October 07, 2025 10:11 AM UTC

Gabe Evans Shrugs While Trump Revenge Cuts Slam His District

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Colorado Newsline’s Lindsey Toomer reports, the Trump administration’s campaign of retaliation by all available means against blue states like Colorado ramped up last week following the federal government’s shutdown, with the punitive cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars of clean energy project funds on top of the reductions in the “We’re All Going To Die Act” federal budget bill:

Colorado businesses, universities and state agencies say they have been left in the dark about the Trump administration’s cancellation of half a billion dollars in federal clean energy grants following the federal government shutdown.

The terminated grants include over $300 million to Colorado State University, $70 million for Xcel Energy and $50 million for the Tribal Energy Consortium.

“The attempt to use a government shutdown to unlawfully rescind already appropriated funds and terminate federal employees is illegal, pure and simple,” U.S Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, said in a statement Friday. “These acts of retribution are intended to stoke fear, and Democrats must use every legal and legislative tool to reverse these decisions and hold the administration accountable — which is exactly what we intend to do.”

While Colorado Democrats are livid over these politically-motivated and legally questionable cuts, local Republicans are silent and/or in full deflection mode, despite the harm being done to projects in their own districts. BizWest:

Among the larger awards that were rescinded in Northern Colorado were a $27 million grant and loan to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to aid in its transition to clean energy and $6.5 million to Brighton-based United Power Inc. for a floating solar microgrid in Fort Lupton. Both projects affected the congressional district of Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose office did not return requests for comment in time for BizWest’s Friday deadline… [Pols emphasis]

The New York Times‘ Catie Edmondson put a finer point on the political dilemma yesterday:

[T]he energy cuts also appear to have done collateral damage to projects championed by House Republicans in competitive districts in blue states from New York to California — the kind of seats that built the G.O.P. majority, and whose loss could wipe it out. It is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s aggressive moves to bend the government to his will have threatened his own party’s political standing…

Mr. Evans, one of the most politically endangered Republicans, [Pols emphasis] in September toured United Power’s Mountain Peak natural gas peaking plant in his district and touted on social media how the “investment will help provide more reliable, safe, and affordable energy” for his constituents.

Federal funding for that project — roughly $6 million — was axed last week. A grant for a second project in his district, worth $27 million, was also canceled.

Over the summer, Gabe Evans’ “Tour of Destruction” to locations in his district adversely affected by Trump administration policies and the federal budget bill Evans cast a deciding vote to pass, from food banks to hospitals to clean energy projects, became a recurring theme that local news outlets came to recognize. These latest retaliatory cuts during the shutdown are different in that Evans did not personally vote for them, but that’s no defense if Evans doesn’t have the guts to push back against Donald Trump for unilaterally imposing them.

And it appears Gabe Evans does not. It’s possible that Evans is quietly hoping that a deal with Democrats to end the shutdown also nixes these cuts in his own district, or failing that the inevitable legal challenge to this legally questionable move is successful.

But for a politician who trades on his image as a former cop and veteran tough guy, that’s pretty far from what you’d call a profile in courage.