By Quentin Young | editor
“Colorado's rule is simple: If you take public money to teach kids, you serve every kid.”
– Jax Gonzalez, political director at One Colorado
The U.S. Supreme Court on April 9, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
By Lindsey Toomer
Attorneys representing Colorado education officials and two Catholic preschools will face off at the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday to determine if Colorado’s universal preschool program can require religious educational institutions to include LGBTQ+ children and parents. It’s the latest in a fraught history of the nation’s highest court weighing in on the balance of state anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people and religious exemptions.
A projection screen shows live footage of ballot drop box locations throughout Adams County at the Adams County Government Center in Brighton on Nov. 7, 2023. (Photo by Kevin Mohatt/Colorado Newsline)
By Sara Wilson
There could be up to 12 federal election monitors in Adams County on Election Day, though they will not be allowed to go inside polling locations. U.S. Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels wrote in an email Friday that the department expects to deploy between four and 12 monitors to Adams. Justice originally intended to send four before it rejected terms from the Colorado secretary of state’s office that the monitors be accompanied by state representatives if the monitors enter voting centers.
King County, Washington, election workers dump out a bin full of ballots from a local drop box to sort ahead of the midterm election on Oct. 29, 2026, in Renton, Washington. (Photo by Jake Goldstein-Street/Washington State Standard)
By Ashley Murray and Jonathan Shorman
When the polls close Tuesday night, the 2026 U.S. election will go down as one of history’s most expensive and extraordinarily ugly midterms — galvanizing record-breaking early voter turnout among a deeply divided electorate. Voters on Saturday crossed the high-water mark of 52.7 million early votes cast, surpassing the midterm record set in 2022, though analysts were reluctant to translate it into a Democratic wave on the way. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice continued to run into a firewall of federal judges, losing its previous cases to take over mail-in balloting and obtain state voter rolls in advance of the midterms.
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