July 20, 2012: A gunman opens fire in a movie theater in Aurora, killing a dozen people and injuring 70.

Dec. 14, 2012: A mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, kills 20 first-grade students and six educators.

More than two dozen gun laws in Colorado have reshaped firearm ownership — and added barriers

March 20, 2013: During the Colorado legislative session following those incidents, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper signs three landmark gun laws: a 15-round limit for firearm magazines, a universal background check requirement and a new fee on gun buyers to pay for the checks.

Sept. 10, 2013: Two Democratic state senators are recalled by voters in a campaign by gun-rights advocates who are furious about the gun legislation. A third resigns later in the year.

November 4, 2014: Republicans win control of the state Senate, breaking Democratic trifecta control of both legislative chambers and the governorship. The party holds the Senate through 2018.

June 12, 2016: A gunman kills 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, in what at the time is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Oct. 1, 2017: In Las Vegas, a gunman fires on a crowd of fans at an outdoor country music concert, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds.

Feb. 14, 2018: A former student kills 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook.

Nov. 6, 2018: Colorado Democrats win a majority in the state Senate and regain trifecta control of state government as Gov. Jared Polis also wins election.

April 12, 2019: Polis signs the extreme risk protection order bill into law. Commonly known as the red-flag law, it allows judges to order the temporary confiscation of firearms from people suspected to be a danger to themselves or others.

March 22, 2021: A gunman kills 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder.

2021 legislative session: Colorado lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, five new gun laws: setting storage requirements for firearms, expanding background checks and adding disqualifying misdemeanors, establishing the state Office of Gun Violence Prevention, setting requirements for reporting lost or stolen firearms, and allowing local jurisdictions to pass more restrictive gun laws than the state.

May 9, 2021: A gunman opens fire on a birthday party in Colorado Springs, killing six people and then taking his own life.

2022 legislative session: Lawmakers pass a law banning the open carrying of firearms within 100 feet of a polling place.

November 19, 2022: A shooter kills five people and wounds 22 others at Club Q, a LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

2023 legislative session: Lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, four new gun laws: establishing a three-day waiting period to purchase a firearm; making the minimum age 21 to purchase a firearm; expanding who can file an extreme risk protection order petition; and banning the sale, possession and creation of unserialized firearms, or so-called ghost guns.

2024 legislative session: Lawmakers and Polis enact seven new gun laws: setting new training requirements for concealed-carry permits; setting new requirements for storing firearms in a vehicle; adding a new tax on firearms, ammunition and certain parts (subsequently adopted by voters 54%-46%); adding new state licensing for firearm dealers; expanding authority for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to investigate firearm-related crimes; adding a new merchant code to track sales of guns and ammunition; and banning the carrying of firearms, including those that are concealed, in government buildings, near polling places and in educational institutions.

2025 legislative session: Lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, seven gun laws: making the theft of a firearm a felony, regardless of the weapon’s value; setting the minimum age at 21 to purchase ammunition in most circumstances; adding new requirements for gun shows; increasing enforcement capabilities for the Department of Revenue related to firearms dealers; adding permitting requirements for the purchase of certain semiautomatic firearms; creating a voluntary do-not-sell list for firearms; and establishing requirements for the Department of Public Safety to seek additional grant money for the state’s response to mass shootings.

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Sure, he thought, Colorado had enacted a 15-round limit on firearm magazines earlier that decade, in response to the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre. But the state otherwise was known at the time for its swing-state purple politics and gun laws that were not otherwise far out of step with the rest of the Mountain West.

As he settled into his new home, however — and before he could open his store — a raft of soon-to-be lawmakers with more ambitious gun-regulation agendas were launching campaigns across the state. The Democrats would take full control of state government in the 2018 blue wave election, and their legislative majorities would go on to pass a slate of laws over the next seven years that established sweeping new standards for gun sales and ownership.

“At that time, we still had the 15-round magazine capacity limit, but we did not have three-day waits — we did not have all this other bureaucratic stuff,” Collins said. “We did not have restrictions on licenses like we see now. We didn’t have SB-3. We didn’t have an excise tax.

“Over the years, just slowly, slowly, Colorado has gone the way — and I fear we’re going the way — of California.”

The sweep of new laws started relatively slowly, with 2019’s extreme risk protection order law. But the pace of new restrictions has picked up unmistakably since then, with lawmakers putting stricter and broader rules on nearly all facets of firearms. Those efforts culminated this spring with the passage of Senate Bill 3 — a law that, when it goes into effect in August 2026, will restrict the sale of many semiautomatic firearms that have detachable magazines unless the buyer has passed a safety course.

Since 2021 alone, Democrats have passed two dozen new gun laws that have affected, among other things, who can own them, sell them and buy them; how gun owners can stow them; how the state taxes and tracks firearms; which guns it allows; who can carry them and where; and who can invoke the state’s red-flag law, as part of an expansion of the 2019 extreme risk protection measure that has allowed authorities to take guns away from their owners temporarily.

Where detractors of all the Democrats’ legislation see an ever-growing list of demands on gun ownership that is eroding their fundamental freedoms, supporters see requirements aimed at fostering responsible gun ownership and rules that put a premium on gun safety.

They have been motivated to tighten gun laws, they say, by the too-common mass shootings and rising routine gun violence that included 943 firearm deaths in Colorado, largely from suicides and homicides, in 2023.

“I’m so proud of where we have come in the legislature when it comes to being true to our convictions, our commitments — to really making an impact and changing the way we look at gun safety and talking about that issue,” said House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat and sponsor of nearly a third of the new gun laws. “We’ve come a long way.”

A timeline of Colorado gun laws since the Aurora movie theater shooting

But Collins, the gun store owner, says he feels like the rug was pulled out from under him after he opened Spartan Defense in 2021. The opening came after he'd weathered pandemic delays -- and right as some of the most notable legislation was being passed.

With hindsight, he's not sure he would have invested in the Colorado Springs store.

"When I got here, business was great," Collins said. "And now, they're just trying to put up all these barriers and roadblocks and red tape."

'Some of the strictest' laws

The Colorado laws passed over the last six years have had a significant real-world effect.

Customers who buy a gun must now wait three days to pick it up. They must pass more stringent background checks, both from the state and the federal government. They must be at least 21 years old to buy any type of gun or ammunition. They cannot have been convicted of a slew of crimes, including any type of assault, a bias-motivated crime, cruelty to animals or harassment.

They must pay a new 6.5% excise tax, which totals $65 on a $1,000 purchase, to generate money for services for crime victims and mental health as well as school safety.

Once a gun is purchased, the owner must store it securely enough that children and people who are ineligible to possess firearms can’t access it. If they keep the gun in a car, they must meet secure storage requirements. Failing to do either can result in a misdemeanor charge.

The owner can’t carry a gun at a polling place or inside government buildings and educational facilities, such as schools and day care centers. If the owner wants to carry the gun concealed, they must pay for and pass an eight-hour course that includes live-fire exercises and a written exam. A refresher course, required every five years for people who already have permits, is two hours and also includes an exam and a live-fire exercise.

And if the person is deemed a threat to themselves or others, their guns can be confiscated.

“The Colorado state legislature has been very busy on the gun front over the past half-dozen years or so,” said Kristin Goss, a Duke University public policy professor who studies gun politics. “Colorado is now pretty comparable to some of the strictest gun law states in the country."

Duran rejected the suggestion that any of those laws infringe on individual rights. As a concealed-carry permit holder herself, she said it’s her “duty” as a lawmaker and a gun owner to show what responsible ownership looks like.

“I don’t ever feel like anything that I have supported or run is an infringement on my rights as a gun owner,” Duran said. “I feel like it’s part of my responsibility as a gun owner to make sure that I pass legislation and support things that make our community safer.”

Gov. Jared Polis is "proud" of the gun laws and has called the state a "model for common-sense reform," his spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, said.

In the first six months of this year alone, more than 2,000 firearm transactions were denied through background checks, for reasons that include past assault convictions, restraining orders, traffic offenses and more, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

"The laws Gov. Polis has signed promote responsible gun ownership, respect Second Amendment rights, give more tools to law enforcement, help to get illegal firearms off our streets, and have undoubtedly made our state more safe," Wieman wrote in a statement to The Denver Post. "These measures, along with many others, have helped reduce crime rates in our communities and we look forward to ensuring those trends continue."

Polis was elected governor as part of the 2018 wave. But he's also shown more restraint than some Democrats when it comes to firearm laws. He balked at an initial version of SB-3 this year that would have outright banned the sale of semiautomatic weapons that have detachable magazines. His office negotiated the allowance for prospective buyers to take training courses.

'More and more restrictive'

The view from reform advocates that the laws enforce responsible gun ownership clashes against that of gun-rights advocates, who see the flurry of legislation as a fast-and-furious construction of new barriers to legal gun ownership.

Most gun owners want to comply with the law, said Ray Elliott, the president of the Colorado State Shooting Association. Gun locks, training, waiting periods and the new excise tax each add barriers -- whether it’s cost or time -- to gun ownership.

“All those rules and laws and everything going on make (gun ownership) more and more onerous, more and more restrictive,” Elliott said. “And as you put up barriers like that, (gun control advocates) know exactly what they’re doing. Less and less people are going to jump through the hoops.”

His view is shared by Collins, the gun store owner, who's also the vice president of the Colorado Federal Firearms Licensee Association. On a recent weekday afternoon, a clerk at his store was walking a potential customer through rules for transferring firearms and how to comply with the law. Collins said training is constant to keep clerks abreast of changes in law and new guidance as the store tries to stay on the right side of new regulations.

The new excise tax, in particular, has been a problem, Collins said. He called the law vague in defining which gun parts and accessories the tax applies to, putting him at risk of either overcharging customers or undercollecting the tax. The tax is also driving some customers out of state for certain items because they find them cheaper to buy online and pay a fee needed to transfer possession of the gun.

State Sen. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, said he sees that problem acutely.

His sprawling northeastern Colorado district touches three other states: Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming. All have distinctly more lenient firearm laws than Colorado. Consituents will cross the border for ammunition, in particular, to avoid the added cost of the excise tax.

"The state of Colorado is forcing more people to go out of state to buy guns, because the laws are so draconian,” Pelton said. “It's making it harder and harder and more expensive for folks in rural Colorado to buy firearms to protect themselves and their land and their livestock."

Elliott didn’t doubt that many who support the recent gun laws were sincere in trying to make people safer. But he also sees an overall movement toward disarmament. He called it “a death by a thousand cuts.”

His group sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year highlighting the laws they find most detestable. The letter was signed by elected Republican officials across the state.

Collins' business does offer firearm training -- he said he's trained more than 15,000 students -- but he argues it should be optional. Making it a requirement infringes on gun owners' rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he said.

Collins estimates that SB-3, when it goes into effect, will impact nearly 80% of his inventory, including AR-15-type rifles -- one of the most popular styles of sport-shooting rifles in the country. The weapon is also commonly associated with some of the worst mass shootings in the country, including in Colorado, though handguns are more frequently used for such attacks.

"I do see people that will want to exercise their rights and are going to stay here in Colorado," Collins said. "I do see people that are just not going to put up with it."

As the new limit on semiautomatic sales nears a year from now, barring any successful lawsuits to prevent it, “I don’t expect anything to be left on my shelves,” Collins said. He expects a surge in sales similar to ones he recalls during the COVID-19 pandemic, before he opened his brick-and-mortar store, and after President Barack Obama was elected, which prompted worries by some people about national restrictions on guns and ammo.

Collins is cautious about how he'll restock as the new law goes into effect. He doesn’t want to get left with inventory he can’t sell.

But advocates and the gun industry have long predicted doom because of new gun laws, said Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat and a sponsor of many of Colorado’s new gun laws, and “none of that is true.” Sullivan's son, Alex, was one of a dozen people murdered in the Aurora theater shooting. Seventy others were injured.

Alex's murder spurred Sullivan to advocate for stricter gun laws in Colorado and nationally, and led to him running for office.

SB-3 does prohibit the sale of many semiautomatic weapons -- unless the purchaser has completed a firearm education course. The bill was heavily amended while it made its way through the legislature and Sullivan now describes it as a “permit-to-purchase” law.

People who follow the law haven’t lost access to anything in recent years -- and won’t under this law, Sullivan said. But laws need to change as society changes, he said. Sullivan likened the new gun laws to the shift toward widespread adoption of seatbelts in cars a few generations ago. It didn’t happen overnight, but the life-saving devices are now the norm.

"OK, you've got to wait a few days to get (a gun). Or you have to fill out another form. Whatever it is, you still get what you want,” Sullivan said.

But do the laws work?

One of the 2021 gun laws championed by Sullivan created the state Office of Gun Violence Prevention to, among other things, track gun deaths in Colorado. And in raw and per-capita numbers, they’ve risen overall since 2013.

In 2014, the first full year of the post-Aurora laws, the state reported 86 gun homicides, or 1.9 per 100,000 people; in 2023, the most recent year with available data, 237 people were killed with guns in homicides, or about 5 per 100,000 residents. 

In that same time frame, the number of gun suicides grew from 527 a year, or 9.9 per 100,000 people, to 673, or 11.5 per 100,000 people.

Gun-rights advocates are quick to point to such numbers, as well as the overall pandemic-era spike in violent crime, as evidence that the laws are, at best, misguided. At worst, they see the crime and violence being used as a cover to disarm law-abiding citizens.

“I don't think it's true that every single law that was passed was necessarily pointless and useless. Many are, but not all," said David B. Kopel, the research director of the Independence Institute, a libertarian-conservative think tank in Denver. He's also a senior fellow at the Firearms Research Center in the University of Wyoming's College of Law.

He said some laws have a reasonable premise, even if the data itself or their implementation leaves an open question about their efficacy and overall consequences. 

The gun issue is also so fraught and caught up in the culture wars that Kopel sees "a tremendous amount of motivated reasoning, on both sides," as those arguing seek to confirm preexisting beliefs.

Gauging the effectiveness of laws means disentangling them from broader societal changes and weighing them against the costs they impose on other people. The waiting period law, for example, may stop some suicides, but it also "makes society more dangerous," he argues, because people can't defend themselves.

Goss, the Duke University professor, likewise points out the lack of good, specific evidence on the effects of new laws on gun violence. Regional differences in history, culture and society can lead to the same laws having different effects.

But the field of study is starting to change. The Rand Corporation recently published a review of studies on gun violence that, while not drawing firm conclusions, highlighted the strength of evidence for certain laws. Broadly, the review shows that stricter laws may decrease gun violence -- but it also finds hard evidence of that may be slim. Its review of studies on waiting periods, for example, found “moderate” evidence that the laws had helped minimize suicide and violent crime.

“There’s pretty suggestive evidence that at the aggregate level, if you have a good set of laws and they’re enforced, there will be a reduction in people misusing firearms,” Goss said. “But we need much better research on that.”

Gun-rights advocates argue that root causes, not guns, should be the focus. If legislators want to address suicide, they should push for programs to support mental health; if it's crime, go after criminals. 

"Criminals, they're just going to have a little bit further to drive in order to get a firearm that they want to use in a bad way," Collins said. He added that high-end precision weapons from stores like his aren't usually the weapons used in violence. It's cheap, stolen firearms. 

He also cited the June 1 attack on demonstrators in Boulder as evidence that people intent on harming others will find a way. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the man accused of carrying out the attack with homemade firebombs, wounded more than a dozen people, including a woman who died later. He is an immigrant who was denied a gun purchase earlier in the year because he lacked proper legal status.

Duran and Sullivan both pointed out that the pandemic upended society both in terms of crime statistics and gun sales. Wieman, the governor's spokesperson, noted that violent crime and property crime both dropped by more than 13% between 2022 and 2024.

Duran says those numbers and other data are worth reexamining to determine what more needs to be done regarding gun safety and new laws.

She also remains confident that the laws have had a positive effect. In her view, even one life saved because of the laws still matters.

"There isn't a magic wand out there," Duran said. "There just isn't. What it takes is combining neighborhoods and community with the advocates and the experts -- all of us together to say, 'What does the data show us and what do we need to do next to make a difference?' "

Colorado's undeniable shift

Twelve years ago, in the wake of the Aurora shooting, it wasn’t clear if Colorado would continue to stiffen its gun laws or not.

Rhonda Fields, who sponsored the magazine limit law in 2013 and is now an Arapahoe County commissioner, said the gun laws passed that year “created shockwaves across the state.” The package also included a law requiring universal background checks and a fee to cover those checks.

Lawmakers faced recalls and threats, including by one man who was arrested for sending Fields harassing messages. Democrats lost control of the state Senate and at least one company, firearm magazine manufacturer Magpul, left the state in protest.

Democrats spent the next several years playing defense, said Sullivan, who was not a legislator then. The state had followed a similar pattern after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre: An unbearable tragedy led to a burst of energy around firearm laws, and then quiet.

The impasse on legislation started to break in 2018, along with Colorado’s purple reputation. Duran, like Sullivan, was part of a wave of incoming Democrats who won office that year to take control of state government.

She recalled walking into the Capitol intent on creating new requirements for concealed-carry laws -- and being told no by Democratic leadership. They already had plans for a new gun bill in the 2019 session, and they wouldn’t wager majority control more than that, Duran said.

That bill was the now-enacted red-flag law. Despite protests over it, Democrats would go on to keep their majorities in the 2020 election. And in the 2022 election. And in 2024.

Backers of stricter gun laws took it as a sign that the people wanted reform.

“You can’t talk about the national gun safety movement without talking about Colorado,” Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt said. “A decade ago, no one saw progress like this coming from a state known for hunting and sport shooting."

His group ranks states based on how it rates the relative strength of their gun laws.

"Colorado has the 10th-strongest gun laws in the country," Feinblatt said, "and its lawmakers aren’t just running on gun safety -- they’re winning.”

But everyday gun owners end up bearing the brunt of the new laws, said Elliott, from the shooting association.

"Responsible gun owners are not the problem," Elliott said. "(The state is) literally passing laws on people that are very, very law-abiding citizens."

Among current and former lawmakers, Fields, whose son was murdered in a shooting in 2005, said it’s “amazing” how far the state has come; she left the legislature after she was term-limited from running again in 2024. Sullivan, likewise, said he “can’t overemphasize the thankfulness” he and others in the community of people affected by gun violence feel for the new laws Colorado has passed.

But he also called for another shift in thinking. He pointed out that education, climate change, the budget and other key state priorities all have periodic check-ins to see how those laws are working. Why not gun laws?

He’s asked legislative staff to seek more information on firearm thefts to see if policy can be tailored to the problem. Rafts of thefts from cars, homes or stores could all need different solutions. He also questioned why laws against attempts to make unlawful purchases of firearms weren’t used against the alleged Boulder firebomber.

Large Democratic majorities make it relatively easy to pass splashy gun legislation and for his colleagues to collect bill signing pens, Sullivan said, but that doesn’t replace the day-to-day policy work.

He also acknowledged that his circumstances are different from others' in the legislature.

"Everyone else has the opportunity to move on from what happened on July 20,” Sullivan said, referring to the date of the Aurora theater massacre. “They get to remember the tragedy and put it back on a shelf, and then wait another year to remember it again. For me, it’s there every single day. It changes you. It gives you a different perspective on things."

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NEW YORK — The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.

Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission.

In Colorado, the department demanded “all records” relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election.

Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law.

The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.

It also signals the transformation of the Justice Department’s involvement in elections under President Donald Trump. The department historically has focused on protecting access to the ballot box. Today, it is taking steps to crack down on voter fraud and noncitizen voting, both of which are rare but have been the subject of years of false claims from Trump and his allies.

The department’s actions come alongside a broader effort by the administration to investigate past elections and influence the 2026 midterms. The Republican president has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and continues to falsely claim he won. Trump also has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to the GOP.

The Justice Department does not typically “engage in fishing expeditions” to find laws that may potentially have been broken and has traditionally been independent from the president, said David Becker, a former department lawyer who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“Now it seems to be operating differently,” he said.

The department responded with an emailed “no comment” to a list of questions submitted by the AP seeking details about the communications with state officials.

Requests to states vary and some are specific

Election offices in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Utah, and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received letters from the voting section requesting their statewide voter registration lists. At least one other, Oklahoma, received the request by phone.

Many requests included basic questions about the procedures states use to comply with federal voting laws, such as how states identify and remove duplicate voter registrations or deceased or otherwise ineligible voters.

Certain questions were more state-specific and referenced data points or perceived inconsistencies from a recent survey from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an AP review of several of the letters showed.

The Justice Department already has filed suit against the state election board in North Carolina alleging it failed to comply with a part of the federal Help America Vote Act that relates to voter registration records.

More inquiries are likely on the way

There are signs the department’s outreach isn’t done. It told the National Association of Secretaries of State that “all states would be contacted eventually,” said Maria Benson, a NASS spokeswoman.

The organization has asked the department to join a virtual meeting of its elections committee to answer questions about the letters, Benson said. Some officials have raised concerns about how the voter data will be used and protected.

Election officials in at least four California counties — Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Francisco —said the Justice Department sent them letters asking for voter roll records. The letters asked for the number of people removed from the rolls for being noncitizens and for their voting records, dates of birth and ID numbers.

Officials in Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received an email from two department lawyers requesting a call about a potential “information-sharing agreement.”

The goal, according to several copies of the emails reviewed by the AP, was for states to provide the government with information about instances of election fraud to help the Justice Department “enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections.” One of those sending the emails was a senior counsel in the criminal division.

The emails referred to Trump’s March executive order on elections, part of which directs the attorney general to enter information-sharing agreements with state election officials to the “maximum extent possible.”

Skeptical state election officials assess how to reply

Election officials in several states that received requests for their voter registration information have not responded. Some said they were reviewing the inquiries.

Officials in some other states provided public versions of voter registration lists to the department, with certain personal information such as Social Security numbers blacked out. Elsewhere, state officials answered procedural questions from the Justice Department but refused to provide the voter lists.

In Minnesota, the office of Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said the federal agency is not legally entitled to the information.

In a July 25 letter to the Justice Department’s voting section, Simon’s general counsel, Justin Erickson, said the list “contains sensitive personal identifying information on several million individuals.” He said the office had obligations under federal and state law to not disclose any information from the statewide list unless expressly required by law.

In a recent letter, Republican lawmakers in the state called on Simon to comply with the federal request as a way “to protect the voting rights of the citizens of Minnesota.”

Maine’s secretary of state, Democrat Shenna Bellows, said the administration’s request overstepped the federal government’s bounds and that the state will not fulfill it. She said doing so would violate voter privacy.

The department “doesn’t get to know everything about you just because they want to,” Bellows said.

Some Justice Department requests are questionable, lawyers say

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Justice Department requesting information on state procedures or the states providing it, said Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general who teaches at Loyola Law School.

But the department’s requests for voter registration data are more problematic, he said. That is because of the Privacy Act of 1974, which put strict guidelines on data collection by the federal government. The government is required to issue a notice in the Federal Register and notify appropriate congressional committees when it seeks personally identifiable information about individuals.

Becker said there is nothing in federal law that compels states to comply with requests for sensitive personal data about their residents. He added that while the outreach about information-sharing agreements was largely innocuous, the involvement of a criminal attorney could be seen as intimidating.

“You can understand how people would be concerned,” he said.

___

Fields reported from Washington. Associated Press state government reporters from around the country contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For all of President Donald Trump’s promises of an economic “golden age,” a spate of weak indicators this week told a potentially worrisome story as the impacts of his policies are coming into focus.

Job gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year.

More than six months into his term, Trump’s blitz of tariff hikes and his new tax and spending bill have remodeled America’s trading, manufacturing, energy and tax systems to his own liking. He’s eager to take credit for any wins that might occur and is hunting for someone else to blame if the financial situation starts to totter.

But as of now, this is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post.

When Friday’s jobs report turned out to be decidedly bleak, Trump ignored the warnings in the data and fired the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures.

“Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump said on Truth Social, without offering evidence for his claim. “The Economy is BOOMING.”

It’s possible that the disappointing numbers are growing pains from the rapid transformation caused by Trump and that stronger growth will return — or they may be a preview of even more disruption to come.

Trump’s economic plans are a political gamble

Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs, executive actions, spending cuts and tax code changes carries significant political risk if he is unable to deliver middle-class prosperity. The effects of his new tariffs are still several months away from rippling through the economy, right as many Trump allies in Congress will be campaigning in the midterm elections.

“Considering how early we are in his term, Trump’s had an unusually big impact on the economy already,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist at Firehouse Strategies. “The full inflationary impact of the tariffs won’t be felt until 2026. Unfortunately for Republicans, that’s also an election year.”

The White House portrayed the blitz of trade frameworks leading up to Thursday’s tariff announcement as proof of his negotiating prowess. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and other nations that the White House declined to name agreed that the U.S. could increase its tariffs on their goods without doing the same to American products. Trump simply set rates on other countries that lacked settlements.

The costs of those tariffs — taxes paid on imports to the U.S. — will be most felt by many Americans in the form of higher prices, but to what extent remains uncertain.

“For the White House and their allies, a key part of managing the expectations and politics of the Trump economy is maintaining vigilance when it comes to public perceptions,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist.

Just 38% of adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a July poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That’s down from the end of Trump’s first term when half of adults approved of his economic leadership.

The White House paints a rosier image, seeing the economy emerging from a period of uncertainty after Trump’s restructuring and repeating the economic gains seen in his first term before the pandemic struck.

“President Trump is implementing the very same policy mix of deregulation, fairer trade, and pro-growth tax cuts at an even bigger scale – as these policies take effect, the best is yet to come,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

Recent economic reports suggest trouble ahead

The economic numbers over the past week show the difficulties that Trump might face if the numbers continue on their current path:

— Friday’s jobs report showed that U.S. employers have shed 37,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump’s tariff launch in April, undermining prior White House claims of a factory revival.

— Net hiring has plummeted over the past three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May — a combined 258,000 jobs lower than previously indicated. On average last year, the economy added 168,000 jobs a month.

— A Thursday inflation report showed that prices have risen 2.6% over the year that ended in June, an increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.2% in April. Prices of heavily imported items, such as appliances, furniture, and toys and games, jumped from May to June.

— On Wednesday, a report on gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the U.S. economy — showed that it grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3% during the first half of the year, down sharply from 2.8% growth last year.

“The economy’s just kind of slogging forward,” said Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies employment trends. “Yes, the unemployment rate’s not going up, but we’re adding very few jobs. The economy’s been growing very slowly. It just looks like a ‘meh’ economy is continuing.”

Trump’s Fed attacks could unleash more inflation

Trump has sought to pin the blame for any economic troubles on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates even though doing so could generate more inflation.

Trump has publicly backed two Fed governors, Christoper Waller and Michelle Bowman, for voting for rate cuts at Wednesday’s meeting. But their logic is not what the president wants to hear: They were worried, in part, about a slowing job market.

But this is a major economic gamble being undertaken by Trump and those pushing for lower rates under the belief that mortgages will also become more affordable as a result and boost homebuying activity.

His tariff policy has changed repeatedly over the last six months, with the latest import tax numbers serving as a substitute for what the president announced in April, which provoked a stock market sell-off. It might not be a simple one-time adjustment as some Fed board members and Trump administration officials argue.

Trump didn’t listen to the warnings on ‘universal’ tariffs

Of course, Trump can’t say no one warned him about the possible consequences of his economic policies.

Biden, then the outgoing president, did just that in a speech last December at the Brookings Institution, saying the cost of the tariffs would eventually hit American workers and businesses.

“He seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought into this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs rather than the American consumer,” Biden said. “I believe this approach is a major mistake.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Francisco Zapata-Pacheco on Thursday afternoon, an unnamed agency spokesman said Friday. Earlier that day, an ICE agent fired three bullets into a vehicle in which Zapata-Pacheco was a passenger, after the vehicle attempted to hit agents as it fled a “targeted enforcement operation” in Colorado Springs.

The vehicle’s two occupants then abandoned it and fled on foot, ICE said yesterday. No one was injured in the incident.

The driver of the vehicle, identified by ICE as Jose Mendez-Chavez, is still at large. The ICE spokesperson said in a statement that Mendez-Chavez has been deported six times before.

ICE stated in its release that Mendez-Chavez had been convicted of child abuse and domestic violence, but The Denver Post was not able to independently confirm that. A man with the same name pleaded guilty in 2019 to reckless endangerment, court records show, after being initially charged with misdemeanor child abuse.

Zapata-Pacheco has no criminal record in Colorado, according to a records search.

According to the Colorado Rapid Response Network, ICE attempted to stop the vehicle at a Colorado Springs construction site. One other person was briefly detained in the area but was released, the group said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday removed the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures after a report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported.

Trump, in a post on his social media platform, alleged that the figures were manipulated for political reasons and said that Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, should be fired. He provided no evidence for the charge.

“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”

Trump later posted: “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”

The charge that the data was faked is an explosive one that threatens to undercut the political legitimacy of the U.S. government’s economic data, which has long been seen as the “gold standard” of economic measurement globally. Economists and Wall Street investors have long accepted the data as free from political bias.

Trump’s move to fire McEntarfer represented another extraordinary assertion of presidential power. He has wielded the authority of the White House to try to control the world’s international trade system, media companies, America’s top universities and Congress’ constitutional power of the purse, among other institutions.

“Firing the Commissioner … when the BLS revises jobs numbers down (as it routinely does) threatens to destroy trust in core American institutions, and all government statistics,” Arin Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said on X. “I can’t stress how damaging this is.”

After Trump’s initial post, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said on X that McEntarfer was no longer leading the bureau and that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as the acting director.

“I support the President’s decision to replace Biden’s Commissioner and ensure the American People can trust the important and influential data coming from BLS,” Chavez-DeRemer said.

Friday’s jobs report showed that just 73,000 jobs were added last month and that 258,000 fewer jobs were created in May and June than previously estimated. The report suggested that the economy has sharply weakened during Trump’s tenure, a pattern consistent with a slowdown in economic growth during the first half of the year and an increase in inflation during June that appeared to reflect the price pressures created by the president’s tariffs.

“What does a bad leader do when they get bad news? Shoot the messenger,” Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a Friday speech.

McEntarfer was nominated by Biden in 2023 and became the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in January 2024. Commissioners typically serve four-year terms but since they are political appointees can be fired. The commissioner is the only political appointee of the agency, which has hundreds of career civil servants.

The Senate confirmed McEntarfer to her post 86-8, with now Vice President JD Vance among the yea votes.

Trump focused much of his ire on the revisions the agency made to previous hiring data. Job gains in May were revised down to just 19,000 from a previously revised 125,000, and for June they were cut to 14,000 from 147,000. In July, only 73,000 positions were added. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.2% from 4.1%.

“No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” Trump wrote. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

Trump has not always been so suspicious of the monthly jobs report and responded enthusiastically after the initial May figures came out on June 6 when it was initially reported that the economy added 139,000 jobs.

“GREAT JOB NUMBERS, STOCK MARKET UP BIG!” Trump posted at the time.

That estimate was later revised down to 125,000 jobs, prior to the most-recent revision down to just 19,000.

The monthly employment report is one of the most closely-watched pieces of government economic data and can cause sharp swings in financial markets. The disappointing figure sent U.S. market indexes about 1.5% lower Friday.

The revisions to the May and June numbers were quite large and surprising to many economists. At the same time, every monthly jobs report includes revisions to the prior two months’ figures. Those revisions occur as the government receives more responses to its survey, which help provide a more complete picture of employment trends each month.

In the past decade, companies have taken longer to respond, which may have contributed to larger monthly revisions.

The monthly jobs report has long been closely guarded within the BLS, with early copies held in safes under lock and key to prevent any leaks or early dissemination.

Polis delivered the instruction in a letter Friday. He told reporters his intent was to “get red tape out of the way” so that the state could approve clean energy projects more quickly. His letter specifically calls out projects that qualify for three tax credits that were limited by the sweeping tax-and-spend bill passed by Congress and signed into law last month.

The credits have provided tax incentives for homeowners who install clean energy systems like solar panels and for energy producers that use clean technology, including wind or solar. The tax bill gave homeowners and producers a shorter runway to make use of them.

Polis also urged utilities and private sector energy producers in the letter to “bring forward the investment, equipment, and workforce to augment our efforts to deploy this infrastructure as quickly as possible,” alongside local governments.

“We can confidently commit to utilities, investors, developers, and customers that we will work to ensure qualifying, cost-effective energy generation starts construction or is placed in service in time to receive federal tax credits,” Polis wrote.

To do that, the governor said, the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Health and Environment will both work to provide faster responses, prioritize clean energy-related permitting and decisions, and provide technical assistance to local governments.

The state will also try to speed up contracts for efforts on state property that are eligible for tax credits, such as electric vehicle charging and standing up renewable energy projects.

“Colorado’s swift response to the devastating impacts of (the federal tax bill) shows true leadership at a critical moment for our economy and clean energy goals,” said Emilie Olson, the Colorado lead of Advanced Energy United, an industry group that advocates for the transition to clean energy.

Polis previously had pledged to shift the state’s clean energy goals to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to have 100% renewable energy sources by 2040. Lawmakers and Polis’ office considered enshrining the 2040 target in state law earlier this year, but they ran out of time to introduce legislation to that effect.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration says it is weighing what to do with family planning supplies stockpiled in Europe that campaigners and two U.S. senators are fighting to save from destruction.

Concerns that the Trump administration plans to incinerate the stockpile have angered family planning advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. Campaigners say the supplies stored in a U.S.-funded warehouse in Geel, Belgium, include contraceptive pills, contraceptive implants and IUDs that could spare women in war zones and elsewhere the hardship of unwanted pregnancies.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott said Thursday in response to a question about the contraceptives that “we’re still in the process here in terms of determining the way forward.”

“When we have an update, we’ll provide it,” he said.

Belgium says it has been talking with U.S. diplomats about trying to spare the supplies from destruction, including possibly moving them out of the warehouse. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Florinda Baleci told The Associated Press that she couldn’t comment further “to avoid influencing the outcome of the discussions.”

The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which managed foreign aid programs, left the supplies’ fate uncertain.

Pigott didn’t detail the types of contraceptives that make up the stockpile. He said some of the supplies, bought by the previous administration, could “potentially be” drugs designed to induce abortions. Pigott didn’t detail how that might impact Trump administration thinking about how to deal with the drugs or the entire stockpile.

Costing more than $9 million and funded by U.S taxpayers, the family planning supplies were intended for women in war zones, refugee camps and elsewhere, according to a bipartisan letter of protest to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio from U.S. senators Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski.

They said destroying the stockpile “would be a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars as well as an abdication of U.S. global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths — key goals of U.S. foreign assistance.”

They urged Rubio to allow another country or partner to distribute the contraceptives.

Concerns voiced by European campaigners and lawmakers that the supplies could be transported to France for incineration have led to mounting pressure on government officials to intervene and save them.

The executive branch of the European Union, through spokesman Guillaume Mercier, said Friday that “we continue to monitor the situation closely to explore the most effective solutions.”

The U.S. branch of family planning aid group MSI Reproductive Choices said it offered to purchase, repackage and distribute the stock at its own expense but “these efforts were repeatedly rejected.” The group said the supplies included long-acting IUDs, contraceptive implants and pills, and that they have long shelf-lives, extending as far as 2031.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders said incineration would be “an intentionally reckless and harmful act against women and girls everywhere.”

Charles Dallara, the grandson of a French former lawmaker who was a contraception pioneer in France, urged President Emmanuel Macron to not let France “become an accomplice to this scandal.”

“Do not allow France to take part in the destruction of essential health tools for millions of women,” Dallara wrote in an appeal to the French leader. “We have a moral and historical responsibility.”

Leicester reported from Paris. Matthew Lee contributed from Washington, D.C.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel provoked diplomatic discomfort in New Zealand by suggesting the opening of a new office in the capital aims to counter China’s influence, drawing polite dismissals from Wellington and ire from Beijing.

Patel was in Wellington on Thursday to open the FBI’s first standalone office in New Zealand and to meet senior officials. The arrangement aligns New Zealand with FBI missions in other Five Eyes intelligence-sharing nations, which also include the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The Wellington office will provide a local mission for FBI staff who have operated with oversight from Canberra, Australia, since 2017.

Patel’s China remarks prompted awkward responses

In remarks made in a video published Thursday by the U.S. Embassy, Patel said the office would help counter Chinese Communist Party influence in the contested South Pacific Ocean.

New Zealand ministers who met Patel, the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit New Zealand, quietly dismissed his claims. A government statement Thursday emphasized joint efforts against crimes such as online child exploitation and drug smuggling, with no mention of China.

“When we were talking, we never raised that issue,” Foreign Minister Winston said Thursday.

Judith Collins, minister for the security services, said the focus would be on transnational crime.

“I don’t respond to other people’s press releases,” she said when reporters noted Patel had mentioned China, Radio New Zealand reported.

Trade Minister Todd McClay rejected a reporter’s suggestion Friday that Wellington had “celebrated” the office opening.

“Well, I don’t think it was celebrated yesterday,” he said. “I think there was an announcement and it was discussed.”

Beijing decries the FBI chief’s comments

At a briefing Friday, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun denounced Patel’s remarks

“China believes that cooperation between countries should not target any third party,” he said. “Seeking so-called absolute security through forming small groupings under the banner of countering China does not help keep the Asia Pacific and the world at large peaceful and stable.”

New Zealand, the smallest Five Eyes partner, has faced ongoing pressure to align with U.S. stances on China, its largest trading partner, while carefully balancing relations with Beijing. Analysts said the FBI chief’s comments could vex those efforts, although New Zealand has faced such challenges before.

“It’s in New Zealand’s interest to have more law enforcement activities to deal with our shared problems,” said Jason Young, associate professor of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington. “It’s perhaps not in New Zealand’s interest to say we’re doing this to compete with China.”

The FBI expansion comes during fresh Pacific focus

Patel’s visit came as the Trump administration has sought to raise global alarm about Beijing’s designs. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in June said China posed an imminent threat and urged Indo-Pacific countries to increase military spending to 5% of GDP.

New Zealand has traditionally avoided singling out individual countries when discussing regional tensions, Young said.

“I’m sure the U.S. would like New Zealand to speak more forthrightly and characterize the China challenge in a similar way to the United States,” Young added.

New Zealand is a remote country of 5 million people that was once assumed by larger powers to be of little strategic importance. But its location and influence in the contested South Pacific Ocean, where Beijing has sought to woo smaller island nations over the past decade, has increased its appeal to countries like the U.S.

Peters, the foreign minister, told The Associated Press in 2024 that U.S. neglect of the region until recent years had in part been responsible for China’s burgeoning influence there. He urged U.S. officials to “please get engaged and try to turn up.”

New office provokes anger among New Zealanders

Not everyone welcomed the expanded FBI presence.

Online, the new office drew rancor from New Zealanders who posted thousands of overwhelmingly negative comments about the announcement on social media sites. A weekend protest against the opening was planned.

Young said it was unlikely people posting in anger took issue with cross-border law enforcement efforts in general.

“I think it would be more a reflection of some of the deep unease that many people in New Zealand see with some of the political choices that are being made in America at the moment,” he said.

Ken Moritsugu contributed from Beijing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday called for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors to usurp the power of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing the head of the U.S. central bank for not cutting short-term interest rates.

Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Powell “stubborn.” The Fed chair has been subjected to vicious verbal attacks by the Republican president over several months.

The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump’s massive tariffs had on inflation.

If Powell doesn’t “substantially” lower rates, Trump posted, “THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”

Two of the seven Fed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, issued statements Friday saying they see the tariffs as having a one-time impact on prices and the job market as most likely softening. As a result, the two dissented at the Fed meeting on Wednesday and pushed for slight rate cuts relative to what Trump was seeking.

Even though Trump, who nominated Waller and Bowman, has claimed the U.S. economy is booming, he welcomed their arguments and what he called their strong dissents.

Friday’s jobs report showed a rapidly decelerating economy, as just 73,000 jobs were added in July and downward revisions brought down the June and May totals to 14,000 and 19,000, respectively.

Trump sees the rate cuts as leading to stronger growth and lower debt servicing costs for the federal government and homebuyers. The president argues there is virtually no inflation, even though the Fed’s preferred measure is running at an annual rate of 2.6%, slightly higher than the Fed’s 2% target.

Trump has called for slashing the Fed’s benchmark rate by 3 percentage points, bringing it down dramatically from its current average of 4.33%. The risk is that a rate cut that large could cause more money to come into the economy than can be absorbed, possibly causing inflation to accelerate.

The Supreme Court suggested in a May ruling that Trump could not remove Powell for policy disagreements. This led the White House to investigate whether the Fed chair could be fired for cause because of the cost overruns in the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation projects.

Powell’s term as chair ends in May 2026, at which point Trump can put his Senate-confirmed pick in the seat.

This story has been corrected to reflect that 14,000 jobs were created in June and 19,000 in May, not 19,000 in June and 14,000 in May.