Colo. senators’ amendment to fund climate research center shot down

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted down an amendment by Colorado’s U.S. senators that would have preserved funding for the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, which President Donald Trump’s administration intends to disassemble. 

The amendment, authored by U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both Democrats, would have modified a broader Senate funding bill to maintain 2024 funding levels for NCAR. 

“I am disappointed … I will continue to look for and pursue all options available to ensure that NCAR is protected,” Bennet said in a Thursday news release. 

President Donald Trump’s administration announced in December that it would “break up” NCAR, with White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought calling the center a “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” in a statement to USA Today. 

Vought said the administration would move NCAR’s “vital activities” to other agencies. The National Science Foundation, which oversees NCAR, announced it would preserve work on “seasonal weather prediction, severe storms and space weather.”

NCAR, founded in 1960, is a multidisciplinary research facility that combines methods and models from climate, Earth and space research to predict and observe weather events worldwide. The center studies severe weather like fires and hurricanes, produces water forecasts, refines air quality forecasts, observes radiation from the sun, and gives other scientists access to supercomputers and data. It also has developed foundational models for understanding climate change.

Scattering NCAR’s services to different locations and agencies could make those services less effective, some experts and politicians fear. Antonio Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (which manages NCAR), described those concerns in a letter to Bennet that the senator read on the Senate floor on Thursday.

“Sending various parts of NCAR to other cities will isolate expertise and reduce the synergies … result when people work together,” Bennet read.

Bennet read another letter from four Western Democratic governors and one Republican governor (Utah Gov. Spencer Cox), calling on legislators to retain NCAR funding. 

“For our states, NCAR delivers direct and practical value,” Bennet read.

Bennet described the dismantling of NCAR as part of a broader federal attack on Colorado under Trump’s direction. 

“This is one more case of senseless destruction and political retribution over the last year,“ he said. “The people of Colorado have found themselves the victims.”

Other Colorado targets

Trump used the first veto of his second term to block the completion of a drinking water pipeline for southeastern Colorado on Dec. 29, calling it an “expensive and unreliable project.” The bill had passed both chambers of Congress unanimously and was sponsored by Republicans. 

In September, Trump began steps to move U.S. Space Command out of Colorado Springs, citing Colorado’s “corrupt” mail-in voting system as a primary reason for the move. His administration also signaled on Jan. 6 that it would freeze more than $300 million in federal funds to Colorado for child care, food aid and other social services, part of a broader funding freeze targeted at five Democratic states and motivated by fears that the benefits were reaching non-citizens.

Trump threatened Colorado with “harsh measures” in August unless the state released former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from prison. Peters was convicted of state crimes in October 2024 for orchestrating a data breach of the county’s election equipment, attempting to uncover voting machine fraud after Trump lost the presidential election in 2020.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Windsor, who sponsored the vetoed bill to complete the drinking water pipeline, said she hoped the veto wasn’t “political retribution.” Boebert suggested the veto was a response to her recent calls for the administration to release more files related to Jeffrey Epstein. 

The pipeline would benefit voters in her district on Colorado’s eastern plains. 

“President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections,” Boebert, who represents U.S. House District 4, said in a statement shared by journalist Kyle Clark.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said on Tuesday that he has found a rare opportunity to work with Boebert in an effort to revive the pipeline. Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation are hoping to override Trump’s veto and get the project finished anyway. 

The Arkansas Valley Conduit is a pipeline intended to bring safe drinking water to 50,000 people in agricultural communities with contaminated or insufficient local groundwater. The conduit is the final phase of a larger federal water project approved by Congress in 1962. The project was poised for completion before Trump vetoed the bill to restructure its financing. 

Bennet said a bill supporting the AVC was the first he ever authored, shortly after he became a senator in 2009. After reading a letter from Otero County commissioners on the Senate floor Thursday, Bennet reflected on the long history of the project. 

“This is a classic case of Americans doing the work for the next generation,” Bennet said. “County commissioners in Otero County who lived and died long ago without ever seeing their dream for clean water for their families and communities realized in the richest country in the world. We’re so close to having it done, and it was canceled out of spite.”