© 2026
NPR News, Colorado Stories
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The Colorado Capitol News Alliance is a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, with support from news outlets throughout the state. Startup funding for the Alliance was provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Purplish: Wrapping up the session: the policies, the politics... and the poetry

Lucas Brady Woods
/
KUNC
The Colorado Capitol in Denver on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.

From speed cameras to vaccine policy to ketchup packets, which of the laws passed by the 2026 legislature will actually be affecting people’s daily lives, five or ten years from now. That’s the question that launches our session wrap up conversation. But in a year when new policies often took a backseat to painful budget realities, there were also lots of politics to keep things interesting.

Catch up on our latest coverage:

Purplish is produced by CPR News and the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Startup funding for the Alliance was provided, in part, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Purplish’s producer is Stephanie Wolf. Sound design and engineering by Shane Rumsey. The theme music is by Brad Turner. Megan Verlee is the executive producer.

I’m the Government and Politics Reporter at KUNC, which means I help make sense of the latest developments at the State Capitol and their impacts on Coloradans. I cover Colorado's legislature, governor, government agencies, elections and Congressional delegation.
Jesse Paul is a Denver-based political reporter and editor at The Colorado Sun, covering the state legislature, Congress and local politics. He is the author of The Unaffiliated newsletter and also occasionally fills in on breaking news coverage.
Bente Birkeland is an award-winning journalist who joined Colorado Public Radio in August 2018 after a decade of reporting on the Colorado state capitol for the Rocky Mountain Community Radio collaborative and KUNC. In 2017, Bente was named Colorado Journalist of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and she was awarded with a National Investigative Reporting Award by SPJ a year later.
Rae Solomon is a reporter for CPR News. Her work is shared with KUNC through the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.