Trump vetoes Colorado drinking-water funding bill, sparking criticism from Lauren Boebert
President Trump vetoed a Colorado measure that aimed to fund safe drinking-water improvements for 39 eastern Colorado communities, a decades-long project addressing groundwater issues such as high salinity and occasional radioactivity.
The bill had passed unanimously in both the House and Senate earlier in the year. Trump's veto letter cited fiscal restraint and criticized the funding of what he called expensive and unreliable policies.
This veto, along with a separate veto of a Florida bill intended to allocate $14 million to protect Osceola Camp in Everglades National Park, marked the first two of Trump's second term.
Lauren Boebert, a Colorado representative, sharply criticized Trump for the veto, linking it to retaliation for her efforts to release Justice Department files on Jeffrey Epstein and called for accountability. It remained unclear whether Republican leaders in Congress would permit an override vote on the veto.
The Florida bill Trump's veto halted was related to an area inhabited by the Miccosukee Tribe, who have opposed the Alligator Alcatraz detention center, recently ordered closed by a federal judge.
Additionally, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters is serving a nine-year term for state-level voting-machine tampering; Trump had attempted to pardon her earlier in the month, but state charges are not subject to presidential pardon.
