The Real World

“Life moves pretty fast,” Ferris Bueller famously said. “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” I thought of that quote in early October as I was trying to make sense of the news coming out of Washington, D.C.: There were President Donald Trump’s tweets taunting the leader of North Korea. There was the botched response to the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico. There was the rollback in birth control coverage for women. And there was the president’s war of words with Republican Senator Bob Corker. By the time you read this, there surely will be more sensational headlines, more meshuggaas. And yet, Americans knew this was coming with Trump (a recent headline in the New York Times read: “For Trump, the Reality Show Has Never Ended”). Here at 5280, we too saw the signs. And given the strangeness of Trump’s electoral campaign and his lack of governing experience, we decided back in early February it would be wise to monitor how the new, unconventional administration would affect Colorado—for better or worse. Sure enough, what we found from Inauguration Day forward is that Trump and Co. has had an outsize impact on the Centennial State. From his hard-line stance on immigration to his easing of restrictions on the coal industry to his desire to re-evaluate how our waters are regulated, Trump’s agenda is affecting our day-to-day lives. We weren’t able to cover everything in 10 pages, of course, but we hope “The Trump Effect” will help you slow down, look around, and make sure you don’t miss the myriad ways this administration is changing life in Colorado in real time.