In the News
Liberal Democrat Joe Neguse of Colorado and conservative Republican Lynn Cheney have a common cause they care deeply about: taking care of wildland firefighters.
The political odd couple penned an op-ed Wednesday in The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-focused news outlet, about their plan to raise pay and benefits for those increasingly called on to protect communities, forests and fauna.
Democrats — and select Republicans — voiced their support for a bipartisan bill that would boost wildland firefighter pay and reclassify their job titles as firefighters during a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.
As wildfire seasons grow longer and more deadly, Congress is taking steps to ease the immense pressure on federal firefighters battling the blazes.
An Afghan interpreter and his family landed at Denver International Airport Tuesday night to settle in at their new home after the fall and evacuation of Kabul.
Ahmad Siddiqi, his wife and four kids fled Afghanistan in August and hadn’t found a permanent residence yet. He turned to Army veteran Scott Henkel, husband of Broomfield City Councilwoman Heidi Henkel, for help. They met while Henkel was serving in Afghanistan in 2006, and the two worked with Rep. Jason Crow and Rep. Joe Neguse’s offices to expedite the process.
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4)– Long hours and high stress are causing a surge in mental illness and suicides among federal wildland firefighters. They’re leaving the job in record numbers amid escalating fires that are increasingly putting their lives at risk, pulling them away from families for months on end, and leaving them with trauma that often goes untreated.
The suicide rate among federal wildland firefighters is 30 times that of the general population.
If you turn on the TV or scroll through Twitter, you can see the disastrous impacts of climate change. Some of us only have to look out our windows to see it. Climate change isn’t just coming — it’s here.
Joe Neguse grew up a Colorado kid, like most Colorado kids, with Red Rocks Amphitheater in his cultural heritage.
A few weeks ago he was out at the Denver city park touring the Civilian Conservation Corps site, the temporary home to about 200 men ages 18 to 25 who built the amphitheater. The New Deal program encompassed 3 million men to help get the country back on its feet from the Great Depression, the defining crisis of its time.
Congressman Joe Neguse, co-chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus, passed two proposals through the U.S. House of Representatives.
These two pieces of legislation called Housing Our Firefighters Act and Care for Our Firefighters Act are each intended to meet the needs of many federal wildland fighters.
Funding for U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse’s Climate Conservation Corps proposal made it into the Build Back Better Act, a $3.5 trillion spending package expected to reach a House of Representatives vote soon.
The Climate Conservation Corps funding totals about $50 billion, close to the levels laid out in Neguse’s 21st Century Climate Conservation Corps Act. That legislation envisioned a modern New Deal-inspired program creating jobs and bolstering wildfire preparedness, land restoration and climate change resilience.
U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse will hold a town-hall-style discussion of the affordable housing crisis online at noon-4 p.m. Thursday.
The event will include two public listening sessions focused on affordable housing and homelessness across Colorado.
“We are at an inflection point for affordable housing, and it’s critical that we find creative solutions that meet this moment,” Neguse said in a news release.