by Ashe in America | Feb 19, 2025 | Feature Story Bottom Left
The drama between state and local authorities and the federal government continues to escalate, and state and local authorities are struggling to keep up with the bullish rhetoric and action from Trump 2.0.
It’s happening on multiple fronts.
Earlier this month, Governor Jared Polis tried to convince everyone that Colorado wasn’t a sanctuary state, and that his administration has always been against migrant crime and for deporting criminals. In other words, he just went out there and gaslit the public.
In an interview with KRDO13 Investigates, Polis claimed, “It’s public information,” Polis said. “So they just give a window of 6 hours and then if ICE wants to get them, they do. This happens every day in Colorado. That’s why this narrative is false, that Colorado is in any way, shape or form a sanctuary state. We are not. There are cities in our state that claim to be sanctuary cities, but the state is absolutely not.”
In response, John Fabbricatore (@JohnE_Fabb), the former ICE Field Director for our region, posted on X, “This is misinformation! Enormous gaslighting! I’ll list the laws in the comments below. @jaredpolis.”
And he did.
In 2013, the “Community And Law Enforcement Trust Act” was signed into law by governor Bill Owens. According to the ACLU, who was advocating for its passage back in 2013:
“Current [2013] law prohibits local governments from enacting any policy that limits or prohibits a local peace officer, official, or employee from communicating or cooperating with federal officials with regard to the immigration status of any person in the state. The law also requires a peace officer who has probable cause to believe an arrestee is not legally present in the United States to report that person to the United States immigration and customs enforcement office. The governing body of each local government is currently required to provide notice to peace officers of the duty to cooperate with state and federal officials with regard to enforcement of state and federal immigration laws and to provide written confirmation that it has done so to the general assembly on an annual basis. The bill repeals these provisions.” — aclu-co.org, position: support.
Fast forward to 2019, and Jared Polis is governor. The “Protect Colorado Residents From Federal Government Overreach” was signed into law by Jared Polis, preventing local law enforcement notification to and cooperation with ICE.
He tells you now that Colorado is not a sanctuary.
In 2020, Jared Polis signed SB20-083, “Prohibit Courthouse Civil Arrest,” which prohibited ICE from entering courthouses to arrest illegal aliens. The following year, 2021, Polis signed several sanctuary-related bills into law:
- SB21-199, “Remove Barriers To Certain Public Opportunities” which provided state benefits to Illegal aliens, with the state estimating 162,000 illegal aliens at the time.
- HB21-1054, “Housing Public Benefit Verification Requirement,” gave illegal migrants housing assistance, creating an “exception to the requirement that an applicant for federal, state, or local public benefits verify lawful presence in the United States.”
- SB21-077, “Remove Lawful Presence Verification Credentialing,” removed all barriers to professional credentials for illegal migrants, eliminating “verification of an individual’s lawful presence in the United States as a requirement for individual credentialing.”
- HB21-1194, “Immigration Legal Defense Fund,” established a defense fund with taxpayer money to defend illegal migrants.
In 2023, he signed HB23-1100, “Restrict Government Involvement In Immigration Detention,” which effectively defunded all immigration-related operations and construction, including stopping Immigration Detention in County Jails.
Jared Polis signed all these bills into law but now claims, “this narrative is false, that Colorado is in any way, shape or form a sanctuary state. We are not.”
In August, as Aurora City Councilwoman Dani Jurinsky was blowing the whistle on the criminal activities of dangerous Venezuelan prison gangs in her city, Polis called his friendly media and claimed the crisis was a fabrication — a “feature” of the council woman’s “imagination.”
From the New York Post in September, “…despite the mountains of evidence, Gov. Jared Polis (D.) is flat-out denying that it’s happening. On Wednesday, his office called the invasion ‘a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination’ and sneered that Polis ‘really hopes that the city council members in charge stop trashing their own city when they are supposed to keep it safe.’ This is gaslighting at its worst.”
As the ICE operations continue across the front range, Polis’ rhetorical history on this topic is coming back around, and it’s damning.
Colorado is a sanctuary by every metric, and Polis should resign.
Ashe in America is a writer and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/asheinamerica.
by Ashe in America | Jan 16, 2025 | Feature Story Bottom Left
ASHE IN AMERICA — OPINION
Different factions of Americans are living in different realities.
Earlier this month, the nation observed the fourth anniversary of January 6, 2021. Few things are more divisive than the competing narratives of January 6.
The Very Official Narrative, which Rep Jason Crow (D-CO06) spent most of the anniversary propagating, was wrapped in a bow since the day it launched.
After months of denying the election results, President Trump called his supporters to Washington, D.C. When he spoke to these supporters, he urged them to march to the Capitol, where Congress was certifying the 2020 Electoral College.
These calls to march “peacefully” and “patriotically” were “coded dog whistles” to encourage violence and overthrow the government. They did march to the building, where they forcibly entered, assaulted police, vandalized, and stopped certification. Oh, and five police officers died.
Those that believe the very official narrative are confused that the insurrection isn’t disqualifying. Why are the American People so willing to forgive insurrection?
This confusion is easily resolved. The majority of people — and, based on the 2024 election results, of voters — simply don’t believe the very official narrative. Why?
The easiest answer is that the very official narrative is often very officially wrong. The media — and their sources, many anonymous and not authorized to speak on the matter — have lost the trust of the people.
Enter the alternative story: January 6 was instigated by those with institutional power to end all inquiries into a dubious election. The alternative story is not wrapped in a bow. It’s messy and raises more questions than it answers.
Donald Trump said on January 6 to remain peaceful and respect law enforcement. He respected the chain of command at the Capitol, for which the top was Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump authorized all resource requests before and during the riot. Pelosi delayed requests from Capitol Police per former Chief Steven Sund.
President Trump did NOT deploy the military, which should be a good thing, but was later presented as evidence in a Colorado civil court that Trump enabled the mob through inaction. Imagine the very official narrative if Trump had deployed the military, outside the chain of command, on U.S. soil that day.
No one was armed, a dispositive fact for the “coded dog whistle” assertion. Violent coups don’t happen without arms but, instead of being dispositive, this fact is simply dismissed. The narrators claim that the plan was to use barricades and “sharpened flagpoles,” and to steal weapons from police… to overthrow the U.S. government.
It’s very silly when considered without the emotional blackmail of dead police officers.
Also, there were no dead police officers. That was always a lie, and now they claim that the five police officers that eventually died, four of them from suicide and none of them on January 6, died “as a result of the riot.” They deceptively continue to claim five dead police officers, on January 6, at the hands of insurrectionists.
In fact, Trump-supporting protesters were the only people to die on January 6, unarmed and at the hands of Capitol police.
Remember the pipe bombs? Congress was originally evacuated over the pipe bomb threats, not the riot. It’s more than four years later and the pipe bomber has yet to be identified or apprehended. The very official congressional committee ignored this, too.
Speaking of the committee, Pelosi was communicating with the Secret Service on January 6, but their texts have gone “missing.” Pelosi was “off limits” and “not a subject” of the investigation. Her communications and decision making have never been produced or examined. Also, her daughter was making a documentary that day. Her hand-picked committee buried public surveillance videos, destroyed files, and tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson.
Messy and in dispute, the alternative story raises many questions. The very official narrative does as well, but it discourages inquiry and demands trust. But trust cannot be compelled or coerced.
That’s how we got here, occupying different realities, bolstered by our varying levels of institutional trust and underscored by some of the facts, but probably not them all. As shown in the image above, Crow claims that the trauma of Congress that day is comparable to serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Check out the comments on his post to see how other veterans responded to that claim.
Public trust matters, and convergence — truth and reconciliation — of competing narratives is required to restore it. J6 is an example, but you can imagine the different realities across many narrative domains: economics, climate change, gender affirmation, education, foreign policy.
Convergence is not impossible, but it won’t be easy — people love their comfortable narratives and resist admitting they got it wrong. And everyone got it, at least, a little wrong.
Nothing worthwhile ever came easy, and restoring public trust is certainly worthwhile. Are we brave enough to face what’s true?
Ashe in America is a writer and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/asheinamerica.
by Ashe in America | Dec 13, 2024 | Feature Story Bottom Left
ASHE IN AMERICA — OPINION
On October 18, 2022, The New York Times shocked themselves when their Siena College poll revealed that 68% of likely US voters answered the same open-ended question the same way:
What do you see as the biggest threat to democracy?
Government Corruption — That the government is not working on behalf of the people.
That was one month before the 2022 midterm elections. I doubt that metric has gone down.
Corruption is a national concern, and Americans are sobering up to the realities of unaccountable governance via public private partnerships. Here in Colorado, this shift in awareness is pronounced.
On October 29, 2024, during early voting, the Colorado GOP revealed the Colorado Department of State (CDoS) published the BIOS passwords for hundreds of pieces of election equipment on their public website.
According to a redacted affidavit, later revealed from Colonel Shawn Smith (USAF, Ret.), from August 8 through October 24, the BIOS passwords were exposed for 600+ individual pieces of election equipment in 63 counties. On October 24, the spreadsheet was removed from the website and replaced with an updated version without the passwords.
The October 24 date is important, because it proves that CDoS knew about the breach but failed to alert the county clerks. The clerks held the potentially exposed devices, and this breach occurred during the voting period.
In November, the Libertarian Party of Colorado unsuccessfully sued CDoS and, during that hearing, it was revealed that the passwords had been up since June 21 — before the 2024 primary — and that there was true security exposure for devices in 34 counties.
But the clerks found out like the rest of us: From the Colorado GOP press release on October 29.
This was a coverup, and following the GOP press release, the crisis communications began immediately. Deputy Secretary Chris Beall (public) and Colorado County Clerks Association Executive Director Matt Crane (private) handled the clerks, while Secretary Jena Griswold (public) shared her story with her pal Kyle Clark (private).
There was never any real threat. They were all acting out of an abundance of caution. There is no security breach.
Again, these contemporaneous assertions were later proved untrue in court and, regardless, at the time Beall, Crane, Griswold, and Clark made these assertions, CDoS could not possibly have known if there was exploitation for a very simple reason: They didn’t tell the Clerks, and the Clerks had the devices.
It was just spin. Narrative. A Story.
They said it anyway. On November 1, just three days after news of the breach hit the public, Griswold claimed victory:
“All of the passwords in affected counties have been changed…every eligible voter should know their ballot will be counted as cast.”
The coverup appears to have been successful for now; but, earlier this month, additional news about Colorado Executive Branch corruption broke.
On December 2, The Gateway Pundit published a bombshell article with newly discovered emails that revealed Mesa County Treasurer Sheila Reiner working with Dominion Voting Systems in 2021. Reiner had a Dominion email address and was coordinating with the election vendor in 2021, without the knowledge or involvement of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.
Open Records don’t cover Dominion email addresses. Hiding communications from open records exposure is an intentional choice.
Reiner was appointed, by CDoS, to run the Mesa County Clerk’s Office after Griswold removed Peters — for what they claimed was a BIOS password leak.
You can’t make this up.
In August 2021, I reported on Reiner inexplicably renewing her elections credentials on August 3 — a week and a half before the Peters story broke — and I speculated about premeditation with CDoS. The sequence of events was a heck of a coincidence if Reiner didn’t have a heads up from Griswold.
Now we know that Reiner was very involved in elections, with a critical election vendor and CDoS, in shadows behind Peters’ back.
How did none of this come up in the reporting? How did it not come up in the local/state/federal investigations into the Peters “breach?” How did it not come up during Peters’ trial?
The simplest answer: Corruption.
You cannot restore public trust without accountability. CDoS is hoping this story fades away; the people must ensure this is just the beginning of this exposure.
The corrupt will never hold themselves accountable.
Ashe in America is a writer and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/asheinamerica.
by Ashe in America | Nov 15, 2024 | Feature Story Bottom Left
ASHE IN AMERICA — OPINION
The election is behind us, and Colorado Republicans performed better in the Centennial State than they did during the prior two iterations of Colorado GOP leadership. The Congressional delegation is now balanced with four Democrats and four Republicans, and Republicans managed to chip away at the super majority in the Colorado House and prevent a super majority in the Colorado Senate.
In 2023, Republican party voting members chose to break the establishment’s stranglehold on their party, choosing former State Representative Dave Williams to lead the party in a new America First direction. The idea was simple: We’re finally going to fight back against Democrats and elect America First Republicans.
Prior to the election of Williams, party leadership under Brown, and under former Congressman Ken Buck (CO-04) before her, were happy being the minority party in the state. They scored no notable wins. They made no meaningful change. They whined and failed and blamed Democrats for their failures. Then they asked for money.
In 2023, Republican voters demanded the party fight back, fight the corruption head on, and openly oppose the sinister subversion of our Colorado institutions.
The opposition began immediately, as the Kristi Burton Browns and Eli Bremers of the world processed their thunderous rejection by the most engaged members of their party.
In the run up to their ouster, in December 2022, Kristi Burton Brown’s leadership team allegedly paid themselves the party’s remaining budget as bonuses, despite a complete and total failure to achieve the much anticipated “red wave.” It’s never been established what accomplishments those bonuses awarded, but it doesn’t matter. They left the party coffers empty, and they never turned over the books.
While starving the party of resources, these Republicans then, in the middle of an election year, attempted a coup on the elected Chairman of the GOP. They dragged the party to court, held a meeting with their allies, agreed on a novel interpretation of the bylaws that affirmed their subversive plot, and claimed that “the party” voted to oust the Chair.
Then Eli Bremer ran around calling himself Chairman for a while.
Imagine how Republicans might have performed in the 2024 election if former GOP leadership was working for, rather than against, the will of Republican voters. Imagine if those resources — legal fees and time spent in court and all that psychological and emotional energy — had been spent on winning races?
Despite this targeted opposition from the Republican establishment, Republican candidates performed better than they have in a long time. It likely would have been even better if not for the ongoing GOP civil war.
Prior to the 2024 election cycle, GOP leadership never made any effort to engage the broader electorate, recognizing the changing demographics in our state. Chairman Dave Williams, however, collaborated with Libertarian Party Chairman Hannah Goodman, and they developed the Liberty Pledge. As a result of the Liberty Pledge, the Libertarian candidate in Congressional District 8 withdrew from the race and Gabe Evans is now a Republican Congressman.
The establishment camp is quick to dismiss the Colorado Republican Party of having any impact in CD8 — Evans reportedly refused party resources and negotiated his Liberty Pledge outside the party — but prior to Williams, the idea of Republicans collaborating with Libertarians would get you banished from polite party society. Williams broke the ground.
Establishment Republicans’ first instinct after Evans’ victory was to attack the coalition and settle personal scores. They barely acknowledged the role of Libertarians in the extraordinarily tight CD8 race; their primary focus — after a massive Republican win — was to attack their fellow Republicans and manipulate their way back into power.
In Colorado, America First is a coalition and competing for credit and assigning blame are death blows to a coalition. It’s not surprising, then, that this is the path of the power hungry. Soon these instigators will renew their calls for Williams to resign despite the chair election being a few months away. Pursuing power and settling personal scores is really all they know.
America First has momentum in Colorado, and powerful people are desperate to stop it. Division is effective at destabilizing, and there’s nothing more divisive than a civil war.
Ashe in America is a writer and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/asheinamerica.
by Ashe in America | Oct 18, 2024 | Feature Story Bottom Left
ASHE IN AMERICA — OPINION
Judge Matthew Barrett
What happens to those who challenge corruption in Colorado government? In the case of Tina Peters, it’s nine years in prison and more than ten thousand dollars in fines. Peters was sentenced on October 3, in a dystopian circus that quickly went nationally viral.
The government — local, state, and federal — worked together to make an example of Peters, the former duly elected Clerk and Recorder of Mesa County, cobbling together alleged violations of COVID-19 emergency rules and pre-2022 office norms to send a message that government authority is tiered and absolute in the Centennial State.
Peters is currently in custody in Mesa County as she appeals the case. She has retained the Wynne Law Group for her appeal. In response to request for comment, Michael Wynne stated, “There are substantial grounds for appeal. The most glaring is the disproportionality of the sentence imposed. And that is before we even get to the merits and the defenses not presented to the jury.” They are expected to make filings related to the appeal in the near future.
During the trial, Peters was prevented by Judge Matthew Barrett from speaking about her intent; the explosive findings from the Mesa County images analysis were also prohibited from being presented for the jury’s consideration. This is because, in pretrial motions, the judge determined that why Peters did what she did was irrelevant to the jury’s consideration about the innocence or guilt of what she did.
That could, and maybe should, have been the end of the story on “election denialism,” and it certainly was as it pertains to the jury’s consideration of evidence and testimony and to their verdict. But in a stunning move at sentencing, Judge Barrett placed himself in judgement over the why — despite prohibiting a fair examination of the same.
“…you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”
This judge — like so many others across the nation — refused to allow a hearing of the evidence about whether Peters’ curiosity, which later turned into concern, was founded. That decision may be legally sound as pertains to Peters’ trial, but Barrett reveals with this statement that he’s already determined the truth of the matter of evidence he refused to consider.
And he relied upon that out-of-court determination in her sentencing. That’s astounding. It gets worse.
“No one in this country has absolute power. Your position as a clerk and recorder, a constitutional position, does not provide you with a means by which to do your own investigation, to not listen to the judiciary, to not listen to the executives higher than you, to not listen to the legislature who sets the law as it may be. This is nonsense. Our system of government can’t function when people in government think that somehow, some way, the power they’ve been given is absolute in all respects.”
It’s hard to make the case that Peters believed she had absolute power. Peters’ only crime is being deceptive with the Secretary of State’s office. At the time, Peters — an official elected to a Constitutional position — believed that the Secretary of State’s office was about to engage in a crime. Her actions were in that context… a detail that was not allowed to be heard by the jury.
Barrett’s stated position appears to declare that Peters had no right, and certainly no recourse, to question the Secretary of State’s office. His carefully crafted statements declare, before Colorado and the nation, that government consensus is not just above the law, but above scrutiny and unable to be questioned.
In other words, public trust is officially mandated. Trust the government or face a decade in prison.
If the government cannot be questioned, corruption will thrive. Opacity, obstruction, and political persecutions are, historically, signals of corruption. All of these elements are glaringly present in modern American democracy, certainly in Colorado, and not just when it comes to questioning the election apparatus.
Consider migrant response, the tax crisis, out of control homelessness, and rising crime.
The people responsible for our current reality — the governing authorities, their public/private partnerships, the NGO infrastructure, and their media lapdogs — are working overtime to convince you that Tina Peters, and anyone else questioning their authority, are the gravest threat to “our democracy.”
That should be enough to make you question what they mean by “our democracy.”
Ashe in America is a writer and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/ashein america.
