In this era of American history, when we are bombarded with scandals that disappear the next day, it would be easy to overlook a bombshell email from one of President Donald Trump’s deputy assistants calling on five agency heads to brainstorm “immediate actions” against Colorado.
But this simple email organizing a phone call to punish Coloradans is worse than Trump lining his own pockets with insider trading deals or doling out federal no-bid contracts to his children’s latest venture or granting a pardon to a big donor. If given the dystopian choice, we would rather a politician try to enrich himself and his cronies than intentionally harm innocent citizens.
The Dec. 15, 2025, email is further evidence that actions coming from a handful of federal agencies in the weeks that followed were part of a deliberate, organized and concerted effort to harm the great people of this state.
Trump’s illegal and harmful behavior cannot stand as a model for future presidents. Courts have consistently held that the federal government can use funding as a stick or a carrot to advance policy goals, but that political grievances or other arbitrary and capricious actions are illegal under the U.S. Constitution.
Trump administration officials may say their actions were done to advance legitimate public policy measures, but the record tells a different story. Trump lashed out publicly in late 2025 when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis refused to pardon Tina Peters, a supporter of Trump’s election fraud claims who used her political office to breach voting machines in Mesa County. Trump made public threats. Then, according to the record getting uncovered in the courts, he took action.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper has called for each federal agency involved in the plan to harm Colorado to launch independent inspector general investigations. We also think the U.S. Government Accountability Office should launch an investigation given that many of the actions involved congressionally appropriated funds that were diverted for political reasons. Colorado’s entire congressional delegation can work together to get a committee to instigate a GAO investigation.
But perhaps most important are Colorado voters who this November can send a clear message — any candidate who does not denounce this illegal behavior from President Donald Trump’s administration is undeserving of our vote. Candidates for public office must choose: They can stand with Trump’s attack on this state, or they can stand with their constituents.
Fortunately, in these times of extraordinary corruption, the courts have proven to be a bulwark. The smoking-gun email was uncovered as part of discovery in a lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser challenging the decision to strip Colorado Springs of the U.S. Space Command. Weiser has been aggressive in using the courts to stop Trump’s illegal actions, and the discovery of a meeting orchestrated specifically to find ways to harm this state is further evidence of why standing up and pushing back matters. An attorney from Weiser’s office called the meeting “a smoking gun.”
The president of the United States conspired to make our lives worse in countless ways. Trump’s vindictive rampage canceled needed federal funding from a clean drinking water project in southeastern Colorado and rejected wildfire recovery projects to rebuild utility lines on the Western Slope.
Of all the actions that followed in the days after the “brainstorm call,” the most brazen was the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s action to strip food stamps from thousands of low-income families in Colorado. These families held no stakes in Trump’s grudge against this state, and yet their food budgets were put in jeopardy as punishment.
Had courts not intervened, Colorado county officials would have had 30 days to conduct in-person interviews with 100,000 food stamp recipients or federal funding for the program would have been canceled. The task was intentionally impossible, preposterous and, we now know, part of a punitive scheme coming directly from the White House.
More evidence will be forthcoming following the court’s ruling: “This is an extraordinary memo, and it’s very troubling to this court,” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said in court last week, ordering federal agencies to respond to Weiser’s requests for documents.
We know that many Americans were outraged in 2020 when then-President Joe Biden ordered the federal government not to contract with employers who didn’t require the COVID vaccine. Nineteen states sued, and the courts ruled the order was unconstitutional. But imagine the uproar if Biden had ordered federal agencies to brainstorm ideas to punish those states who refused to comply. And if following that meeting, Texas had lost federal funding on par with what was stripped from Colorado, which in addition to everything we’ve already mentioned included $615 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and $109 million in grant funding from the Department of Transportation.
We use this hypothetical example intentionally, because whether you agreed with the vaccine mandate or not, at least Biden was making the order in an attempt to pursue public health. Trump’s motivations, on the other hand, were personal and his actions were arbitrary.
Coloradans are the ones who ended up paying for it all.
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