January 02, 2026 03:56 PM UTC

Only Fools Defend Trump's Retaliation Against Colorado Now

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• by: Colorado Pols

Over the New Year’s holiday news blackout, President Donald Trump launched his latest reprisal against the state of Colorado over our long list of affronts against the Dear Leader stretching all the way back to the state Republican Party’s refusal to back Trump in the 2016 presidential primary. Since retaking office in January, the state of Colorado has fallen disproportionately victim to a hostile federal administration in the form of mass layoffs, funding cuts and recissions to already-awarded funds, relocation of the U.S. Space Command to Alabama, and investigations into the state election and correction systems that have been broadly interpreted as retaliatory after Trump promised “harsh measures” against the state if convicted felon former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters isn’t freed from state prison.

As the Washington Post reports, Trump’s veto of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s bill funding the construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit drinking water project could be the breaking point for local Republicans who have tried to remain loyal while Trump unleashes indiscriminate hell on their constituents. How can “law and order” MAGA loyalists like Rep. Gabe Evans justify this brazen extortion?

Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Colorado congresswoman long associated with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, on Wednesday criticized President Donald Trump for vetoing bipartisan legislation to support a major drinking-water project in her district, saying she hopes the rejection “has nothing to do with political retaliation.”

The legislation Trump vetoed, known as the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, would have helped complete the final component of the decades-old Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. Colorado lawmakers supporting the bill have said the project’s cost estimate has nearly doubled in recent years because of inflation and increased labor costs…

Boebert [said] that the veto of the “noncontroversial, bipartisan bill,” which both the House and Senate passed unanimously this year, will deny “clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections.” In a statement, she continued, “I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability.” [Pols emphasis]

But while Boebert was expressing her vain hope that this wasn’t exactly what it looks like, Trump was confirming his ulterior motives to POLITICO:

“They’re wasting a lot of money and people are leaving the state. They’re leaving the state in droves. Bad governor,” Trump said in an exclusive phone interview with POLITICO.

So first of all, and it’s hardly necessary to point this out, the contention that people are leaving Colorado “in droves” is not based on the kind of hard data leaders relied on before the post-truth era of American politics. 9NEWS performed the obligatory debunking:

Trump’s claim that Coloradans are leaving the state “in droves” appears to be based on a survey by a single moving company…

A survey by United Van Lines reported 661 more outbound moves than inbound moves from a sample size of 6,633 moves involving Colorado in 2025. That landed Colorado on United Van Lines’ list of top five states for “Highest Outbound Moves” behind New Jersey, New York, California and North Dakota.

Four other moving companies released similar studies of 2025 trends and none found a significant out-migration from Colorado.

Although debunking Trump’s ridiculous excuse is helpful, it’s not as important in this case because Trump has already repeatedly declared his true motives for every adverse decision he makes against the state of Colorado. The morning after he vetoed Boebert’s Arkansas Valley Conduit bill, Trump lashed out again at Gov. Jared Polis as well as Republican Mesa County DA Dan Rubinstein, calling for them both to “rot in hell” while once again impotently demanding Peters’ release (top right). At this point, only a fool or a sycophant would try to defend the veto of this unanimously-passed bill for clean drinking water to an overwhelmingly Republican corner of the state on the merits.

There’s always one fool to prove us right.

We are now living in a situation that the Founders in their eminent wisdom establishing counteracting checks and balances between executive, legislative, and judicial power either failed to anticipate or did not adequately account for the possibility of: a democratically elected chief executive totally unbound by ethical constraints, wielding power that has always depended upon conscientious application and accountability to be safe for any one man to hold. Last week, a 6-3 Supreme Court finally checked Trump’s ability to simply declare he needs military forces in the streets of American cities without any factual basis, one of the first meaningful restraints imposed by Trump’s self-stacked SCOTUS since he retook office. It is clear now that Trump intends to continue pushing the boundaries of executive power everywhere he can for his own lawless purposes unless the other two branches find the backbone to make him stop.

Until that day, Colorado gets to suffer. Republicans and Democrats alike.