On Thursday, the U.S. House narrowly failed to override a rare veto by President Donald Trump of a Colorado water project located in arch-conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district. Thirty-five Republicans, many of them from Western states, joined all Democrats in the override effort.
The bill would have cost the federal government less than $500,000 and originally passed the House and Senate unanimously, which tells you just how uncontroversial it was. Trump justified the veto by claiming that “[e]nding the massive cost of taxpayer handouts and restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the nation.”
In reality, Trump is carrying a vendetta both against Colorado for refusing his demands to release election-tamperer Tina Peters from prison, and against Boebert for voting to release the government’s files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
President Donald Trump, shown on Jan. 6.
“Nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections,” Boebert said when Trump first vetoed the legislation. And after the override failed, she was even more bitter, telling reporters, “Folks are afraid of getting a mean tweet or attacked.”
Trump’s petty vindictiveness, however, hurts more than just the Trump-voting, poverty-stricken residents of Boebert’s district. It may well imperil Colorado’s entire Republican congressional delegation heading into November.
Colorado’s delegation is currently split 4-4. The Democratic seats are solidly blue. The Republican seats are not.
In Colorado’s 3rd District, Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd won narrowly, 51% to 46%. This was Boebert’s former district, but redistricting made it bluer, prompting her to flee to safer territory. Hurd barely held on.
Explaining his vote to override Trump’s veto, Hurd tweeted, “In modern congressional history, it is extraordinarily rare—perhaps unprecedented—for a President to veto a bill that passed both chambers unanimously while his party holds unified government. What does it say to all of our constituents if this institution makes this kind of commitment, and then abandons them when it matters most?”
While Hurd hasn’t yet appeared on top Democratic target lists, his district has been disproportionately harmed by Trump’s actions, from canceled transportation grants to the administration’s refusal to provide federal assistance after two natural disasters.
“Western Colorado has long supported the President, and that support comes from communities now facing the real human and economic consequences of recent disasters,” Hurd said in a statement.
Turns out they’re now facing the real human and economic consequences of supporting Trump and Hurd.
In the 5th District, freshman Rep. Jeff Crank won comfortably by 14 percentage points in 2024, but he’s now dealing with a Trump-caused disaster of his own. The president punished Colorado for voting against him by ripping U.S. Space Command out of Colorado Springs and relocating it to Huntsville, Alabama.
Republican Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado, shown in 2024, won by about 1 percentage point in 2024, making him a target for Democrats in their pursuit of retaking the House in 2026.
In MAGA country, fighting Trump publicly is bad politics; losing that fight is worse. In a blue-wave year, Crank is left defending his seat as his district loses a high-profile employer at the hands of his own party.
Then there’s freshman Rep. Gabe Evans, who won his suburban Denver seat by the slimmest of margins, 49% to 48%—a difference of just 2,449 votes out of more than 333,000 cast. That guy is a dead man walking. Even a blue ripple in November will sweep him away.
Boebert’s own 4th District is ostensibly safe, and she won it by double digits in 2024, 54% to 42%. But despite being the reddest district in Colorado, she underperformed Trump, who won it with 58%. Her constant shenanigans, including that sordid theater incident that dominated headlines for weeks in 2023, have hurt her standing with the kind of morality voters that abound in eastern Colorado.
This November, she will likely face retired Navy Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat who is raising money hand over fist, as challengers to firebrand incumbents often do. In a normal political climate, that fundraising would be meaningless. In this one, where Trump is screwing her constituents amid an expected Democratic wave, Boebert shouldn’t be resting easy.
The anti-Trump electoral environment alone likely dooms Evans and Crank. But Trump’s pettiness could easily put even Colorado’s supposedly safe Republican districts into play.
