Why Colorado has lost federal funding

States with two Democratic senators lost money in nearly every case. Casualties were two very Republican areas of Colorado.

by Allen Best

To understand a story that appeared in the New York Times last weekend it’s useful to visit two places in Colorado that have lost or never gained federal funding, victims of a Trump administration vendetta against states that cast a majority of their votes for his opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

One of them is Rio Blanco County. There, the Lee Fire started Aug. 4, 2025, eventually charring nearly 138,000 acres that had been used mostly for livestock grazing. It was ranked the fourth largest wildfire, as determined by acreage, in Colorado’s recorded history.

Areas ravaged by wildfire commonly have access to federal disaster assistance through the ECP program designed to stabilize farmers and ranchers in conditions like this. Ranchers and other landowners in Rio Blanco County have been frustrated.

“We are still struggling to get any payments whatsoever from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to rebuild our fences. The rules change frequently and now most cost-share payments will have to be approved in Washington first. Not the local office,” said Kathleen Kelley (above), who grew up in Meeker, the county seat, and now lives on the ranch her father began farming in 1948. She and her husband, Reed, took over the ranch in 1986 when they purchased the central part of the ranch.

The fire was devastating to the couple Their new home on a ridge overlooking the ranch narrowly escaped being consumed. As bad as that was, she says, “there are worse things than the fire.” They now must replace nearly 80 years of critical infrastructure, none typically covered by any insurance, including rebuilding over 20 catch-ponds for livestock water, filled with debris from post-fire flooding.

Trump in December denied disaster relief for the Lee and adjoining Elk fire in northwest Colorado for $41 million in Federal Emergency Management Administration funding. But as Kelley and others seek to recover from the fire, other projects beyond those funded by this one federal agency seem to be affected, she says.

In southeastern Colorado, the storyline is a little different but the bottom line the same. In that case, Congress had approved federal assistance for financing of a pipeline to deliver federal assistance to financing higher-quality water imported from across the Continental Divide to 39 communities along the Arkansas River, many of them among the poorest in Colorado.

Sponsors of the bill to provide partial funding for the Arkansas Valley Conduit had included U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert. The district of Boebert, a reliable and even staunch Trump supporter in all but the rarest of cases, includes many of the communities that would have benefited. Another Republican, Rep. Jeff Hurd, represents the remaining affected communities in the lower Arkansas River Valley.

No matter, Trump vetoed the bill.

In late December, Jack Healy of the New York Times traveled to La Junta and other places in the Arkansas Valley after the veto.

“Miffed at Colorado’s votes against him in three successive elections and furious at its refusal to free Tina Peters, a convicted election denier and ardent Trump supporter, Mr. Trump has opened an assault against the Democratic-run state,” Healy reported.

Then last Friday, two other New York Times reporters described a broader fussilade that included Colorado but other states, too.

The New York Times last Friday cited evidence for what many had suspected. The Trump White House had terminated 284 of the more than 600 grants awarded by the Biden administration for a wide range of novel energy projects. “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Russell Vought, the director, had said on social media.

The Times’ Tony Romm and Brad Plumer cited testimony of a lawyer for the Energy Department who conceded that the “284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”

This conflicts with what Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a Congressional hearing in June. “No decisions were made on politics,” he said.

Asked for a reaction, the administration of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis shared this statement:

“The Trump Administration’s own court documents confirm what Governor Polis has been saying since the early days of this administration: instead of making life easier and more affordable, President Trump has used federal funding to play political games. These funds are taxpayer dollars that all Coloradans contribute to and rely on to support not only 21st century energy projects, but critical funding across government including public safety, terrorism prevention, disaster recovery, food access, early childhood development, and more. Colorado deserves a federal government that works for every state, not just those that supported the President. To date, Governor Polis has successfully defended over $1.2 billion in federal funding the Trump Administration tried to cancel from the State, and he will continue standing up for Colorado when it is targeted for political retribution.”

The Polis administration has a dashboard that tracks disruptions of federal funding. It is not limited to energy or water projects. The dashboard says Colorado has managed to get $1.21 billion in federal funds reinstated but is at risk of losing $467.8 million. However, $328.18 million in funds have been cancelled or not renewed administratively by the Trump administration. Another $680.9 million in Congressional funding has been cancelled or not renewed.

“Starting in 2025, the Federal government began enacting severe, haphazard, and broad disruptions to programs Coloradans rely upon,” according to the dashboard website.

In January, upon completion of Trumps’ first year of his second term, Polis issued a statement that pointed out that all of Colorado’s eight congressional districts have been impacted. Republicans represent half the districts.

Most notorious of the Trump administration cuts has been the effort to dismember the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

Boulder voted for Trump’s opponent. Not so Rio Blanco County. There, 81% of voters went with Trump. As for the Arkansas River communities, they lie in several different counties. In one of them, Otero, Trump got 65% of votes.