President Donald Trump would like Coloradans to know this holiday season that he wants our governor to “rot in hell” and that he wishes Mesa County’s district attorney, Dan Rubenstein, “only the worst.” All that anger directed at Coloradans is because our justice system is refusing to release a woman who was tried and convicted of fraud in relation to Trump’s illegal attempt to remain in office in 2020.

Trump’s embarrassing temper tantrums would be tolerable if they didn’t also come with real-world actions that hurt Coloradans — costing them their livelihoods, and yes, access to clean drinking water.

Gov. Jared Polis’ and Rep. Lauren Boebert’s responses to Trump give us hope that Americans can unite after Trump leaves office, as required by the U.S. Constitution, in January 2029. Trump will not succeed in his effort to divide Coloradans who love one another despite our political differences.

Trump is hurting our more liberal-minded residents in Boulder County with his decision to first cut dozens of jobs at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and then his pledge to dismantle the headquarters entirely.

And now Trump will hurt more conservative-minded Coloradans with his veto of $1.2 billion in federal funding for a clean-drinking water pipeline to residents in eastern Pueblo County who have been advised for years not to drink well water because of contamination.

Gov. Jared Polis’ response to all of this has been calm, dignified and dedicated to preserving the integrity of our justice system.

“I hope the President’s resolution this year is to spend less time online talking about me and more on making America more affordable by stopping his disastrous tariffs and fixing rising health care costs. Finally, I wish all Americans, including the President and all the wonderful people across the political spectrum, a happy, healthy and productive New Year,” Polis said Wednesday.

Boebert shot back at Trump’s veto of her bill, telling 9News that: “If this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans, that’s on them … Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics.”

Before the New Year, Trump ordered his administration to move the work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research from Boulder to “another entity or location.”

The administration attempted to blame the move on NCAR’s work studying climate change. The White House issued a statement to The Denver Post calling NCAR “the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy.”

We disagree strongly with both of the assertions in that statement. First, the global climate is warming, and a vast amount of scientific research indicates that the trend is being driven in large part by the increase in greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane, among others) in our atmosphere.

Second, NCAR’s work is professional, scientifically based and doesn’t carry a hint of the “alarmism” that we see from many politicians who talk about an extinction-level event occurring in a few years.

But we also don’t believe for a moment that “climate change alarmism” is the real reason behind Trump’s decision to dismantle NCAR — a federal agency we must remind the president that was created by Congress and funded by Congress and protected from unilateral termination by the executive branch.

Trump’s decision came rapidly after Colorado officials refused Trump’s demand that Tina Peters be released from jail. Peters, a former clerk and recorder from Mesa County, was convicted of using fraudulent means to give a random man access to the county’s voting equipment. Peters believed Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been stolen. She stole credentials from one of her employees and brought a man into a secure area where he accessed data from vote-counting machines. Later, she tried to cover up her actions.

The data did not show any evidence of voter fraud.

But that hasn’t prevented Trump from trying to pardon her and now from retaliating against Colorado officials who are merely upholding the work of a jury of Peter’s peers who found her guilty.

Hundreds of federal workers in Colorado have already lost their jobs as a result of Trump’s policies. Then those employees who remained suffered under the federal shutdown. Now, Trump is coming again for federal workers, claiming he is trying to reduce the federal debt and deficit. But Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill added more to the federal deficit than what he has cut so far.

Which brings us to Trump’s most recent retaliatory action against Colorado, which he says was done in the name of cutting the federal budget and “restoring fiscal sanity.”

We cannot argue with Trump that the $1.3 billion price tag to bring clean drinking water to 50,000 residents is steep. But it is not wasteful. This is a necessary and long-awaited public infrastructure project. The project has been thoroughly vetted and is shovel-ready.

Trump’s veto is a black eye on his administration, and his outlandish words and actions only underline why he is wholly unfit to serve as president of the United States of America.

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