For more than a week, Colorado’s latest request for a federal disaster declaration — a typically pro forma action to unlock financial help — has languished on President Donald Trump’s desk.
Members of Congress, local leaders and statewide officials call the support critical for rebuilding after a pair of devastating fires tore through Colorado, with flooding not far behind the blazes. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has rallied support from across political lines to underscore the need for the declaration publicly, and U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican, is organizing a tour with other western lawmakers so he can recruit them to a lobbying effort aimed at winning Trump’s approval.
Hanging over the waiting period is that the Trump administration, breaking with recent history, has rejected similar aid requests from Colorado and other states that voted against his return to the White House.
Both the Aspen Acres and Gold Mountain wildfires burned through Hurd’s Western Slope district, which also covers much of southern Colorado. He said it was still too soon to read anything into the still-unanswered federal aid request — even as he keeps in mind that the administration denied the similar request for the 2025 Elk and Lee fires, also in Hurd’s district, including appeals earlier this year.
To win support for the disaster declaration, he said he was working through “as many channels as we can — both officially, through the press, and through sources the president and his team would see, but also behind the scenes.”
He lauded the bipartisan effort behind the public pressure campaign — and also highlighted that Pueblo County, which bore the brunt of the Aspen Acres fire, voted for Trump in 2024.
“This is a terrible disaster in a crucial part of the state,” Hurd said. “Families have been impacted by not only the wildfire, but the flooding. The scope and nature of this disaster is almost unprecedented in this part of the state, in this part of the country. I will say also, these are communities that are largely rural and support the president.”
This summer, the has burned more than 100,000 acres, or roughly 159 square miles, mostly in southwest Pueblo County. It is the seventh-largest wildfire in Colorado history. The has burned nearly 40,000 acres, or 62 square miles, mostly in Ouray County. Both are largely contained, but still active in a season that has seen many other fires in the state.
The fires have destroyed more than 800 structures and 324 homes, according to signed by all of Colorado’s members of Congress and both senators.
Polis declared each fire a disaster at the end of June, and since then the state has opened up nearly $266 million to help with fire suppression, recovery and response, according to his office.
State ‘has worked closely with FEMA,’ Polis says
Polis made the formal request for federal aid to the White House on Aug. 23, after state and local officials worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to document and validate eligible damage.
The next day, Polis’ office publicized quotes from nearly two dozen local leaders and homeowners calling on the White House to approve the declaration.
“The State of Colorado has worked closely with FEMA to put this request together and ensure we are doing all we can to support the communities impacted,” Polis said in a statement as the request neared the one-week mark. “I’m grateful to Colorado’s entire congressional delegation for coming together in bipartisan support of our request. These rural communities have been through an incredibly difficult summer and I urge the President to approve Colorado’s request so that survivors can rebuild, repair, and recover from these catastrophic events.”
As of Monday afternoon, the White House still had not approved the declaration.
In an unattributed statement, a White House spokesperson said Trump responds to each request “with great care and consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement — not substitute, their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters.”
That is the exact language the White House used when offering a statement on why it denied support for the Elk and Lee fires.
“The Trump administration remains committed to empowering and working with State and local governments to invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes, making response less urgent and recovery less prolonged,” the statement continued.
The disaster declaration would help the local governments in the affected areas rebuild infrastructure, including roads, water treatment plants and parks that were damaged or destroyed by the wildfires. Rural electric cooperatives would get help to rebuild destroyed power lines and transmission stations.
A declaration would also help homeowners rebuild property that was uninsured, either because insurers wouldn’t cover them or because they didn’t need coverage — as was the case with homes that weren’t in flood zones until the blazes remade local topography.
In recent months, Trump has increasingly politicized disaster relief. In July, he announced nearly $1 billion in aid to red states while praising candidates he backed in elections set at the same time, . Politico that Trump overrode regional approval to deny aid to New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The administration has also admitted in court documents to canceling grant funding for blue states and not “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor,” . Colorado was among those states.
The Times that data showed a sharp spike in disaster funding denials for Democratic states in Trump’s current term compared to presidents of both parties going back to the start of the century — including Trump’s first term. The Times’ analysis showed Trump had denied 43% of disaster relief requests made by Democratic states in his second term, compared to 19% of requests made by Republican states.
Colorado was also targeted by administration officials in December as the president lashed out at Polis for the ongoing imprisonment of Tina Peters, the disgraced election official who was sentenced for election-related crimes. Polis later commuted her sentence.
While the White House has denied playing politics with disaster relief, itap a pattern officials — Republican and Democrat — have invoked.
“Politics should never determine who rebuilds after a natural disaster,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Americans count on their government to support their communities after disaster strikes. This administration’s shameful trend of denying disaster aid to Colorado, and other states the president wants to punish, shatters Americans’ trust in their government.
“We won’t stop fighting for Colorado communities and making sure politics stays out of disaster recovery.”
Republicans join push, hoping to add leverage
State Rep. Larry Don Suckla, a Cortez Republican whose district includes the Gold Mountain fire burn area, said he watched the smoke rise from his backyard.
Places like Lake City, in Hinsdale County, were particularly devastated, both from the fire itself and from a halt in the summer tourism the area relies on, he said. He signed on to Polis’ letter, and, in an interview, emphasized that rural Colorado — the part of the state that grows food and harvests timber — would benefit from the disaster declaration.
“Maybe my party affiliation, and the party affiliation of (Rep. Stephanie Luck, a Republican whose district includes the Aspen Acres fire), will make a difference. I don’t know,” Suckla said. He added that he owed it to his constituents to use whatever leverage he could to secure federal help.
State Sen. Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican and leader of his caucus, said he considered the prior denials in his decision to join Polis’ public push.
He urged officials to “please not make this political theater, or comedy, and recognize the impacts these disasters have had on people’s livelihoods.”
He also warns of “a sense of frustration and abandonment” if the declaration isn’t approved.
“Folks in general are pretty resilient, and we’ll figure out a way to move forward,” Simpson said. “It might take longer, and more energy and more resources, and it takes away from other efforts. Something will suffer along the way, I suppose. But I’m sure it would be a sense of defeatism if the declaration isn’t made and declared, and support doesn’t follow.”
Meanwhile, people in the Aspen Acres and Gold Mountain burn areas will be left dealing with the aftermath.
Ouray County Commissioner Michelle Nauer evacuated when the fire neared her neighborhood, and she had to listen as a nearby creek broke its banks and overflowed into neighbors’ homes in the following days — neighbors who didn’t live in a flood zone, and so they hadn’t needed to buy insurance to protect against that type of calamity. Flooding often acts as a double whammy following fires, after the blazes scour the earth of vegetation that has kept banks in place.
Her friends, neighbors and constituents lost homes and businesses. Nauer, who is unaffiliated with a party, says she’s “not putting a whole lot of hope” into the disaster declaration request, given recent history.
But that doesn’t mean her community doesn’t need it.
“The emotional and financial devastation to the community, it has been horrific to us. I don’t know how else to describe it,” Nauer said. “I don’t know what else I would say (to people deciding on disaster relief). Please? Of course, please.”
