The House voted Thursday not to overturn a pair of vetoes President Donald Trump made to legislation on a Colorado water pipeline and a Florida flood control project — despite Congress passing the bills with no objections last month.
The votes represented the first attempted veto overrides of the Republican-controlled House, following what were Trump’s first vetoes of his second term in office. And while Trump has acknowledged that his vetoes were for political reasons, most of the House GOP declined to override him.
The vote to uphold the veto of a water infrastructure project bill in Colorado, which is currently ensnared in the administration’s fight with the state’s Congressional delegation over cuts to a local climate center, got 248 votes, short of the 285 two-thirds majority needed for an override. Just 35 Republicans joined all 213 Democrats in voting for it.
That project sits in the district of Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who also defied Trump and earned the White House’s ire by supporting a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill compelling the Justice Department’s full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“I will continue to fight for Western water. This was a commitment made by President Trump in 2020 and I will continue to fulfill that commitment,” Boebert told reporters after the vote Thursday.
The House also voted 236-188 to uphold Trump’s veto of legislation that would support the local Miccosukee Tribe, which has been at odds with the White House over the administration’s plans to build its “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center. The bill was endorsed by Florida’s Republican senators and several GOP members of the Florida delegation in the House.
Twenty-four Republicans and all 212 Democrats voted to overturn the veto, with one Republican, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, voting “present.” That bill needed 284 votes to override.
Lawmakers in both parties charged that Trump’s unexpected vetoes shortly after Christmas were political retribution for people who had opposed his agenda.
Trump justified his veto of the water pipeline bill by calling Colorado Democrat Jared Polis a “bad governor.” State officials have refused to pardon former Republican election official Tina Peters for her convictions last year related to efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 president election, which Trump lost.
The president accused Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe, which would be allowed under the other bill to carry out construction projects to protect a village from flooding, of trying to obstruct his immigration policies by suing to stop a migrant detention center near their land.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
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