Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

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, it����ap 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.”

My first full day at work as a United States Senator was January 6th. A few days later, we unexpectedly learned that after a secretive Oval Office meeting, Trump had decided to move U.S. Space Command from its historical headquarters in Republican-leaning Colorado Springs to Alabama.

That was just the beginning.

In the years that followed, President Trump’s anger toward Colorado only grew. After the Colorado Supreme Court determined in 2023 that he had engaged in insurrection and was therefore disqualified from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, he lashed out at the ruling.

Then, after former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers for undermining Colorado’s free and fair election system, President Trump embraced her. To most Coloradans, Peters was and is a disgrace. To Trump, she was a martyr.

Upon taking office again, President Trump reversed the Biden administration’s permanent basing decision, ordering the fully operational Space Command to relocate to Alabama, threatening thousands of jobs and our military readiness. His administration denied disaster assistance to Colorado communities rebuilding from wildfires and floods. He even vetoed bipartisan legislation to bring clean drinking water to 39 southeastern Colorado communities.

His administration has also moved to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, and canceled more than $100 million in transportation grants and hundreds of millions in clean energy investments. They froze funding for child care, food assistance, and other services for vulnerable families. The EPA overrode Colorado’s regional haze plan, undermining years of state-led work to reduce pollution. The list goes on and on.

We now know that these relentless attacks weren’t merely coincidence. Last week, an email disclosed in court revealed that officials at the highest levels of the White House were directed to orchestrate political retribution against Coloradans.

I’ve called for an investigation into the administration’s targeting of our state. Our country needs to fully understand how federal resources were manipulated to punish innocent Coloradans, both Republicans and Democrats. Government resources belong to the American people. They are not weapons to wield against the president����ap enemies.

Coloradans are already struggling with the cost of groceries, housing, health care, and other essentials. All across Colorado, families, farmers, and small business owners are struggling to stay afloat. But instead of lowering prices, President Trump and his allies are misusing federal power and putting political priorities ahead of the public interest. We’re fighting back.

When President Trump proposed a Department of Justice fund to compensate election criminals like Tina Peters and those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, we led the opposition against it. When Republicans proposed selling up to three million acres of public lands across Colorado and ten other Western states to the highest bidder, we rallied lawmakers from across the aisle to defeat it. When critical weather and climate science was under attack, we held up an appropriations package for weeks over efforts to close NCAR and worked with Democrats and Republicans to protect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) access to critical weather data.

There’s no shortage of pressing problems to fix: the cost-of-living emergency, runaway healthcare costs, and mass deportations that are inflicting terror. These challenges require pragmatic solutions, not grinding political axes. The White House’s continued fixation on the 2020 election, Tina Peters, and indeed the state of Colorado, isn’t getting us any closer to addressing them.

Coloradans shouldn’t pay the price for the petty grievances and failed policies that make their lives harder. We need to continue holding this administration accountable, fighting back against the president����ap attacks on Colorado, and lowering costs for working families.

John Hickenlooper is a U.S. Senator representing Colorado.

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Geo Group’s refusal to comply with the order’s deadline — confirmed Tuesday by a state spokeswoman — means the impasse may now only be resolved in a courtroom.

Urged by advocates to take firmer action to investigate the spread of tuberculosis, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued the order on Aug. 13 after Geo refused to comply with a June order from Adams County health officials. The state order gives the Colorado Attorney General’s Office authority to sue Geo to force it to comply with the tuberculosis investigation, which seeks details about the detainee diagnosed with TB and any other people who may have come into contact with them.

Hope Shuler, a spokeswoman for the health department, confirmed that Geo had not sent the required information to state officials.

“Public officials must be able to verify the facts, identify people who may have been exposed and ensure they receive appropriate follow-up care,” Shuler wrote in a statement. “GEO has a responsibility not only to the people in its facility, but also to its employees and surrounding community. Its continued refusal to cooperate significantly limits the investigation, but we remain determined to obtain the information needed to protect public health.”

It’s unclear what happens next or on what timeline: Shuler said the health department is “actively coordinating with Adams County, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and Denver Health TB Clinic on next steps, including legal remedies.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is in California for a trial against the social media company Meta, said the office had no updates as of Tuesday afternoon.

In a statement Tuesday, Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira did not respond when asked whether the company had complied with the order. He said that there are no active or suspected cases of tuberculosis at the facility.

“Over the past two months, GEO has engaged repeatedly with the Adams County Health Department and other Colorado officials and has provided information to the state as authorized by DHS,” he said, referring to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement. “DHS and (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) remain actively involved in disease-prevention and control measures at (the detention center).”

In an email last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement referred questions about the order to Geo, which the agency contracts to run the detention center.

One person tested positive for tuberculosis in June, health officials have previously said. That person has since been deported, and Adams County officials said the person was believed to have contracted the respiratory illness before entering the facility. Geo undertook its own investigation and has repeatedly said there are no additional active cases of TB within the 1,530-bed detention center.

But Geo and ICE have refused to provide additional information to state or county investigators or grant them access to the Aurora facility to confirm that report or conduct the health investigation that’s required by law. The county issued its own public health order in June, which was ignored.

The state health department then requested more information in mid-July and gave Geo a 48-hour deadline to respond. Geo ignored that request, too, and state health officials’ attempts to work with Geo — outside of another health order — were unsuccessful.

Adams County officials previously told reporters that Geo had stopped communicating with them in late June.

U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper visited the Aurora facility Monday and told reporters that Geo staff declined to discuss the tuberculosis situation on advice of their lawyers. He said they also would not indicate whether they intended to comply with the state health order.

“You cannot do an investigation like this in a vacuum,” Hickenlooper said from the sidewalk outside of the facility. “…I’m shocked. I’ve never in my life seen a time where a direct order from the public health authority or a direct order from the state office of public health is ignored.”

If Weiser’s office sues Geo to enforce the order, the ensuing litigation will likely become entangled with another lawsuit between the company and the state.

In June, after Gov. Jared Polis signed a law requiring more regular inspections of the facility, Geo sued, arguing in essence that only the federal government could regulate it. The first hearing in that case came late last month and had influenced officials’ willingness to take additional legal steps to force compliance with the tuberculosis investigation.

State officials in both Washington state and New Jersey have sued Geo after the company blocked health inspectors in those states from accessing its detention centers.

Last month, Geo announced that it had signed a $528.6 million contract with ICE to open a new detention center in Hudson, a small, rural community north of Denver.

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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“It’s the kind of thing that’s so blatant and unprecedented, it����ap almost hard to find the language to describe it,” said Jonathon Booth, a historian and associate professor at the University of Colorado’s law school. “It����ap so far beyond what every other administration has attempted to do.”

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 “brainstorm” 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’s food stamp program and the planned dismantling of a Boulder research lab.

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys essentially acknowledge that the Trump administration has taken adverse action against Colorado because of the state’s political leanings — and that there’s “no legal basis” 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.

“The Constitution has always permitted governmental entities to make decisions based on political or geographic considerations — hence earmarks and ‘pork-barrel spending,’ ” federal attorneys wrote in June, in response to a lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser alleging sweeping retribution against the state.

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’t 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.

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’t work with federal immigration authorities, federal courts rejected the move for the same reason: that if the administration could determine policy and use funding to force it without Congress’s approval, then a “check against tyranny is forsaken.”

Even balanced against the earlier immigration move, the efforts described in the email and in the state’s lawsuit are unprecedented, the experts said.

“The scale and the open partisan retaliation – it’s just totally different,” Booth said.

According to other evidence disclosed in the case, five presidential staff members — including Emily Underwood, who sent the “brainstorm” email — 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’s 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’s Energy Department funds in December and January 2025.

“I can’t think of anything that is so brazen,” Spencer said. “I think that presidents are always concerned about the politics, they’re always hoping that certain states will enact or enforce the policies that they’re (supporting) and maybe they use funding as kind of a shield against states going rogue. But this is the first instance I’m aware of that the executive is using the funding as a sword.”

Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that some prior administrations had misused the Justice Department’s settlement fund, and he pointed to the system of government patronage that existed in the first century of the country’s 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.

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.

“Regardless of the technicalities of the law, it����ap really hard to see how you run the government as if it was a partisan protection racket and maintain democratic norms,” Huq said. “It����ap really hard to see how you square this with any kind of commitment to democracy as a going concern.”

The disclosure of the email drew public criticism from Colorado’s Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper said the document “confirms the highest levels of the White House orchestrated a campaign of political retribution against Coloradans over President Trump’s petulant grievances.” He called on the inspectors general of every federal agency to investigate whether federal resources were used to target Colorado.

Bennet called The Post’s reporting “proof of what Coloradans already know to be true: Donald Trump is weaponizing the federal government to punish Colorado.”

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.

“That is the big unanswered question for me, which is — once you screw up the way governing and providing services is done in the United States, what happens?” Huq said. “Can you just be like, ‘Forget it, we’ll do a mulligan?’ I don’t know. It doesn’t sound plausible me that would happen.”

The helicopter was unable to land because smoke in the area had reduced visibility to “near zero,” , and the firefighting crew instead attempted to deploy emergency shelters when the fire swept over them. The crew had reported a fire near them roughly 20 minutes before.

The firefighters were part of a helicopter-deployed team based in Garfield County that was fighting the Knowles fire in extreme conditions on June 27 in western Colorado. Firefighters Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson were killed in the burnover, which occurs when a fire overtakes firefighters or their equipment. Last week, firefighter Nathan Matthews died of the injuries he sustained in the incident. A fifth firefighter who was also injured is still recovering, fire officials wrote in the report.

The update provides the most detailed timeline about the incident yet released by federal officials, who are still investigating the deadly burnover. An initial crew of firefighters began staffing the fire at about 9:36 a.m. that day Around 12:30 p.m., a lightning strike lit a new fire near the Snyder Mesa and Jones fires, which were about eight miles east of the Knowles fire. The fires would all merge into the Snyder fire.

Shortly before 3 p.m., fire personnel discussed picking up the crew with a helicopter, according to the report, and the crew reported that there was a fire near their location. Ten minutes later, a helicopter was on its way to pick them up and expected to arrive within minutes.

The crew was working in extreme conditions, investigators said, that included strong winds between 30 mph and 50 mph and dry fuels. The fire spread at high rates throughout the afternoon, prompting the new ignition to merge into the other fires. The winds kept the smoke near ground level, “reducing visibility to near zero at the deployment site.”

At 3:19 p.m., the helicopter was unable to land because of the smoke, and the crew on the ground deployed their fire shelters.

In an unsigned statement Friday morning, the U.S. Wildland Fire Service said it was continuing to investigate. In its update, investigators said they were continuing to “examine all aspects of the incident” and said the update “provides only verified preliminary facts and does not represent final findings or conclusions. Further details will be shared as appropriate once the full report is complete.”

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper called for from the Senate floor.

“These families deserve answers, and we need to understand what went wrong so we can prevent future tragedies,” Hickenlooper said.

Lopez and his running mate, lieutenant governor hopeful Taralyn Romero, submitted 11,948 valid signatures, surpassing the state’s requirement of 1,000 from each of Colorado’s eight congressional districts. Lopez, who will be listed as unaffiliated, can now join Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser and Republican newcomer Victor Marx on the general election ballot in November.

Lopez spokeswoman Anna Garza said Lopez intends to carry his campaign through November.

“This campaign is giving voters an independent choice grounded in People Over Politics, Do No Harm, and Do What Works,” Lopes said in a statement. “We look forward to debating the issues, presenting practical solutions, and earning the trust and support of Coloradans across the state.”

A former mayor of Parker, Lopez’s independent run is the latest turn in his decades-long quest to serve in higher office in Colorado. He’d twice mounted unsuccessful GOP primary campaigns for governor before this election cycle. He also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but dropped out.

After then-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck resigned in 2024, Lopez won a special election to represent the 4th Congressional District for six months ahead of that year’s general election.

He also served as the Colorado director of the Small Business Administration and later paid a $15,000 settlement after he was accused of trying to “improperly influence actions of the SBA in violation of federal law,”

This year, Lopez initially filed to run for governor as a Republican, then announced that he’d left the party and would run as an unaffiliated candidate instead. The ballot will also include some third-party candidates.

Lopez’s candidacy will likely further complicate the narrow path to victory for Marx, the first-time political candidate who won the GOP nomination earlier this month. He’s struggled initially to pull together the disparate wings of the party.

Lopez was not popular enough among Colorado Republicans to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination when he ran in 2018 or 2022. But he still earned more than 292,000 votes in the later contest. Given Colorado’s decidedly blue hue, Marx will need every conservative and unaffiliated vote he can get if he hopes to pull off a seismic upset against Weiser in November.

In a statement Tuesday, Marx spokeswoman Rachael Flick said the candidate “isn’t (focused) on other campaigns” or “internal party politics.”

“Our campaign is focused on building the broadest possible coalition of Republicans, unaffiliated voters, and anyone who believes Colorado can do better,” she wrote.

The race also echoes the 2010 gubernatorial contest, when former Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo mounted a third-party bid against Republican nominee Dan Maes and Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper, then the Denver mayor.

, with Tancredo pulling in more than 36% of the vote. Maes finished a distant and dismal third, with just over 11%.

Colorado’s struggles to improve housing affordability inform many of the federal housing reforms, which should leave the state in a better spot to “connect the dots” and implement the changes coming.

“Colorado has always been on the cutting edge. We are so far ahead of other states,” said U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who made sure some state innovations were included in the 60 provisions in the ROAD Act, short for Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream.

For example, Colorado’s approach of providing local governments with incentives to allow more ADUs — accessory dwelling units, such as backyard cottages or garage apartments — and transit-oriented development is being replicated in the new law, Hickenlooper said.

The state has been a leader in providing financial and regulatory support for modular and other innovative construction methods. That local effort, spearheaded by Gov. Jared Polis, is about to embark on a national tour.

The ROAD Act will make it easier for state housing finance agencies, like the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA), to pair federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) with state-backed debt funds.

In 2022, Colorado voters agreed to set aside 0.1% of state income tax revenues for a State Affordable Fund. CHFA has gained national recognition for how it has leveraged the Proposition 123 funds for uses like land banking, funding construction innovation and incentivizing municipal zoning reforms — versions of which are in the federal legislation.

CHFA has pushed to raise national bank lending limits on affordable projects, which have been set at 15%. The ROAD Act raises those “Public Welfare Investment” caps to 20%, unlocking billions of dollars in additional private bank tax equity.

“A lot of the efforts that Colorado and similar states have made are being acknowledged through this bill and are being supported at the federal level,” said Tyler Jaeckel, director of the Colorado Division of Housing.

Jaeckel said the legislation signals a clear federal recognition of state-level innovation.

The ROAD Act also provides the regulatory relief that the real estate industry argues is critical. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that government regulations, from local to federal, .

The ROAD Act tries to soften costs by providing exemptions under the National Environmental Policy Act for infill housing, small developments with 15 or fewer units, and property acquisitions dedicated to affordable housing.

Structural reform vs. direct subsidies

Rather than distributing direct safety-net assistance like housing vouchers, the ROAD Act favors a mix of development incentives and regulatory reforms to expand housing supply over time.

That clear-the-path approach, however, leaves some housing advocates concerned that immediate needs aren’t being met.

“We only serve 1 out of 4 eligible Americans who desperately require a housing voucher, many of whom are our elders,” said Peter LiFari, the executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, the housing authority in Adams County. “They need our support as a nation. This bill could have made that happen.”

LiFari argued the bill arrived 20 years too late and noted its proposed financial investments paled in comparison to annual defense spending.

Likening the package to “vanilla ice cream,” LiFari joins those offering a polite golf clap: Pleased it passed, but wishing it had dared to do more.

No quick fixes offered

Where to place the ROAD to Housing Act in a historic context remains up for debate. Experts agree it won’t offer immediate relief like emergency pandemic programs, although they hope it establishes a lasting foundation.

Is it the most significant housing reform since the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 or the Fair Housing Act of 1968?

Kinsey Hasstedt, Colorado director of state and local policy for Enterprise Community Partners, views it as the biggest event in housing policy since the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the FHA and the modern mortgage system.

“I think it����ap monumental and has the potential to do a lot of good,” Hasstedt said. “I also think that, realistically, nothing is going to happen fast. There are a lot of provisions that need appropriations, and there are provisions that require future rulemaking.”

Like Sen. Hickenlooper, U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat representing central Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, saw provisions she had originally authored folded into the final package.

She called its passage a “glimmer of hope” that Congress can still enact sweeping legislation.

“Like all urgent issues, this is going to be an all-hands-on-deck approach, or it needs to be, for a long period of time,” she said. “This does not solve everything.”

She highlights the bill’s $200 million competitive grant program for local governments willing to reform land-use rules to boost housing density and supply.

That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion in capital required to close what Zillow estimates is a deficit of 4.5 million U.S. homes.

“We really do need massive federal investment to bring down the costs for regular people, to bring back the opportunity of that foundational piece of the American dream,” she said.

New programs will need to win appropriations. But updating existing programs should deliver more funding flexibility in the near-term for affordable housing developments, Hasstedt said.

“I think it����ap a huge opportunity for housing and affordability, and it����ap going to take some time for all of it to shake out,” she said.

Caps on large investors

The one provision that has drawn more attention than any other is Title X, which caps single-family home ownership by large institutional investors at 350 homes.

Owners above that cap are grandfathered in, but they are prohibited from making additional purchases on the open market.

Institutional investors control between 1% and 2% of the nationwide single-family housing stock, and close to 4% of the rental housing stock, .

Small mom-and-pop landlords with under 10 homes control about 85% of the rental market.

Hasstedt served on a task force last year that estimated was held by large corporations.

Several barriers complicated the calculation, however, and she hopes that the ROAD Act’s transparency rules will make corporate tracking easier in the future.

Data shows that corporate buyers have heavily targeted homes at lower price points, crowding out first-time buyers.

Specific neighborhoods in Aurora, Commerce City and eastern Colorado Springs have above-average concentrations of institutional ownership, which can make it harder for people to buy starter homes and leave them subject to upward rent pressures.

Higher interest rates and narrower operating margins have already from their 2021 peak and institutional sales are increasing this summer after the passage of the new law.

Institutional capital is pivoting to a “build-to-rent” or BTR strategy — constructing dedicated rental communities rather than buying up existing housing stock.

Earlier versions of the ROAD Act would have forced BTR owners to sell their homes after seven years while offering tenants a right of first refusal to buy.

The real estate industry successfully lobbied to remove those restrictions, arguing forced sales would stifle new construction.

“Some of the most disruptive provisions of the earlier version of the bill that were extremely concerning did get modified,” said David Sinkley, president of Boulder Creek Neighborhoods, a Lafayette-based homebuilder.

Homebuilders rely on the BTR market to absorb excess inventory when the for-sale market slows, he said.

Without that off-ramp, builders would be forced to slash prices, threatening the equity held by recent buyers or to idle construction crews.

Between 2006 and 2012, Colorado lost 80% of its active homebuilders. Construction capacity wasn’t there when housing demand rebounded, contributing to an affordability crisis.

Sinkley also wishes the ROAD Act had gone further, especially when it came to addressing construction defects litigation, which he said continues to block new condo development in Colorado.

Nor does the legislation directly try to lower mortgage rates, which he said remain the primary obstacle for prospective buyers.

“I caution consumers not to think this will change prices and mortgage rates immediately,” said Ryan Bennett, home loan regional director in Denver with BOK Financial Corp. “It will be a slow process.”

It isn’t a regional problem —  the three states with the strongest percentage job gains over that period are Nevada, Idaho and Utah, while Texas, Florida and California lead for the number of jobs added.

Nor can a recession be blamed for the poor showing. The U.S. economy is chugging along, and since the early 1990s, Colorado has rarely lost jobs when that is happening.

Yet, Colorado ranks 12th worst in total job losses and 14th worst in percentage job losses since Jan. 2025, according to

It isn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel like West Virginia, Michigan and Ohio. And the unemployment rate remains a manageably low 3.9%.

But for an economy used to being a star athlete, Colorado appears to be hanging out under the bleachers with a different crowd.

“We know this is a critical moment for the state. We have many strengths. But we are facing increasing headwinds,” Rachel Rose, deputy director of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), told the Colorado Economic Development Commission (EDC) last week.

To address those headwinds, Gov. Jared Polis plans to announce the formation of a new competitiveness council this week involving both public and private partners.

Polis has already directed Rose and OEDIT Executive Director Eve Lieberman, in cooperation with the Colorado Economic Development Council, to host a .

“Our goal is to hear from businesses of every size in every sector in every part of the state. We are working on a grassroots effort,” Lieberman said.

Former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration deployed a similar approach under the Colorado Blueprint, holding more than 50 regional working sessions and talking to business leaders and residents in all 64 counties.

Key concerns raised in those sessions included high living costs that deterred employee recruitment, burdensome regulations and new workplace mandates, and infrastructure bottlenecks.

Expect those issues and more to come up again in the current round of meetings in a state that has moved politically from purple in 2011 to solidly blue.

The outreach effort will also try to get at why companies are leaving, and where applicable, what incentives other states provided them.

OEDIT is also working with University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds Business Research Division to analyze what economic indicators matter most and where Colorado has a competitive advantage, and where it lags behind.

And that information should help inform the competitiveness council.

“This will be very good from the standpoint of having the data and having the policy recommendations ready to go,” said EDC member Chris Frantz, who attended an earlier listening session.

Rankings matter

OEDIT has tracked various rankings since 2012, and they provide a pulse on how the state is doing. For years, they offered bragging rights, until they didn’t.

“Each ranking has its own level of rigor and bias,” Rose said.

For example, Colorado routinely made the top 10 of CNBC’s “America’s Top States for Business” from when it launched in 2007 to 2022, even ranking first in 2011. But this year, .

Items dragging Colorado down were the cost of living, 49th; cost of doing business, 38th; and infrastructure, 32nd. The state continues to lead nationally on technology and innovation, and the quality of its workforce.

“Colorado’s drop in the rankings reinforces what the Chamber’s strategic research has already shown,” Colorado Chamber President and CEO Loren Furman . “Regulatory burdens, housing, rising costs and workforce needs remain key issues affecting the state’s competitiveness.”

But optimists can rally around the U.S. News & World Report “Best States” ranking, which has

That report places more weight on “structural” measures, such as educational attainment, venture capital investment, and productivity.

Those measures indicate that Colorado has a strong foundation for renewed growth, if it can address what has caused it to lag this decade.

The ALEC Economic Outlook Index’s ranks Colorado in 29th place, down sharply from 17th place in 2024 and 2025 and far from its second-place ranking in 2008.

Areas where Colorado ranks lowest are for the share of debt that local governments and state enterprises carry as a share of their revenues, and for its labor laws.

And when it comes to taxes, Colorado ranks 33rd overall with high local sales tax burdens and complex property tax mechanics overcoming a relatively low flat personal and corporate income tax rate, according to the Tax Foundation.

Go small or big?

In April, a coalition of more than 230 business leaders issued a letter warning that Colorado was at risk of losing its reputation as an innovation hub if economic competitiveness and pro-business policies were not prioritized.

The effort was led by Dan Caruso, who heads an organization called Engage Colorado, and it had the support of Polis, who leaves office in five months.

Caruso, in a , said that Colorado now finds itself among the states losing rather than winning when it comes to retaining and attracting employers.

“Losing states don’t view winning businesses as an investment that will provide a substantial return for their state. Instead, they see it as a cost that competes against other budget items,” he said.

By not prioritizing economic development and job creation, business leaders and capital providers may come to view a state as undisciplined in its spending priorities.

Caruso argues Colorado needs to bring bigger economic development incentives to bear if it wants to compete with “winning” states like Texas, and to prioritize more pro-business policies.

“Dangerously and disappointingly, Colorado is following California and New York’s playbook of taking for granted that innovators want to be in their states,” he said.

Michael O’Donnell, executive director of the Prairie Rose Development Corp., said Colorado is losing steam in an area that will never receive the headlines that the departure of Chipotle or Palantir did.

“We have the largest numeric loss in startup activity of any state. We have become a little bit less entrepreneurial than we used to be,” O’Donnell told the commission.

He then corrected himself, saying “a lot” less.