{"id":3816,"date":"2026-08-17T14:07:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T14:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=3816"},"modified":"2026-08-17T14:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T14:07:17","slug":"trump-administrations-efforts-against-colorado-unprecedented-and-likely-illegal-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=3816","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration\u2019s efforts against Colorado unprecedented and likely illegal, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Trump administration\u2019s apparent efforts to coordinate a series of retributive actions against Colorado late last year are largely unprecedented and were likely not legal, constitutional law professors told The Denver Post.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s the kind of thing that\u2019s so blatant and unprecedented, it\u2019s almost hard to find the language to describe it,\u201d said Jonathon Booth, a historian and associate professor at the University of Colorado\u2019s law school. \u201cIt\u2019s so far beyond what every other administration has attempted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

As President Donald Trump publicly campaigned to free Tina Peters from a Pueblo prison, officials from several federal agencies were summoned to a December meeting to \u201cbrainstorm\u201d actions that could be taken against Colorado. The email, disclosed in a court hearing last week and reported Thursday by The Post, was followed by cuts to grant funding, the denial of disaster relief aid, scrutiny of Colorado\u2019s food stamp program and the planned dismantling of a Boulder research lab.<\/p>\n

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys essentially acknowledge that the Trump administration has taken adverse action against Colorado because of the state\u2019s political leanings \u2014 and that there\u2019s \u201cno legal basis\u201d preventing the president from doing so. The White House denied that the various adverse decisions were taken because of Peters, a former Mesa County clerk and Trump ally who was serving a prison sentence for giving an unauthorized person access to secure voting equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Constitution has always permitted governmental entities to make decisions based on political or geographic considerations \u2014 hence earmarks and \u201cpork-barrel spending,\u201d federal attorneys wrote in June, in response to a lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser alleging sweeping retribution against the state.<\/p>\n

But three legal experts who spoke to The Post said the federal government could not punish states purely for partisan ends. The federal government can\u2019t simply withhold or redirect congressionally appropriated funding to states because of partisan desires, said Doug Spencer, the chair in constitutional law at the University of Colorado. Nor can it make decisions for arbitrary or capricious reasons, as the state alleges several of the adverse decisions were.<\/p>\n

While Congress successfully used highway funding to enforce a nationwide drinking age in the 1980s, the Supreme Court upheld the effort because federal lawmakers had passed legislation backing it. But when Trump was first elected and attempted to withhold funding from states that didn\u2019t work with federal immigration authorities, federal courts rejected the move for the same reason: A federal appellate court wrote that if the administration could determine policy and use funding to force it without Congress\u2019s approval, then a \u201ccheck against tyranny is forsaken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even balanced against the earlier immigration move, the efforts described in the email and in the state\u2019s lawsuit are unprecedented, the experts said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe scale and the open partisan retaliation \u2013 it\u2019s just totally different,\u201d Booth said.<\/p>\n

According to other evidence disclosed in the case, five presidential staff members \u2014 including Emily Underwood, who sent the \u201cbrainstorm\u201d email \u2014 were given updates about a letter that the Agriculture Department was sending to Colorado about a rapid re-examination of SNAP recipients. Stephen Miller, Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff, is listed among federal officials involved in the decision to deny disaster relief to the state. Ten presidential and budget office staff, including Underwood, were involved in discussions or meetings about Colorado\u2019s Energy Department funds in December and January 2025.<\/p>\n

Read more Colorado\u2019s Youth Mental Health Corps improves student attendance and behavior<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t think of anything that is so brazen,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cI think that presidents are always concerned about the politics, they\u2019re always hoping that certain states will enact or enforce the policies that they\u2019re (supporting) and maybe they use funding as kind of a shield against states going rogue. But this is the first instance I\u2019m aware of that the executive is using the funding as a sword.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that some prior administrations had misused the Justice Department\u2019s settlement fund, and he pointed to the system of government patronage that existed in the first century of the country\u2019s existence. But he otherwise struggled to think of an analogous situation taken by a previous administration, and he argued that the partisan retribution likely also violated the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

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He said the federal and state governments had previously operated under the joint understanding that the government did not exist to achieve partisan or personal ends. But that understanding, he said, has broken down.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of the technicalities of the law, it\u2019s really hard to see how you run the government as if it was a partisan protection racket and maintain democratic norms,\u201d Huq said. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to see how you square this with any kind of commitment to democracy as a going concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disclosure of the email drew public criticism from Colorado\u2019s Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper said the document \u201cconfirms the highest levels of the White House orchestrated a campaign of political retribution against Coloradans over President Trump\u2019s petulant grievances.\u201d He called on the inspectors general of every federal agency to investigate whether federal resources were used to target Colorado.<\/p>\n

Bennet called The Post\u2019s reporting \u201cproof of what Coloradans already know to be true: Donald Trump is weaponizing the federal government to punish Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

While governors and presidents have often disagreed, states and the federal government have always partnered on projects like infrastructure or Medicaid. But Huq warned about the broader effects that may unspool if trust between the federal and state governments is broken and cannot be healed, even under subsequent presidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the big unanswered question for me, which is \u2014 once you screw up the way governing and providing services is done in the United States, what happens?\u201d Huq said. \u201cCan you just be like, \u2018Forget it, we\u2019ll do a mulligan?\u2019 I don\u2019t know. It doesn\u2019t sound plausible me that would happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Today in History: August 17, Miles Davis releases \u2018Kind of Blue\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump’s administration’s apparent efforts to coordinate a series of retributive actions against Colorado late last year are largely unprecedented and were likely not legal, constitutional law professors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump administration\u2019s efforts against Colorado unprecedented and likely illegal, experts say - Colorado Springs Moverss<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=3816\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump administration\u2019s efforts against Colorado unprecedented and likely illegal, experts say - 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