A 3 A.M. White House Email Summoning Five Agencies to a "Brainstorm Call" on Colorado Surfaces in Court — Days After the State Refused to Free Tina Peters, and Weeks Before Hundreds of Millions in Grants Were Cut
An email written at roughly 3 a.m. on December 15, 2025 by Emily Underwood, a deputy assistant to the president and senior policy strategist, went to officials at the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Interior and Agriculture and at the Office of Management and Budget under the subject line "brainstorm call." Recipients were told to be "prepared to discuss immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado," and to "prioritize Colorado for the purposes of ensuring grants and federal support are in line with administration priorities." The email was sent a month after Colorado refused to move Trump ally Tina Peters — the Mesa County clerk convicted in state court over the 2020 election-equipment breach — to federal custody, and days after the state declined to give effect to Trump's clemency declaration for her. Hours after the email went out, Trump called Gov. Jared Polis "weak and pathetic" on live television. In the weeks that followed, federal agencies froze hundreds of millions of dollars owed to Colorado, denied disaster aid for fires and flooding, cut more than $600 million from 38 Colorado-affiliated energy projects, and announced plans to disband the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. The email surfaced publicly at an August 11, 2026 hearing in Colorado's lawsuit against the administration and was first reported by the Denver Post on August 13-14. Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said from the bench that he had "never seen anything like it." Attorney General Phil Weiser called it proof of "an unconstitutional scheme"; Colorado's two senators and its House Democrats called it weaponization of the federal government. A White House spokeswoman denied the call had anything to do with Peters and said the president was using "lawful and discretionary authority."
“The shocking White House email discussed in court earlier this week proves what we have long suspected: the White House orchestrated an unconstitutional scheme to weaponize the federal government to attack and punish Colorado for its lawful decisions over elections and our criminal justice system.”