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The Colorado Sun published 2,788 stories and opinion pieces in 2025. That’s a lot of news, features and perspective competing for your attention. Some subjects not only proved compelling in the moment, but also hinted that their narratives would continue to take shape into the new year. 

We’ve selected some topics that almost certainly will keep grabbing Coloradans’ interest as events twist and turn and redefine the news. Below, our subject matter experts have offered their observations on the issues they’ve followed, and on the new directions those stories could take in the months ahead.

Heat was turned up on wolf reintroduction and it’s getting hotter

If there’s one topic that kept readers howling in 2025 it was Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program and the continued missteps Colorado Parks and Wildlife has made, guided by what many see as a flawed plan. 

That story has only intensified as we lope forward. We still have wolves that are highly interested in eating livestock and a new head of CPW — Laura Clellan, whose appointment was quickly followed by the decision to relocate one of those wolves back to the place where all of the problems started. Gray wolf 2403 is a member of the Copper Creek pack that was trapped after its parents killed dozens of livestock on two ranches in Grand County. After a stint in captivity, they were transported to Pitkin County, where they continued killing livestock. Then 2403, a male, traveled into New Mexico. A memorandum of understanding between the states required Colorado to take him back. Clellan explained in an agency news release that the wolf was returned to Grand County because that is where he could “best contribute to CPW’s efforts to establish a self-sustaining wolf population” while CPW attempts “to minimize potential wolf-related livestock conflicts.” 

What happens next will influence Colorado’s continued wolf reintroduction story. Only now the stakes are higher than ever, with the federal government attempting to dictate CPW’s mission. In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service barred the agency from sourcing their next batch of wolves in British Columbia, where they went last year for wolves. And in a few days, CPW will face some tough questions when it gives its update during the 2026 legislative session. State Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, says the cost of the program to taxpayers — $3.5 million in 2025 alone — will most certainly come up, and that the legislature could slice funding going forward. “We wouldn’t want to defund it completely because we have wolves on the ground and we need to make sure ranchers have access to compensation,” he said. But it’s getting harder to see success in the crystal ball of reintroduction. — Tracy Ross

Will Colorado have to go it alone in going green?

The biggest environmental battle ahead for Colorado in 2026 is whether and how the state majority in favor of activist climate and pollution policies can go its own way against a concerted federal rollback of clean air and clean energy mandates. 

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The confrontation escalated last week, with the dirtiest of all fuels, as the Trump administration ordered Tri-State Generation’s Craig Unit 1 coal plant to stay open beyond its long-planned Dec. 31 closing date. Closing the last six coal electricity plants by 2031 has been a Holy Grail of Colorado environmental and economic policy and regulation, and state and environmental leaders are vowing a legal challenge. With coal power, “Whether you want it or not, whether you need it or not, it’s yours,” is setting up to be a heated 2026 fuel fight. 

Colorado’s executive branches, regulatory commissions and legislature are currently stacked with policymakers who want to meet mandates for cuts to greenhouse gases, the emissions that violate ozone caps, and an overall push to switch the economy from fossil fuels to cleanly-generated electricity. They are forging ahead with rules and incentives that go beyond a GOP-controlled presidency and Congress. 

Where Colorado’s environmental approach was threatened by federal government moves in 2025, the state attorney general’s office fought back, as our politics staff is carefully tracking. How successful Phil Weiser’s fights will be in 2026 could come in the form of federal court decisions on state mandates for electric vehicle sales, clean energy research grants and who pays for EV charging stations. 

Colorado’s often-effective environmental advocacy groups, meanwhile, will double down on state control. They are seeking a “cap and invest” policy to help Colorado catch up on carbon-cutting goals, emulating Washington state and others, which fossil fuel advocates will no doubt hate. They already have U.S. Senator and gubernatorial candidate Michael Bennet on board for the 2026 debating season. — Michael Booth

Trying to be smart in use and regulation of modern AI 

The year 2026 will be pivotal for artificial intelligence in Colorado. A state law to protect consumers from potential discrimination by AI systems goes into effect June 30, delayed from the original Feb. 1 start date to give lawmakers another chance to change Senate Bill 205.

Many local tech leaders opposed the law immediately after it passed in 2024 because of the “what-if” scenarios that could stifle innovation. Elected officials, including Gov. Jared Polis, also wanted to change the law, which requires AI developers and companies that deploy the AI to disclose the foreseeable risks of discrimination on consumers.

Then on Dec. 11, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to block states from adopting their own AI regulations, which “makes compliance more challenging, especially for startups.” Trump criticized Colorado’s law banning algorithmic discrimination because it could “force AI models to produce false results” to avoid discrimination.

Rep. Brianna Titone, a Democrat from Arvada who cosponsored the original bill, said Trump doesn’t have the authority to do the work of Congress. She’s also working on a new “repeal and replace” bill to simplify the process of addressing inaccurate AI data by putting the liability on developers of large-scale systems, like Google and Open AI, and not the smaller companies deploying them. That, she said, “will produce better outcomes and actually serve the deployers in a better way … making Colorado a good place for AI.”

The growing use of modern AI goes beyond technology. Xcel Energy told the Colorado Public Utilities Commission last summer it needs to nearly double electricity generation by 2040 to meet data-center demand. Data centers use a lot of water to cool computer facilities and that’s alarming environmentalists and municipalities.

Educators are also trying to figure out how much AI to allow into classrooms, as reports of AI chatbots influencing teenagers’ mental health abound. In the workplace, companies wonder how AI can help employees be more productive, as job openings diminish. A new workforce report from the Colorado Workforce Development Council called artificial intelligence “the most probable emerging technology” for “disruptions to the labor market.” — Tamara Chuang

End is near for Colorado’s Digital Divide

In 2026, the state’s remaining 96,000 households with subpar or no broadband service are expected to finally get access to speeds of at least 100 mbps down and 20 mbps up.

The Colorado Broadband Office picked 25 internet providers to get the job done. They will split  $420.6 million from the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program. 

But that’s only half the amount the state was awarded two years ago. BEAD rules changed in June under the Trump administration to pick the lowest-priced bid and avoid favoring one technology over another. The state had to reexamine projects that prioritized fiber, resulting in 94,000 Coloradans no longer deemed eligible because of existing wireless or available satellite service.

A big winner was Amazon Leo, previously known as Project Kuiper, a private satellite internet service planning to launch in 2026. Amazon was awarded $25.3 million to cover more than 42,000 unserved or underserved households in Colorado. 

The state still hopes to tap the rest of its original $826.5 million award to build more middle-mile infrastructure, improve public-safety connectivity and retrofit multifamily properties. But a new wrinkle was added Dec. 11, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order to block states from adopting their own AI laws. The order called out Colorado’s AI law and threatened to freeze additional BEAD funding. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is expected to issue guidance in “early 2026,” according to state officials. — Tamara Chuang

Colorado landed the Sundance Film Festival. Now what will we do with it?

It took a Stanley Hotel overhaul, a $34 million tax incentive, a pile of grants just shy of $2 million, a film-focused legislative task force and multiple walking tours of downtown Boulder highlighting the city’s theaters, hotels, bus routes and bike paths, in order to convince the Sundance Film Festival to ditch its longtime home in Park City, Utah. And that was just the beginning. 

In March, the festival announced a 10-year contract with Boulder, beginning in 2027.

The festival managed to evade giving an official reason for its relocation, but savvy onlookers cited ideological battles with Utah’s ultraconservative lawmakers, while before his death in September festival founder Robert Redford had publicly gestured toward Park City’s growing pains. Boulder doesn’t have the same ski-town uptick in tourism that Park City does in the middle of January, when the festival takes place, but that doesn’t mean the projected 40,000 to 50,000 visitors will tread lightly during those winter weeks. 

So while businesses in Boulder will no doubt be shoring up for a big influx, the rest of the state also stands to gain from a renewed focus on filmmaking, making 2026 a year to keep an eye on the homegrown movie industry. — Parker Yamasaki

Feds opened the door to school vouchers. Will Colorado walk through?

The year ahead could be a defining one for school choice in Colorado, which has continued to expand schooling options for families since becoming an early adopter of charter schools in the 1990s.

Many Colorado families have embraced school choice, sending their child to a charter school, taking advantage of online programs or enrolling them in a public school other than the one assigned to them by their home school district.

Private schools are yet another option for students, but, unlike some other states, Colorado does not allow public dollars to subsidize a child’s private-school education. Colorado voters have repeatedly rejected those kinds of programs, called voucher programs.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been doubling down on creating a federal voucher program and is asking states whether they want to opt into a new program in which taxpayers could receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for donating to a “scholarship granting organization.” Those organizations would then fund scholarships for kids at public and private schools, supporting expenses such as fees, books, tutoring, technology, after-school programs and private-school tuition.

Education advocates and state officials are divided over whether Colorado should lean into the new program. Gov. Jared Polis told The Colorado Sun he plans to enroll Colorado in the program to draw in more dollars for students. Critics worry the program will erode the public school system by diverting much-needed funding to private schools serving wealthier families.

In the coming months, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service will release a set of proposed regulations. Polis must give the federal government an answer by December, before the program begins in January 2027. — Erica Breunlin

Did one meeting in Vail forever damage the Democratic caucus?

As we head into a new year and a new legislative session at the Colorado Capitol, tensions among Democrats are running high. That’s in large part because of deepened distrust between the party’s more moderate and more progressive wings.

Those tensions peaked after an October weekend retreat during which members of the legislature’s Opportunity Caucus, who are in the more moderate wing, mingled with lobbyists at a hotel in Vail and then would not answer questions from journalists about who paid for the event. Leaked emails show that the dark-money nonprofit organization One Main Street Colorado, which funds moderate candidates in primary campaigns against progressives, appears to have at least partially funded the gathering and helped plan it.

Progressive Democrats have called out Opportunity Caucus Democrats for attending a retreat, while Opportunity Caucus leader Sen. Lindsey Daugherty has attacked critics. The Opportunity Caucus is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that doesn’t disclose its donors and is what The Sun refers to as a dark money group. Other nonprofit caucuses — the Black Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus — released their donor lists to The Sun when asked.

Now, funding questions surrounding the retreat are at the center of an investigation by the state’s Independent Ethics Commission. Sixteen Democrats face complaints filed by Colorado Common Cause, a liberal-leaning nonprofit that advocates for an open government, and have until the end of the week to respond.

Colorado Common Cause executive director said in November that the group anticipated reaching a settlement with the Opportunity Caucus lawmakers, but so far those negotiations have not been successful. If a settlement isn’t reached, it could be years before the ethics commission releases a final ruling on the complaints.

Will Democrats across the political spectrum be able to work together starting Jan. 14 while the IEC investigation is ongoing? Time will tell. — Taylor Dolven

How much more cutting can Medicaid spending take?

“I hate the HCPF budget,” state Sen. Jeff Bridges said at the end of a grueling meeting of legislative budget-writers in March, using the acronym of the state’s Medicaid agency.

Then, to emphasize the point, he said it louder.

“I HATE the HCPF budget.”

Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who was at the time the chair of the Joint Budget Committee, and his colleagues had just finished poring over possible cuts to Medicaid to plug a more than $1 billion state budget hole. That was hard enough — committee members considered cuts to dental care for people whose mouths are in pain, cuts to behavioral health providers for troubled youth, and cuts to therapies that use horses to help children with disabilities, among many others.

But now they have to do it all over again. And again. And again.

With the state stuck in a projected cycle of annual, massive budget deficits — and with Medicaid making up roughly one third of the state’s overall budget — lawmakers have almost no choice but to look for additional cuts in the health program for people with low incomes or disabilities. And, while the state is working on ways to improve efficiency and bang for the buck in Medicaid, inevitably this will mean hacking programs that real human beings depend on.

Gov. Jared Polis’ budget for next year notably slices away at Medicaid spending.

“It’s an important exercise to show what sustainability in Medicaid looks like,” Polis said.

But to those cut by the blade, what may be seen as sustainable for the state budget is entirely unsustainable in their own lives. In November, The Sun spoke with families caring for adult children with disabilities, who are facing potential reductions in what they are paid to provide that care.

As one mother said: “This is going to push people who are marginalized over the edge.” — John Ingold

Ski patroller unions shine a bright light on the pain of resort-town economics

We entered 2025 writing about a ski patroller strike at Park City Mountain Resort in Utah. We wrapped 2025 as the owner of Telluride ski area closed the resort in response to the second ski patroller strike in modern resort history. 

The implications in Telluride are far-reaching. If the resort stays closed, seasonal workers will likely leave. If snow piles deep without immediate work by trained avalanche mitigation specialists, Telluride’s steep terrain could be inaccessible for a long stretch. If patrollers get what they want — somewhere around $8 an hour more versus the $4 offered by the resort owner — workers across the resort realm will be clamoring for a similar bump in pay.

And if the resort remains closed, the many tourist-reliant businesses in the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village will face hard choices about investing, employing or simply staying open. 

The labor movement in the ski resort industry is swelling as the wealth disparity reaches new heights in mountain towns. The price of homes has more than doubled in the past five years as the cost of living soars beyond the reach of most hourly workers in mountain towns

The United Mountain Workers union has some 1,100 workers in 16 units at 14 ski resorts in four states, including nine ski areas in Colorado. And the unionized ranks are growing. Increasing unionization of resort workers — and now walkouts and strikes — will continue as everyone except the very wealthy struggle to make a life in the West’s high country valleys. — Jason Blevins

Immigration whiplash shows no sign of easing

It’s been a wild year trying to keep up with new federal immigration policies that led to raids in Aurora and Denver, the detention and eventual release of a high-profile Trump administration antagonist, and thousands of arrests that included elderly people and even babies. All the intensity culminated with ICE trying, unsuccessfully, to keep journalists out of a courtroom during a hearing at the detention center in Aurora in December. 

The aggressive immigration crackdowns, and the protests that follow, aren’t expected to calm down in 2026. 

Most of those affected in Colorado are natives of Mexico and Venezuela, but federal policies also are targeting people from Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan, including one Louisville resident who helped U.S. soldiers fight the Taliban. The state paused issuing commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants without citizenship or green cards, and it’s unclear whether or how that particular state-federal conflict will get resolved. 

Thousands of immigrants in Colorado are in limbo after the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services put all applications for asylum on hold, and paused applications for green cards for residents from 19 countries on a travel-ban list, which includes Venezuela, Afghanistan and Cuba. Meanwhile, for those who are fighting removal orders in immigration court, court backlogs are stretching cases four years or more. This likely will get worse as the number of immigration judges in Colorado dropped in 2025 from nine to six. — Jennifer Brown

What fresh rules, cuts and conservation will Colorado River negotiations demand?

The 40 million people who rely on Colorado River water, including residents across Colorado, will enter into a new phase of reservoir rules, water cuts and conservation efforts in 2026.

Water officials plan to launch a new set of management rules this fall for the basin’s key reservoirs, like lakes Powell and Mead which make up 92% of the entire basin’s storage capacity. Basin states are still at loggerheads over what the new rules should look like as a changing climate shrinks the basin’s water supply.

The current management plan was part of a drought response effort in the 2000s. But the rules, which expire in August, failed to keep enough water in the reservoirs to avoid historic low water levels, a crisis response and emergency water releases in 2021.

Replacing rules written in 2007, however, is a major endeavor. Officials have been working through a federal environmental analysis since 2023. Thirty tribal nations are weighing in. Talks among the seven basin states have stalled for months, over sticking points like who cuts back on water in the basin’s driest years. 

The state negotiators had no progress to report in December and face a ticking clock to reach an agreement. Until they do, cities, farms, industries and more are stuck in limbo — trying to plan for their water futures, and potential cutbacks, in the midst of uncertainty. — Shannon Mullane

Trying to solve for housing affordability and availability remains fraught

Rents finally fell in 2025. Home prices leveled off, too, after years of explosive growth.

But despite glimmers of relief in 2025, the state’s housing crunch remained as dire as ever for many Coloradans.

“In a lot of ways we feel like this climate is much more challenging than the Great Recession, because of just how tough it is for that low-income household to make ends meet,” said Pat Noonan, whose Colorado Housing Connects hotline has helped people at risk of losing their homes since 2006. At Colorado Sunfest in May, Noonan told us his nonprofit now fields more calls from renters facing eviction than it did from homeowners at the height of the subprime mortgage crisis.

In response, we saw lawmakers pass legislation banning landlords from charging certain fees, while building off the state’s recent efforts to boost the housing supply. One new law aims to make it harder to sue condo builders, while another allows builders to develop denser apartment buildings with a single stairwell. State and local officials also worked to implement laws passed in 2024, while homebuilders and housing advocates launched a consortium of their own to push for additional reforms.

Not everyone’s on board with the efforts to address the affordability crisis. Six local governments sued the state over new laws promoting density, while communities across the Front Range and high country were divided over local ballot measures to both fund new housing and limit its construction.

In Littleton, voters went so far as to enshrine single-family zoning in the city’s charter. The ballot measure left the southern Denver suburb at odds with state law and blocked efforts there to encourage more affordable types of homes, like duplexes, townhomes and accessory dwelling units.

Expect the housing wars to continue in 2026. Legislative Democrats have already unveiled two bills to override local zoning laws in the pursuit of more construction. — Brian Eason

Schools step up as a safety net for kids in mental health crisis

Even as much of life has settled into a new rhythm of normalcy, and pandemic disruptions to school have become a thing of the past, mental health woes among youth have persisted, particularly as kids face academic pressures and school violence while also bombarded by technology and social media. Children’s Hospital Colorado clocked a significant uptick in the number of young patients whose mental health challenges sent them to the emergency department over the summer — typically a quiet season. Those challenges were also more severe, mental health experts say.

The state has long lagged behind in the number of mental health workers and beds needed to keep pace with the volume of students in crisis. But Colorado is moving in the right direction, with hospital systems prioritizing more beds for psychiatric patients in recent years. The state has also carried forward I Matter, a program that offers kids up to six free counseling sessions, and continues to run Safe2Tell, where students can anonymously report concerns about their safety or a peer’s safety.

Meanwhile, schools have become even more of a safety net for students as teachers, administrators and school counselors provide more social emotional support so they are better able to learn. — Erica Breunlin

And the 2026 election could change it all. Or not.

The outcome of most, if not all, of the storylines we’ve told you about above will be shaped by what happens in next year’s elections. 

After eight years leading the state, Gov. Jared Polis will leave office in early 2027. His predecessor, almost certainly another Democrat, will be elected in November. 

The leading contenders to replace Polis are U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. The two Democrats will face off in a high-stakes primary in June. The race will start to heat up in the first months of the new year, with millions of dollars on deck to be spent on ads and voter activation efforts. 

Speaking of spicy primaries, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper is seeking reelection. But first, he’ll have to fend off a primary challenge from state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a self-described progressive insurgent. (Republicans haven’t found a formidable opponent for Hickenlooper.)

Then there’s the toss-up 8th Congressional District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans is trying to help his party maintain total control in Washington, D.C., by winning reelection. It won’t be easy. The 8th District is one of the most competitive U.S. House districts in the country, and Democrats and Republicans plan to spend gobs on the contest. 

Three Democrats are running in the primary to replace Evans: state Reps. Shannon Bird and Manny Rutinel, as well as Marine veteran Evan Munsing. Evans keeps amassing money while Democrats duke it out.

The offices of attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer are up for grabs next year, too, not to mention Colorado’s seven other congressional districts and dozens of statehouse seats. We are expecting some consequential statewide ballot measures, too. (Think: fentanyl, taxes and transgender rights.) — Jesse Paul

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is creating a roster where individuals can sign up for a bison hunting license. 

Interested hunters can apply to be added to the list, which will only be used if management action — such as preventing property of agricultural damage — is required for wild bison that enter Colorado. The state is not creating a regular hunting season for bison. 

Colorado is not home to any herds of wild bison after the species was systematically killed across the West in the 1800s. 

However, a new bill signed into law in May allowed the species to be dual-classified as livestock or wildlife. The bill’s primary goal was to protect wild bison from Utah’s Book Cliffs herds that wander into Colorado near Rangely. Prior to the law being enacted, these animals lost any protections when they entered Colorado and were typically killed. 

Parks and Wildlife estimates that the mismatch in protections has led to a dozen wild bison being killed in Colorado after leaving Utah in the last decade. It estimates that 25 have been killed in the past 20 years. 

Now, free-roaming wild bison are managed by Parks and Wildlife as a big game species, meaning they cannot be killed without a proper license or permission. Privately-owned bison will continue to be managed by the Colorado Department of Agriculture as livestock. 

In accordance with the new law, Parks and Wildlife launched a stakeholder process to create a bison management plan in October. The plan will set a bison management area and a population objective range to guide future decisions around wild bison in the area just northwest of Grand Junction, where the animals have previously entered Colorado. In the fall, the wildlife agency’s commission also passed a few regulatory changes, including building a regulatory framework for the potential hunting of wild bison to protect against disease or property damage and that covers compensation for property damages caused by the animals.  

In October, as wildlife advocates urged Parks and Wildlife not to allow hunting of bison, Brian Dreher, assistant director of the terrestrial branch at Parks and Wildlife, said the new regulatory framework merely provides the agency with management options. 

“We don’t have any intentions to hunt these animals in the near term, but we also need some flexibility to deal with any issues that arise,” Dreher said.

With the creation of the “bison roster,” which Parks and Wildlife announced on Jan. 1, hunters will be randomly selected in the event the agency needs to kill a wild bison that is causing issues. The agency reported these special licenses will be issued on a “case-by-case basis for time-sensitive management needs.” Once a hunters’ name is selected, the hunter will be granted a one-week license to kill a bison.

The application to sign up for the roster is available from Jan. 1 to 31 on the Parks and Wildlife website. If a drawing is conducted, successful applicants will be notified by phone and email. Hunters will have 24 hours to respond and accept the license.