It took about 11 months, which in Trump-time is either an eternity or a coffee break depending on your attention span, but President Trump finally dropped the first vetoes of his second term. And naturally, the reactions have ranged from predictable outrage to the more entertaining category of friendly fire.
The White House rapid response team flagged two bills that got the presidential red pen, and both tell you a lot about how this administration is wired. The first was the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act, a feel-good sounding piece of legislation aimed at expanding land set aside for the Miccosukee Tribe inside Everglades National Park. Specifically, it would have folded in an area known as Osceola Camp.
President Trump was not impressed. In his veto message, he pointed out that the residential community “was constructed in 1935, without authorization, in a low area that was raised with fill material.” He also noted that “none of the current structures in the Osceola Camp are over 50 years old, nor do they meet the other criteria to be considered for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.” Translation for normal people, this was not some sacred historic enclave being trampled by big bad government.
Then came the line that really set people off. Trump added that “the Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected.” That appears to reference the tribe’s very public opposition, including a lawsuit, to the so-called Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Florida, something highlighted by the Associated Press. Apparently, trying to block federal immigration enforcement while asking for special federal favors is not a winning combo with this White House.
The second veto hit closer to home for Republicans. The Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act would have eased the path for a long-delayed water pipeline project in Colorado’s Arkansas River Valley. President Trump zeroed in on the money, and the history. “It was originally authorized … in a bill signed by President Kennedy in 1962,” he wrote. “For decades it was unbuilt, largely because the AVC was economically unviable.”
He went on: “More than $249 million has already been spent on the AVC, and total costs are estimated to be $1.3 billion.” Then the hammer. “H.R. 131 would continue the failed policies of the past by forcing Federal taxpayers to bear even more of the massive costs of a local water project.” And finally, the kind of line fiscal conservatives have been begging to hear again: “Enough is enough. 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.”
That veto infuriated Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, a usually reliable Trump ally. She called the bill “completely non-controversial” and suggested to a local outlet, later quoted by The Hill, that the veto might have been political retaliation over her support for unsealing the Jeffrey Epstein files. She complained that denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people was hardly “America First.”
Maybe. Or maybe President Trump looked at a billion-dollar boondoggle, remembered who is supposed to pay for it, and said no. In Washington, that alone counts as a minor miracle.
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