Trump issues first vetoes of his second term

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used his veto power this week for the first time since returning to the White House, rejecting two bipartisan bills that passed unanimously in the House and Senate. 

The White House announced Tuesday night that Trump vetoed the bills on Monday. One of the bills involved funding for a major drinking water project in Colorado and the other was designed to give a Native American tribe more control over a portion of the Everglades. 

Both bills passed the House and Senate through voice votes. Both houses of Congress would need to pass the bills again by a two-thirds margin to override the president's veto. It's not yet known whether the Republican-controlled House and Senate will try to override Trump's veto. 

Over the past 25 years, it's been fairly rare for the president to exercise his veto power. Trump vetoed just 10 bills in his first term and former President Joe Biden used the veto power 13 times, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush used the veto 12 times. 

Just weeks before Trump left office in 2021, Congress overrode his veto of a defense policy bill.

One of Trump's vetoes this week included funding for a pipeline project to bring clean drinking water to Colorado communities on the Eastern Plains between Pueblo and Lamar. The Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit (AVC) Act passed unanimously in the House and Senate. 

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. Trump also previously 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. 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.

Colorado's Democratic senators have chipped away at the funding gap on the project for more than a decade. Boebert sponsored the House bill to finish the project.

In his veto letter, Trump wrote, "My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies. Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts and restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the Nation."

In a statement, Boebert said, "President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. If this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans; that's on them."

Boebert said she hopes "this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics."

The other bill Trump vetoed - the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act - would have added a small village called the Osceola Camp to a section of the Florida Everglades that the Miccosukee Native American Tribe has control over.

According to CBS News, the bill was backed by Florida Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, and by GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez and Democratic Rep. Darren Soto. During remarks before it unanimously passed the House in July, Gimenez said the bill was "about fairness and conservation."

In a message to Congress, Trump said the project would benefit "special interests" and accused the Tribe of not cooperating with his immigration policies. 

The president wrote that "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."

Earlier this summer, the Miccosukee Tribe joined a federal lawsuit against an immigration detention in the Florida Everglades the Trump administration dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

KUSA's Marilyn Moore and Kyle Clark contributed to this report.