Trump has used his first two vetoes of his second term to exact petty political revenge. His first veto was of a clean water project, because he is mad Colorado convicted an ally of his, Tina Peters, for trying to interfere with the 2020 election on his behalf. In the second case, he denied the expansion of tribal lands for the Miccosukee Tribe because they participated in a lawsuit against Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz project.
Because, you know, the purpose of legislation should be to fulfill the petty needs, desires, and raw feelings of the President of the United States instead of weird things like the unanimous consent of the Congress or silly things like public health.
Via 9News: Trump vetoes bill to fund Arkansas Valley Conduit in Colorado.
Monday’s veto comes after Trump promised retaliation against Colorado for keeping his ally Tina Peters in prison. Peters was convicted on state charges for a scheme to tamper with voting systems in a search for election rigging in the 2020 presidential race.
Trump is killing the bill to finish the Arkansas Valley conduit, a decades-long project to bring safe drinking water to 39 communities on the Eastern Plains between Pueblo and Lamar. The groundwater there is high in salt, and wells sometimes unleash radioactivity into the water supply.
The Arkansas Valley Conduit is the final component of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, which was first approved in 1962. In recent years, the cost estimate nearly doubled.
The pipeline is in Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district. Boebert recently stood up to the Trump administration to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Via Axios: Trump’s first second-term vetoes reject bipartisan bills.
The Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act would expand the tribe’s land to include part of the Everglades National Park in Florida known as Osceola Camp. It also instructed federal officials to protect structures from flooding.
[…]
The president wrote, “despite seeking funding and special treatment from the Federal Government, the Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected.”
While the votes theoretically exist to override the vetoes, I have to wonder if Congress will even be in session soon enough to act, and even if they are, if Speaker Johnson would deign to take the measures back up.
This is all just a reminder of how petty and vindictive a man we have in the White House.
