New evidence shows overt political retaliation against Colorado is behind the Trump administration’s dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research lab in Boulder, according to new filings in a lawsuit by the lab’s university consortium managers.
The Trump administration is also illegally stonewalling record searches and production in the case, according to the amended filing in U.S. District Court for Denver by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR for the government.
The consortium previously obtained a court order temporarily blocking some of the dismantling, including the effort to give away a key Wyoming supercomputing lab. The updated lawsuit seeks to make that order permanent, arguing that other court cases against Trump have uncovered a push by the White House to punish Colorado for imprisoning Tina Peters, a former Mesa County clerk convicted in 2024 in an election-tampering scheme.
In May, Gov. Jared Polis cut Peters’ 9-year sentence in half and ordered her release. The move, opposed by many state Democrats, came after a campaign of federal cuts to Colorado-based programs ranging from clean energy subsidies, to welfare benefits, to transferring the prestigious U.S. Space Command headquarters out of Colorado Springs. Trump officials had also been demanding that Colorado give up its mail-in election balloting, after years of unfounded claims that they allow fraud.
Evidence of retaliation surfaced in a separate lawsuit by the Colorado attorney general protesting multiple Trump actions, the consortium’s updated lawsuit says. On Dec. 15, before Polis agreed to release Peters, Trump attacked the governor on social media as a “weak and pathetic man.”
On the same day, the UCAR lawsuit says, “Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Policy Strategist Emily Underwood emailed officers of multiple federal agencies, including the Office of Management and Budget, to schedule an urgent, same-day call to coordinate the federal assault on Colorado,” the amended complaint says. Underwood “instructed the officers to come prepared to discuss immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado. A deluge of retaliatory actions followed.”
The National Science Foundation, which oversees NCAR, did not respond to messages seeking comment on the expanded lawsuit. In the past, they have declined to comment on the case.
The updated lawsuit lays out other alleged evidence:
- On Dec. 16, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “announced to the media that the National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Vought called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location” outside Colorado, the lawsuit says.
- A White House spokesperson directly tied this threat to Polis and election issues, saying “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump, his constituents would be better served,” the suit says.
- On Dec. 17, the National Science Foundation sent a letter to the consortium saying the agency would be soliciting offers and ideas “pertaining to divestment, transfer, and/or re-scope the components of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.”
The alleged retaliation and “the federal government’s desire to punish the state of Colorado for exercising sovereign powers reserved to it by the Constitution, including the power to regulate elections and to administer criminal justice,” violate the law, the UCAR suit claims. The Constitution prohibits federal agencies from “punishing a state for the lawful exercise of sovereign powers.”
The lawsuit was originally filed in March, and an injunction against the federal government giving away any pieces of NCAR was granted June 1.
Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued the injunction because the National Science Foundation divesting the supercomputing center was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” according to the ruling. Jackson said his injunction was necessary because the UCAR suit was likely to succeed, and that too much damage had already been done to the supercomputing center’s operations.
Jackson also agreed with UCAR that the lab, which employs about 1,400 people, was already losing key, irreplaceable employees as a result of the turmoil and suffering enormous damage.
“The resulting loss of institutional knowledge and technical expertise would create substantial risks to the operational stability of the (center) and the forecasting and modeling systems that depend on it,” Jackson wrote at the time. “The United States military, federal agencies, and private-sector partners rely on the work performed and data produced at the (center) to make critical operational decisions.”
The newly amended suit adds in new allegations that the federal government was unlawfully ignoring or delaying the plaintiffs’ demands for information and internal communications under the Freedom of Information Act.
UCAR says the government’s new deadline to respond to the amended complaint is Sept. 9.