December 17, 2025 03:27 PM UTC

What The Heck Are "Woke" Trains, Anyway?

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Sun reports today on another act of political retaliation against the state of Colorado by the Trump administration, this one involving the cancellation of over $100 million in transportation grant funding that, though allocated, appropriated, and plans built around its disbursement, does not meet the administration’s new regressive political correctness standards:

The Trump administration said Tuesday it is canceling $109 million in transportation grants awarded to Colorado for projects with an environmental focus.

The funds were slated to pay for increasing the use of electric vehicles and EV charging options, as well as rail improvements, including research into hydrogen and natural gas-powered trains. Some of the money was slated for a specific transit project in Fort Collins.

“Effective immediately, USDOT has canceled five different projects in Colorado — ranging from woke, zero-emission plans to ‘green’ rail cars,” [Pols emphasis] Danna Almeida, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said in a written statement. “These projects did not align with President Trump’s ambitious America First agenda or were redundant.”

So first of all, we have to take issue with this notion of “woke” transportation projects. Our understanding of the term “woke” since it came into common use during the first Trump administration is that it pertains to social justice and racism, which although certainly a right-wing boogeyman is distinct from “green” energy proposals. But whether “green” or “woke,” these are just not descriptive of what a majority of the grants cancelled yesterday actually consisted of. Almost two-thirds of the $109 million cancelled was for positive train control systems on train tracks in Northern Colorado, which is a critical safety improvement having absolutely nothing to do with any kind of “woke” policy, or even necessarily any “green” policy. Positive train control is used by passenger and freight systems, and greatly improves safety for both.

At this point, the justifications thrown out by the administration for these obvious acts of retaliations are more or less pro forma. Between the cancelled funds, investigations, lawsuits, mass layoffs, relocations, and overt threats by Donald Trump himself against the state of Colorado, there is no question that our state is being singled out for punishment for a litany of Trump’s personal grievances going all the way back to the Colorado Republican Party’s #NeverTrump snubbing in the 2016 presidential caucuses. We’re the state that took Trump’s qualifications to run as an insurrectionist to the Supreme Court. And in a Colorado state prison sits the last person still serving time over Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 presidential elections.

Responding to today’s news, Rep. Brittany Pettersen spelled out the obvious:

Unfortunately, until Trump is definitively checked in the courts and/or at the polls, this duplicitous retaliatory relationship isn’t likely to improve. Get ready for more surprising examples of “wokeness” you never imagined, because we have a President to whom words mean anything…and also nothing.

And if you catch Trump in the right mood, he’ll happily admit this is simply about punishing a state that crossed him too many times.