Attorney General Phil Weiser on Thursday said he is taking expanded legal action against the Trump administration for the president’s “widespread campaign of retribution to punish Colorado.”
Weiser announced in a news conference that he updated a lawsuit the state originally filed against the Trump administration in October over plans to move U.S. Space Command to Alabama from Colorado Springs. He said the lawsuit was amended Thursday and urged people to “stay tuned” for further legal actions, reacting to “an array of threatened and actual punishments.”
“The only response is to fight back and to defend your principles, because if you try to give in or make nice with a bully, that only makes you vulnerable to more bullying, and you will find additional unreasonable demands,” Weiser said. “You will never make peace, and you will lose your moral compass and your dignity.”
Weiser said President Donald Trump does not like Colorado’s mail-in ballot system or its prosecution of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, who is serving a nine-year state prison sentence for orchestrating a breach of her county’s election system as part of a failed attempt to uncover voter fraud.
Gov. Jared Polis received three letters Tuesday from the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notifying him that the federal government was withholding funds for Colorado’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the Social Services Block Grant program and the Child Care and Development Fund.
The letters said the federal government is “rooting out fraud” and that the administration “has reason to believe” that Colorado is “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits “intended for American citizens and lawful permanent residents.” State officials told The Colorado Sun that TANF recipients must have U.S. citizenship or a green card or must be a refugee placed in the state by the Office of New Americans. Immigrants living in the United States without permission also do not qualify for the state’s child care assistance program.
The state was placed on a temporary “restricted drawdown” Tuesday and requested to provide federal regulators with state data about recipients of TANF and Social Services Block Grant funds by Jan. 20, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates and any other state identification numbers, according to a copy of the letters reviewed by The Sun.
Colorado receives about $138 million annually from the Child Care and Development Fund, which makes up most of the state’s child care payment assistance program for about 28,000 kids; about $150 million annually from the federal government for TANF, money that helps about 15,000 families pay for food, clothing and other basic needs; and about $27 million from the Social Service Block Grant program that supports at-risk youth and vulnerable adults, among others.
The most recent actions blocking child care and TANF funds are not part of the expanded legal action announced Thursday, but will become part of Colorado’s growing list of suits very soon, Weiser said.
“We’re handling that on a separate track,” Weiser said.
The news of withheld funds followed other federal hits on Colorado, including Trump’s veto last week of a bill that would have provided funding to complete a pipeline to carry clean water to communities in southeastern Colorado. A week before that, he denied disaster funding to help northwestern Colorado recover from wildfires and southwestern Colorado recover from flooding.
The president also rolled back funding for clean energy projects and initiatives in the state, including promising to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. The climate and environmental research center that employs nearly 1,000 people in Boulder has been around for 60 years.
The federal cuts and reversals have been spread across nearly all departments of government, but clean energy development, research and pollution-cutting programs have been particular targets. In October, Colorado joined 22 other states in suing the Trump administration in federal claims court over cancellation of $7 billion in nationwide grants meant to give lower-income families access to “Solar for All,” including nearly $150 million for Colorado.
The Trump administration also recently ordered Tri-State Generation’s Craig 1 coal-fired power plant to remain open after its long-planned Dec. 31 closure, saying the energy was needed to stabilize the U.S. power grid. Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois, facing similar orders for coal plants in their region, are joining environmental groups in legal challenges.
The updated Space Command lawsuit announced Thursday accuses the Trump administration of seeking retribution against Colorado in multiple ways, including:
- Termination of $109 million in transportation funding and plans to end an additional $615 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, announced Dec. 16
- Plans to dismantle the NCAR in Boulder, also announced Dec. 16
- An order from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Dec. 18 that Colorado recertify eligibility and conduct in-person interviews for 100,000 households receiving food assistance benefits, called SNAP, in five counties within 30 days. If Colorado failed to complete this impossible and unlawful task, USDA threatened sanctions, including potentially removing Colorado from the SNAP program. That could impact 600,000 Coloradans, Weiser said Thursday.
- Denial on Dec. 20 of two disaster relief assistance requests from the Federal Emergency Management Agency related to devastating wildfires and flooding.
Weiser said Colorado will join the legal actions on the coal plant reopenings, though the administration’s actions are not yet at the stage where a lawsuit can be filed.
“We, of course, find the administration’s decision … confounding to say the least,” Weiser said. “We know that that plant is being closed because it is not reliable, because it is costly, and obviously it is not clean. That is our authority, and this has been a principle for close to 100 years. States manage their energy mix. This administration’s efforts to bully and to violate the law, to dictate to states about how they manage their energy is wrong. It’s illegal, and we will be fighting it.”
Trump called Polis a “scumbag” on social media and vowed to punish the state for refusing to let Peters out of prison. Trump pardoned Peters, but because she was convicted on state charges, only the governor can commute her sentence or pardon her. Polis also has refused to honor the Trump administration’s request that Peters be transferred to federal custody.