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Do not despair about Rep. Ron Weinberg’s gross behavior, but rejoice that brave women came forward to share their experiences and quickly shut down his political advancement.

Do I know for certain that Heather Booth, an elected school board member from Elizabeth, and Jacqueline Anderson, the former vice chair of the Mesa County Republican Party are telling the truth in their letter recounting Weinberg’s inappropriate remarks? No, but if #MeToo taught us anything, it’s that the cost of speaking up in politics is high, and remaining silent is rewarded. These brave women appear to have no motive other than to do the right thing by coming forward. Also, others witnessed the remarks.

Weinberg has denied that he made sexual remarks to the women and has hired an attorney.

However, he also quickly stepped down from his bid for a leadership position for Colorado House Republicans. This is progress, even though House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese did not use her position of influence to pressure him to drop his bid.

The #MeToo movement hit Colorado’s state Capitol hard in 2017, culminating in the unprecedented ouster of one lawmaker – Rep. Steve Lebsock – who was accused of making unwanted sexual advances to interns and another lawmaker. However, few people remember that two other lawmakers faced a reckoning for their bad behavior and that one of them remained in office and served out his term as if nothing had happened. Rumors about the other lawmaker’s bad behavior swirled, but nothing else came to the surface.

At the time, I wrote a column describing working at the Capitol as a “gauntlet of sexual harassment:” unwanted advances, alcohol-fueled inappropriate remarks, and just plain old sexism. The worst part was the complete lack of accountability for elected officials. There was no human resources department to consider a complaint, and while accountable to the public, politicians seemed secure in their knowledge that no one would dare to speak out.

But that has changed.

The Colorado General Assembly now has a robust process for considering complaints. In the wake of the Lebsock saga, lawmakers created “workplace expectations” to give employers and employees at the Capitol standards. The House and Senate ethics committees have investigated everything from lawmakers driving drunk or appearing at events intoxicated to a senator’s mistreatment of her staff and subsequent creation of a fake letter of support.

There are holes in the safety net. The ethics committee doesn’t have purview over the complaints about Weinberg – the events happened before the man was elected to the Colorado House to represent District 51 in Larimer County.

Despite those holes, accountability continues to come for Colorado lawmakers who behave badly. Yes, voters always have elections to hold elected officials responsible for their choices, but voters can’t exercise that power if they aren’t informed. Formal investigations help empower people.

No one is circling the wagons to defend Weinberg, or sitting idly by hoping the allegations are forgotten.

The process is not perfect. Bad behavior will continue.

But women and men now know they don’t have to tolerate obscenity. The women who spoke up have their own power in this state, and I applaud them for using their positions to ensure other women don’t suffer the nonsense Weinberg spewed their way.

Megan Schrader is the opinion editor of The Denver Post.

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Updated July 9, 2025 at 11:14 a.m. Due to an editor’s error, this column was updated to reflect the fact that the House ethics policy does apply to journalists and lobbyists. The column was also updated to show that Pugliese did not pressure Weinberg to drop his bid for a leadership role. 

Communications experts suggest that the best way to get a conversation going with someone you disagree with is to ask them to talk about themselves. Unfortunately, I have found that asking “What the heck is wrong with you??!?” is really not a good way to start a productive conversation. But I am not ready to abandon it entirely.

My most recent voicing of that question was in response to last week’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., had canceled its subscriptions to the 3,000 or so scientific journals published by Springer Nature. According to Andrew Nixon, the HHS spokesperson, “All contracts with Springer Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer dollars should be (sic) not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science.”

As a former editor at Nature Publishing, I would quibble with Nixon’s misinformed assessment of the quality of science published in the peer-reviewed Nature journals, and the central importance of most of those publications for overall scientific knowledge and progress. I suspect his real objection to the Nature titles (or the objection of his boss, whom he is obviously parroting) is not that the published science is junk, but rather that it contradicts the pseudoscientific brain-worm droppings of the HHS secretary and those around him. In that context, “What the heck is wrong with you?” seems like an eminently reasonable thing to ask.

To be fair, there is a lamentable increase in the number of scientific papers being published that can only be described as, well, “junk science.” This contamination of the literature includes an alarming proliferation of outright fraudulent publications in an expanding avalanche of new digital-only “science journals.” The primary reason for this rapid growth is the unrelenting pressure on scientists to publish often and in as good a journal as possible to earn tenure, hire post-docs and techs, keep grant money coming in, and maybe even found a biotech pipe-dream company. Publication count and quality have pushed aside virtually all other metrics of scientific worth in many places.

Sadly and predictably, despite ongoing efforts to stop it, publication quality has suffered as the quantity has increased. About two million papers across all science publishing history were indexed in the main publication databases in 2016. Five years later, three million papers have appeared, despite a drop in the number of new PhD students and researchers. Fewer scientists are writing and/or reviewing far more papers than ever before: an unsustainable situation. As a result, the quality of peer review — the primary guardian of scientific quality — suffers, which in turn leads to crappy papers and the not-entirely inaccurate statements like those of HHS’s Nixon. 

It is also true that the leading global scientific publishers are for-profit companies that generally achieve large annual profit margins, most of that coming from the strained budgets of academic and corporate libraries. By “bundling” a bunch of less worthy journals with their flagship titles, they can command eye-popping prices for subscription access. There is a fundamental tension between the goals of publishing meaningful science and publishing to promote shareholders, a tension that can be used by opponents like RFK to raise questions about the whole enterprise. 

But to focus solely on the negatives of what is an overwhelmingly positive aspect of the scientific enterprise is exactly what the Trump administration wants. They are proficient at ferreting out the less-desirable facets of many of our institutions and programs and turning them into the defining features for public consumption. Although I can’t entirely dismiss HHS’s formal claims about junk science, I can insist that over-emphasizing the extent of those claims is only distracting from the much larger overall good provided by scientific publishing. 

Being constantly on defense over trumped-up negatives, whether on this topic or on immigration, gender identity, health care, etc., is exhausting. It is also demoralizing to see most of our elected representatives mired down themselves in defensive, almost apologetic crouches rather than pushing back — hard. Maybe we can start changing the current “on-our-heels” dynamic by going on the offense, including asking publicly and loudly where appropriate, “What the heck is wrong with you?” 

Fintan Steele is an ex-Benedictine monk and priest with a Ph.D. in biology/genetics. He spent most of his life in science communications, including scientific publishing and, most recently, for biopharma and academic centers. He and his husband live in Hygiene. Email: fsteele1@me.com.

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I fear for my future self.

When I was a teen, a suicide attempt put me in the hospital. I recovered from the pill overdose and got the treatment I needed to manage depression, a condition that has never ceased to be my shadow. It, along with chronic pain from an autoimmune arthritic disease, has darkened moments of an otherwise good life. I can’t help wonder, though, if I were 76 instead of 16, and lying in that hospital bed if doctors would have simply offered to finish the job and prescribed suicide instead of offering life-preserving help.

Impossible? Original laws in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill have been expanded to cover those with chronic and mental ailments. In the latter two countries, even children may request euthanasia. The Netherlands and Belgium have seen a rise in assisted suicide among those for whom mental illness is the only underlying condition. Patients with mental illness will be eligible for assisted suicide in Canada in 2027. Already euthanasia has become the 5th leading cause of death north of our border.

If euthanasia laws are a slippery slope, we’ve taken the first downhill stride here in Colorado. The legislature has expanded the 2016 voter-approved initiative law to allow more people to prescribe assisted suicide pills and has shortened the waiting period. How long before medical personnel can offer people like me who struggle with chronic illness and depression a way out instead of a way forward?

For those with life-threatening, rather than merely debilitating chronic conditions like mine, the 2016 law was a precipice not a slope from which we have already jumped. Fortunately, four disability rights organizations, the United Spinal Association, Not Dead Yet, the Institute for Patients’ Rights, and Atlantis ADAPT, and a courageous young woman who struggles with anorexia and depression have decided to challenge Colorado’s assisted suicide law to stop “a deadly and discriminatory system that steers people with life-threatening disabilities away from necessary lifesaving and preserving mental health care, medical care, and disability supports, and toward death by suicide” according to the suit filed this week.

The suit points out that the assisted suicide law does not require “screening or treatment by a mental health professional for serious mental illness, depression or treatable suicidality before the lethal prescription is written.” While providers of suicide pills are supposed to discuss alternatives to suicide, there is no way to certify they have done so and they need not actually help patients obtain services.

The suit exposes a two-tiered medical and justice system. Other state public health laws, regulations, and services protect people who are suicidal from caregivers, medical professionals, and family members who might encourage self-harm, but suspends these protections if a doctor predicts the person has less than six months to live.

As the suit points out, these predictions are not always correct. My dad, diagnosed with an incurable form of aggressive cancer, was initially given six months to live. With equally aggressive treatment and loving support, he lived three years. That was before the passage of the assisted suicide initiative.

Last year, 510 people received suicide pills according to a state health department report. Eighteen of these recipients were diagnosed with “severe protein calorie malnutrition,” indicating they could have had an eating disorder which is a treatable diagnosis. None of these patients received the same protection from self-harm afforded other Coloradans. Thus, the law “violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it lacks the safeguards needed to protect people with life-threatening disabilities from self-inflicted death caused by impaired judgment, depression, and undue influence by others,” the lawsuit rightly states.

On behalf of everyone who struggles with mental, chronic, life-threatening, and terminal health conditions who are vulnerable to suicide, I hope the plaintiffs prevail.

Krista L. Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

The recent Mahmoud v. Taylor Supreme Court decision affirmed the rights of parents to opt-out of public school LGBTQ+ lessons that undermine a family’s religious beliefs. This is a crucial win for religious liberty and a victory for true inclusivity by expecting that religious families’ beliefs don’t stop at the classroom door.

This win is very personal for my family as we experienced hostility and were denied the ability to opt-out of radical transgender-promoting lessons for my 6-year-old in the Boulder Valley School District.  My family, like a majority of Americans, believes that our male or female identity is a fixed biological trait that cannot be changed.  I want my daughter to grow up knowing that God made her wonderfully and perfectly in His image as a little girl.  No matter how she feels inside, this is how God made her!  However, our elementary school was teaching little learners that our family’s Christian beliefs about how God made us were wrong and even “hateful.”

Just like in the Maryland case that went to the Supreme Court, my district introduced transgender-promoting books and lessons under the guise of creating a “welcoming classroom.” The school believed that, in order for “queer” kids being raised transgender to feel safe at school, all other students must be taught to believe and conform to the ideas of transgenderism.  The lessons went far beyond encouraging kids to be kind.  In my daughter’s case, the classroom teacher taught students that gender is fluid and based on how you “feel inside.”  She then instructed the 6-year-old kids to choose their own gender.  This is not mere “exposure” to diverse people groups, but rather lessons that were extremely manipulative, age-inappropriate, moralistic and even referred to young students’ contrary faith beliefs as hateful.

The Supreme Court correctly identified the coercive and damaging nature of these lessons, stating, “Here, the [Maryland school] Board requires teachers to instruct young children using storybooks that explicitly contradict their parents’ religious views, and it encourages the teachers to correct the children and accuse them of being ‘hurtful’ when they express a degree of religious confusion.”

In our experience we were met with outright hostility for our Christian beliefs.  Our family was disparaged in the hallways of the school by the music teacher.  Activists, in coordination with district employees, organized a hostile mob of transgender activists at a school board meeting who booed and hissed our family for our Christian beliefs–all over an opt-out request!

We were one of many families forced to leave our school because of the hostility shown to those of religious faiths.  Some claim that if religious families don’t like these lessons, we must homeschool or pay for private.  However, excluding the religious from school over objections to controversial lessons is a further means of financial coercion for families to “conform” and accept this radical instruction.  The Supreme Court agrees, saying “It is both insulting and legally unsound to tell parents that they must abstain from public education in order to raise their children in their religious faiths, when alternatives can be prohibitively expensive and they already contribute to financing the public schools.”

A sexuality lesson promoting the radical beliefs of transgenderism to 6-year-olds is highly divisive and inappropriate in the first place.  However, we celebrate that families now–at the very least—have the right to opt-out of these lessons and can no longer be coerced to abandon their beliefs.

As Justice Alito writes, “A classroom environment that is welcoming to all students is something to be commended, but such an environment cannot be achieved through hostility toward the religious beliefs of students and their parents.”

BJ and Brecken Jones were plaintiffs in a 2020 federal civil rights lawsuit (Jones v. Boulder Valley School District RE-2) resulting from being denied the right to opt-out their young elementary kids from material in a case similar to Mahmoud v. Taylor. The case was settled in 2021.

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In Colorado, we pride ourselves on working across the aisle when the well-being of our communities is on the line. As current and former county commissioners—one Republican and one Democrat—we don’t always agree on policy. But when it comes to the so-called “big beautiful bill,” we see eye to eye: this legislation threatens the health, stability, and futures of Coloradans across the political spectrum.

This federal budget reconciliation bill would have deeply harmful consequences that would be anything but beautiful for Coloradans who are working hard to care for themselves and their families. By gutting key provisions that make health care affordable, adding red tape to safety-net programs, and stripping away critical supports and services, the bill would make life harder and more stressful for thousands of Colorado families. This is a health emergency in the making.

Here’s what’s at stake:

For one, the bill allows enhanced premium tax credits for ACA insurance plans to lapse, effectively driving people out of the ACA marketplaces and increasing premiums for millions of Americans who rely on them. According to Connect for Health Colorado, the state’s health insurance marketplace, more than 112,000 Coloradans could lose their health coverage if this bill becomes law. The loss of enhanced premium tax credits could strip away up to $620 million in subsidies from Colorado households. In some cases, Coloradans could see their premiums double.

The bill doesn’t stop at ACA coverage. It also makes major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, lifelines for thousands of Colorado families. Proposals include burdensome work requirements that could result in millions losing their Medicaid coverage, not because they’re unwilling to work, but because they can’t navigate a complicated bureaucracy or don’t meet narrowly defined criteria. Meanwhile, work requirements would force the state to spend even more on administrative oversight to verify recipients’ eligibility. These cuts and unnecessary red tape would be devastating for people with health conditions, jeopardizing access to life-saving health care, medications, and crisis services.

Meanwhile, cuts to SNAP, our most effective anti-hunger program, would increase food insecurity and household stress. These cuts will also be devastating to the local rural grocery stores that provide employment as well as community support. These draconian policies are being pushed forward in order to fund massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It’s a corrupt trade-off: taking health care and food assistance away from those in need to provide even more for those who already have the most.

For anyone who’s ever worried about affording health insurance, particularly those managing a chronic illness or navigating a mental health crisis, this is more than a budget line item. It’s a cause for panic.

Colorado is already grappling with a full-blown mental health crisis that has left far too many of our at-risk neighbors without the support they need. This makes cuts to health coverage all the more dangerous. Rural communities are especially vulnerable. Mental health providers are already scarce, and resources are limited. If more of our residents lose coverage, we won’t just see rising ER visits. We’ll see growing despair and worsening outcomes. We’ve seen it before, and we know who pays the price: kids, people with disabilities, and families already under stress.

We might come from different sides of the political spectrum, but as Coloradans, we agree on a shared set of values. We believe in fiscal responsibility. We believe in strong communities. And we believe that public policy should help people, not punish them. There’s nothing “beautiful” about a bill that strips away stability and increases suffering.

This is a moment that demands unity, not division. We urge our local leaders, health professionals, advocates, and residents across Colorado to raise their voices and oppose this bill. Let your representatives in Congress know that Coloradans won’t stand by while our health and dignity are put on the chopping block.

Emma Pinter is an Adams County Commissioner and Wendy Buxton-Andrade is a former Prowers County commissioner.