Trump White House directed five agencies to condition Colorado funding on political alignment, then cut hundreds of millions

At 2:43 a.m. on December 15, 2025, a deputy assistant to President Trump, Emily Underwood, emailed officials at the U.S. Departments of Energy, Transportation, Interior, and Agriculture and the Office of Management and Budget under the subject line "brainstorm call," asking them to be "prepared to discuss immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado" so as to "prioritize Colorado for the purposes of ensuring grants and federal support are in line with administration priorities." Hours later, Trump publicly called Colorado Gov. Jared Polis "weak and pathetic" over Polis's handling of Tina Peters, a former Mesa County election clerk imprisoned for a 2021 voting-data breach scheme whose release Trump had unsuccessfully pressed Colorado to grant; four days earlier Trump had issued Peters a symbolic pardon, and the Justice Department's pardon attorney had told Trump ally Steve Bannon that federal officials were applying "the right kind of pressure" on the state over her case.

In the days after the email, the agencies that received it took a series of actions affecting Colorado: the Department of Energy canceled $615 million in funding intended for the state, the Department of Transportation ended $109 million in grant funding, the Office of Management and Budget moved to shutter the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, and the Department of Agriculture ordered an accelerated recertification of roughly 100,000 SNAP recipients. The Interior Department separately compiled a list of all outstanding federal grants to Colorado. Federal officials also rejected disaster relief funding for wildfire-damaged areas on the Western Slope, and Trump later vetoed water-infrastructure legislation for the state.

Updates

2026-06-01 — Judge blocked NCAR transfer, citing evidence of Colorado retaliation [4]

U.S. Senior District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued a preliminary injunction blocking the National Science Foundation from transferring the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center to the University of Wyoming, finding the transfer decision "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." Jackson noted that OMB Director Russell Vought publicly announced the NCAR breakup the day after President Trump criticized Colorado Gov. Jared Polis for refusing to release Tina Peters, and accepted arguments that the administration targeted Colorado over the Peters case and the state's voting patterns.

2026-08-11 — Underwood email became public at Colorado retaliation-lawsuit hearing [1]

The Underwood email became public on August 11, 2026, when Colorado's deputy solicitor general, David Moskowitz, produced it at a federal court hearing in Denver as part of a state lawsuit — originally filed over the relocation of U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs — that alleges administration retaliation against Colorado tied to the Peters case and the state's mail-in voting system. According to a transcript of the hearing, Moskowitz called the email a "smoking gun," and U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, who read it aloud in court, said he had "never seen anything like it" and that a president targeting a state "because they don't feel that the state...[is] in line with the current administration's priorities" was "phenomenal" and "not the country I think we live in." Jackson ordered the Executive Office of the President to turn over additional records. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the email "proves" the White House "orchestrated an unconstitutional scheme to weaponize the federal government to attack and punish Colorado." A White House spokeswoman denied, without going on the record, that the email was related to Peters, and directed further questions to OMB's press office; the Justice Department attorney representing the administration at the hearing did not dispute the email's reported contents.