air Force One planes would cost “more than $4 billion,” to which he added, “Cancel order!”

He tweeted the message less than a half-hour after a Chicago Tribune story posted online in which Boeing’s CEO cast doubts on Trump’s international business plans.

Boeing stock temporarily lost about $1 billion in value, though it had recovered to values similar to the day’s opening by the end of trading.

The $4 billion value is also in doubt, as Boeing confirmed it was under a $170 million contract to aid in building the new aircraft. A government spokesperson said the final details of the cost of the deal were still being developed.

Trump also tweeted in the past week about a “deal” with Japan-based SoftBank that he says is a $50 billion investment and he says will bring 50,000 jobs to the U.S. But that tweet, too, has had holes poked in it.

The $50 billion is part of a previously-announced investment by the company, who said previously that it was investing $100 billion in worldwide tech companies, according to the New York Times. Some of the fund also comes from Saudi Arabia, and Foxxconn – a Taiwan-based technology company – is also said to be involved in the deal.

TRUMP ACCESSIBLE IN NEW WAYS

Trump has arguably been the among the most-effective Twitter users, especially among politicians.

He has 17 million followers on the social networking site, though the true number of active users remains unknown.

He also, at times, is extremely accessible for a major politician via the network. He often manually retweets regular users, and has said he uses Twitter to get “important things” out “much faster than a press release,” as he told NBC Tuesday.

But he has not held a news conference in months, so traditional news outlets have at times been forced to rely on his social media feeds and surrogates for information directly from the source.

President Barack Obama has also held fewer news conferences toward the end of his presidency. And though he was the first president to have a Twitter account, he rarely interacts with the public like Trump.

White House access has decreased steadily over the years. The public used to be able to walk right up to the White House doors, but as security concerns grew over the years, they were pushed back to the White House front lawn.

Perimeters were installed over the years, and the Secret Service started guarding the home at one point in the late 1800s. They started protecting the president after President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, according to research by The Washington Post.

The military protected the White House during the two world wars, and gates to the White House were closed to the public for good during World War II.

Eventually, traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue was closed altogether after a series of security breaches during Bill Clinton’s first term and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Tours are still allowed, but have been restricted since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

Now, people going on tours of the president’s home must go through Congress in order to arrange one.

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Report: Colorado’s VA hospitals got 2 and 3-star ratings out of 5 in internal VA reports

Posted on by Blair Miller

AURORA, Colo. – Colorado’s two Veterans Affairs medical centers received two and three stars out of five in a secret rating system the Department of Veterans Affairs has in place.

USA Today on Wednesday published the never-before-see star ratings Wednesday after obtaining the internal documents. Five stars were assigned to the best hospitals, while one star was given to the worst.

The documents show Denver’s VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System was given two stars and the Grand Junction VA Medical Center was given three stars in the most-recent reports available for both hospitals, from the fourth quarter of 2015.

Data from the second quarter of 2016 was released to USA Today for centers rated with either one or five stars, but centers that got two, three, or four-star reviews saw no new data released.

Many of the lowest-performing centers, according to the internal ratings, were centered in Texas and Tennessee; the Dallas, El Paso, Nashville, Memphis and Murfreesboro centers all received one-star ratings in the second quarter of 2016. The much-discussed Phoenix VA also received one star.

Most of the top-performing centers that received five stars were situated in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, according to the data.

USA Today says the ratings are determined by “dozens of factors” that include death and infection rates, wait times and complications suffered by patients that could have been avoided.

VA Undersecretary for Health David Shulking told the paper the rankings are considered an “internal improvement tool.”

“My concern is that veterans are going to see that their hospital is a ‘one’ in our star system, assume that’s bad quality and veterans that need care are not going to get care,” he told USA Today. “And they’re going to stay away from hospitals and that’s going to hurt people.”

The VA said 120 of 146 hospitals rated on the scale have shown improvement since July 2015, though Shulking declined to specify which hadn’t aside from the one-star Detroit VA.

Veterans Affairs has been closely scrutinized across the country because of wait times and patient deaths, among other things.

Colorado’s specifically have also come under fire over the past two years.

A September federal report found the department’s lack of oversight and “gross mismanagement” in Aurora added hundreds of millions in costs to the new hospital.

And just last month, a VA employee who blew the whistle to Congress that the department was using unauthorized wait lists for mental health care resigned after alleged retaliation.

A new billboard has gone up in Denver that says, “VA is Lying, Veterans are Dying.”

Last year, the Grand Junction center stopped performing several surgeries and procedures after two patients died over a nine-month period and several other patients suffered complications.

Shulkin told USA Today that veterans shouldn’t have to wait for care, and that the number of them waiting for more than a month for care has dropped from nearly 60,000 to 600 since he took over the department in July 2015.

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