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MorningMagazine_2025-02-05 Jack Dawson
King Soopers’ locations that will host a strike on Thursday
Thousands of King Soopers employees will begin striking tomorrow, with several stores planning to participate in an early morning picket line. The strike is set to begin at 5 a.m. King Soopers president Joe Kelly said they plan to stay open, but are aware that there will be people outside some stores in Colorado.
Since October, King Soopers and union employees have been negotiating for fairer wages and other contract amendments, but didn’t reach a deal by the time their contracts expired at the end of January.
The two-week strike will involve 10,000 employees at 77 stores. Workers from stores in the cities of Boulder and Louisville will be a part of the walk-out, along with employees at King Soopers in Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties.
Since workers in Pueblo and Colorado Springs didn’t vote until this weekend, they are not part of the strike starting this week. However, they could go on strike within the next few days. Meanwhile, workers in Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland are preparing strike votes.
For the full list of stores going on strike tomorrow, head to KDVR.com.
Lawmakers deny extra funding for CBI to clear DNA testing backlog
A number of Colorado senators won’t give the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) more money until they get more oversight over the government agency.
CBI wants money to clear their 500-day backlog of uncompleted sexual assault exams and questionable DNA tests, according to The Denver Post.
The agency already asked for more time to spend money last year to retest samples manipulated by former CBI analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods, who’s currently facing 120 felony charges for her errors. The joint budget committee rejected that request after the Department of Public Safety, which houses CBI, shared an “appallingly bad” plan for how it would address those compromised results and excessive wait times for sexual assault exam results.
Last year, lawmakers authorized $7.4 million for CBI to work through Woods’ lab results. Without additional approval, they need to spend that money by the end of this year. According to Senator Jeff Bridges, only 14 of the more than 1,000 cases flagged for retesting have been completed thus far.
Lawmakers are still deciding what kind of additional oversight they’d like over CBI.
Federal employees are being asked whether or not to resign
Thousands of federal employees in Colorado are trying to design whether or not they’ll resign this week.
The decision comes as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking actions to reduce the workforce of government agencies. Over the past couple of days, employees at the Federal Center in Lakewood received several emails giving them the opportunity to resign. The email, from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said that anyone who accepts the resignation offer will “be exempt from any reductions-in-force that are planned for the federal workforce.” The federal government has given employees until tomorrow to decide if they’ll resign.
The Federal Center in Lakewood describes itself as the largest concentration of federal agencies of Washington D.C. The Center sits on 623 acres of land, has over 6,000 employees, and is associated with 26 government agencies.
The Mayor of Lakewood said her city has received no written information about potential closures at the Federal Center. That’s all according to 9News.
Denver fossil fuel CEO Chris Wright confirmed as energy secretary
The Senate has confirmed Denver fossil fuel CEO Chris Wright to serve as energy secretary.
At his hearing, Wright acknowledged that climate change is real but added that “there isn’t dirty energy or clean energy,” just different sources of energy with different tradeoffs.
Wright has been the chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy since 2011, and is one of the loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change, according to The Colorado Sun. He alleges that fossil fuel production can lift people out of poverty internationally, and has promised to help Trump “unleash energy security and prosperity.”
Colorado’s two Democratic senators – John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet – have both expressed public support for Wright.