President Donald Trump on Monday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have secured clean drinking water for thousands of Colorado residents, leading Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to wonder if the move was “political retaliation” for her vocal stance on the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“And I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability,” Boebert said Tuesday in a statement shared on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by Denver TV news anchor Kyle Clark.
She continued, “Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics.”
Boebert sponsored the bill, formally titled the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, which would have funded construction of a long-delayed pipeline for clean drinking water affecting some 50,000 people in communities within the Arkansas River Valley.
The MAGA darling has consistently backed Trump’s “America First” mantra and his false claims of election fraud in 2020, but broke with him over his refusal to release all files on Epstein — the late child predator who once called Trump his “closest friend.”
Boebert backed a discharge petition against Trump’s will in November to force a vote on releasing the Justice Department’s files, becoming one of the 218 required signees that led to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which gave the DOJ 30 days to release said records.
She was pulled into an emergency White House meeting afterward, later posting a cryptic emoji on social media and thanking unnamed officials “for meeting.” Boebert seemed to grasp for alternative answers Tuesday as to why Trump vetoed her bill.
“President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously,” she said. “Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado.”
The congresswoman went on to note that many of those people “enthusiastically” voted for Trump “in all three elections,” adding with clear frustration that she “must have missed the rally” where Trump “promised to personally derail critical water infrastructure projects.”
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The president claimed in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that the project is an unacceptable “taxpayer handout” that would be too “expensive.” The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated it would cost the federal government less than $500,000.
“My bad, I thought the campaign was about lowering costs and cutting red tape,” Boebert said Tuesday. “But hey, if this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans; that’s on them.”
Trump vetoed another bill this week that had overwhelming bipartisan support.
The Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act would have added a small village to a section of Florida land controlled by the eponymous Native American tribe, and would have required the Department of Interior to help protect structures on the land from flooding.
Trump claimed in his letter that “it is not the Federal Government’s responsibility” to do so.
He did not mention that the Miccosukee legally challenged his authority to build “Alligator Alcatraz” nearby — and that they successfully argued earlier this year that the immigration detention center should have been subject to federal environmental reviews.