Biden rings in Air Force Academy graduation, fourth health insurer to leave Colorado | WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Today is June 2, 2023 and here is what you need to know:

Under partially cloudy skies at Falcon Stadium, President Joe Biden on Thursday highlighted various world threats from the conflict in Ukraine to increasingly damaging natural disasters that 921 Air Force Academy graduates will face as future military leaders.

Biden noted the world "genuinely needs" them at this inflection point in history and despite all the challenges, he has never been more optimistic, in part, because of the graduates.

"I know you are going to meet the moment," he said during a packed graduation ceremony.

Biden handed out diplomas to the more than 900 cadets, chatting with some of them. Biden told Fredericka Chaires to remember him in this moment when she becomes a general, Chaires said.

At the end of the ceremony, Biden fell on a black sandbag that was on the stage, said Ben LaBolt White House communications director said Twitter.

"He's fine," Bolt said.

Friday Health Plans will become the fourth health insurance company to pull out of the Colorado market in the past year, according to an announcement Thursday from the Colorado Division of Insurance.

Friday's departure is in addition to Humana, which covered about 155,000 members; Bright Health, which covered about 30,000 members; and, Oscar Health, which covered 3,800 members. All three companies announced in 2022 they, too, would leave the Colorado market.

Three of the plans operated in the small group and individual markets. Humana operated only in the small business market.

Friday enrolled about 30,000 Coloradans in its HMO plans, mostly in the individual market.

The company, which had 230,000 enrollees in Texas, was placed into receivership in that state in March and its assets put up for liquidation.

About 203,000 Coloradans are enrolled in health plans in the individual market. Another 220,000 are enrolled in the small group market, which is for companies with up to 100 employees.

The insurance division said Thursday that Friday Health's problems are financial and nationwide.

Colorado's seven congressional Democrats all voted in favor of a plan to raise the country's debt ceiling this week, calling the compromise legislation flawed but necessary to avoid default and avert an economic disaster.

To hear them tell it, U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, and U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, Brittany Pettersen and Yadira Caraveo each had major misgivings about the agreement brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but held their collective noses to help pass it.

When it came time to vote, however, the three Republican members of the state's House delegation each went a different way, with Doug Lamborn voting for the bill, Ken Buck voting against it and Lauren Boebert missing the vote after days of denouncing the deal.

Dubbed the Fiscal Responsibility Act by House GOP leaders, the bill passed the House 314-117 late on May 31, with slightly more support from Democrats than from the chamber's majority Republicans. A day later, the Democratic-controlled Senate sent the legislation to Biden for his signature on a bipartisan 63-36 vote.

The bill passed just days before the June 5 deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who warned that federal spending would exceed the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit authorized by a previous Congress, forcing the federal government to miss debt payments for the first time in the country's history.

Giving pundits the opportunity to haul out that trusty Washington bromide that if both extremes are against it, it must be a successful compromise, the package drew opposition from some of the most conservative and most progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

For the first time, Colorado's second-highest court on Thursday ruled that trial judges do not have to ask jurors to disclose their race and ethnicity, nor do they need to caution jurors about implicit bias — although there is nothing preventing judges from taking those steps, either.

The U.S. Supreme Court recognized nearly four decades ago that purposeful racial discrimination in jury selection is unconstitutional, and litigants may challenge a juror's dismissal as being rooted in race. Yet, Colorado law does not require people to disclose their race or ethnicity on questionnaires used in jury selection.

A three-judge panel for the state's Court of Appeals acknowledged other jurisdictions, including Colorado's federal trial court, do collect jurors' racial demographics. But the panel stopped short of endorsing defendant Luis Fernando Toro-Ospina's argument that requiring judges to ask about race would improve the process of identifying unconstitutional discrimination.

"The parties' arguments present important policy questions. But we do not sit as a policy-making body," wrote Judge Timothy J. Schutz in the June 1 opinion. "We conclude that such policy decisions are properly entrusted to the General Assembly and the Colorado Supreme Court."

With ballots due in Denver's municipal runoff in a matter of days, Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette convened a panel of political experts on May 30 to weigh in on the state of the race between Mike Johnston and Kelly Brough.

Voters will choose the city's next mayor in the first election for an open seat in 12 years, since outgoing Mayor Michael Hancock won the first of his three terms.

The hour-long, virtual forum featured former state Sen. Mike Kopp, the president and CEO of Colorado Concern, a coalition of business owners; Alan Salazar, Hancock's chief of staff and a veteran top political aide; Ian Silverii, founder of The Bighorn Company and the past director of ProgressNow Colorado; and longtime political consultant Steve Welchert, director and president of The Welchert Company.

Luige Del Puerto, editor of Colorado Politics and The Denver Gazette, and Ernest Luning, a senior reporter at Colorado Politics, moderated the wide-ranging discussion about the candidates, their campaigns and the winner's impending pivot to governing Colorado's largest city.