Dozens of Republicans voted to override two of President Donald Trump’s vetoes Thursday. It was the first time this Congress tried, but failed, to block the president when he refused to sign legislation that both chambers approved.
Both vetoes were sustained as neither override received the necessary two-thirds of the chamber’s support. But two dozen Republicans broke with Trump on a bill related to a Florida Native American tribe, and 35 did on a bill that authorized water projects in Colorado.
Surprising many lawmakers, Trump vetoed the two noncontroversial bills at the end of 2025 that passed unanimously in both chambers, sparking speculation of political retribution.
Ahead of the House vote on Thursday, across the Capitol, five Senate Republicans broke with Trump on a War Powers Resolution to curb military action in Venezuela. Shortly after, the president name-checked those GOP defectors in a post on his social media platform, saying they “should never be elected to office again.” That message may have served as a signal to House Republicans considering rebuking him on his vetoes.
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The bills the House took up addressed hyperlocal issues in Colorado and Florida and did not garner blowback from the White House when both chambers approved them last year.
The House first sustained the president’s veto on a bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez, in a 236-188 vote. It would have expanded the reservation of Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe to include Osceola Camp, a residential area. It required the Department of the Interior to collaborate with the tribe on infrastructure to mitigate flooding.
But the tribe entered a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the state and local government over the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center. The tribe argued they failed to follow environmental regulations in the Everglades when building the center as part of the Trump administration’s broad deportation push. The lawsuit yielded a temporary order in August that halted construction of the detention center. Trump said in his veto letter that the tribe “has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” which the tribe denies.
Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who previously backed the bill, said Trump told him beforehand he was vetoing it because “he didn’t think it was fair” that the tribe wasn’t “paying for the land that they were using.” Gimenez told NOTUS he also received a call from Trump before the veto.
“I wasn’t too happy about it, but then I started to make some calls about the effect of it. Apparently a lot of the things that we wanted from that bill are going to happen anyway,” Gimenez said.
He said the Florida Department of Transportation already has funds to offset the flooding, and that it was issuing necessary permits to the tribe. But expanding the reservation is no longer in the cards.
“I’m not actively seeking to override it because there is no material difference, unlike the other bill, I think that does have consequences,” Gimenez said.
The House also upheld Trump’s veto on a bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, in a 248-177-1 vote. More GOP members broke with the White House on this measure. It aimed to complete the construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit pipeline to supply mostly rural Colorado communities with clean drinking water. Boebert signed on to a discharge petition last year to force a vote to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, prompting a meeting with Boebert and administration officials in the Situation Room.
Boebert told NOTUS she did not get a heads-up from the president about the veto, and she has not “spoken with the president on this issue.”
“It’s just hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted investments from both federal government and local and state governments, and I’m really proud of the work President Trump did with [Interior Secretary David] Bernhardt in 2020 to get this project up and going and break ground on it and the investments that he’s already committed with intention,” Boebert said. “I’m looking forward to helping him fulfill his commitment to Western Colorado water users.”
After the veto, Boebert issued a statement, in part saying, “I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics.”
Trump also took aim at Democrats in the state. He told Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Republican Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein to “rot in Hell” last week on Truth Social over the incarceration of Tina Peters, who was pardoned by Trump but is still serving a 9-year prison sentence for an election office security breach. Peters was convicted of state crimes, while the president’s pardon power only extends to federal ones.
Colorado’s two Democratic senators, Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, said in a joint statement at the end of the year that “Nothing says ‘Make America Great Again’ like denying 50,000 rural Coloradans access to clean, affordable drinking water.”
“Trump’s attacks on Southern Colorado are politics at its worst—putting personal and political grievances ahead of Americans. Southeastern Coloradans were promised the completion of the Arkansas Valley Conduit more than 60 years ago,” the senators said in the statement.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, who voted to override both vetoes, told NOTUS that members are more likely to stand up to the administration when it comes to hyperlocal issues.
“Both of these passed by voice vote, as I recall, and these are really good members,” Cole said. “I do think that there’s, within the interest of their districts and the work that they did, I think there’d be a lot of sympathy for their position.”
Just before the House vote Thursday, Sen. John Hickenlooper told NOTUS that he was “hopeful” the measure would pass both chambers.
“This is the kind of thing where this passed both the Senate and the House with no negative votes,” Hickenlooper said. “So if we can’t get a veto override on this, I’m not sure what we can do.”
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