Trump's tariff loss at SCOTUS haunts him in unexpected way as judge links Tina Peters saga to 'barrage of threats' against Colorado

Aware that President Donald Trump pardoned his incarcerated 2020 election-denying ally Tina Peters just one week before his administration took aim at Colorado's food stamps and threatened "financial sanctions," a federal judge declined to "turn a blind eye" to the timing and prevented "any adverse action."

Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote Monday that the Trump administration's threats to Colorado's continued participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) "did not arrive in a vacuum" and appeared to be a blatant effort to "punish" the state — "with no advance warning" — through United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins' "astonishing" letter to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis just days before Christmas.

The judge recounted that a similar letter was also sent to Trump's rival, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., but Colorado, which received the letter on Dec. 18, stood out as the only other state the USDA "'require[ed]' to participate in a 'pilot project' related" to SNAP administration, for the claimed purpose of cracking down on "nationwide benefits fraud."

The letter, court documents said, attempted to force Colorado — under penalty of potential "financial sanctions" — to "recertify the eligibility of 'all SNAP households' in five of its most populous counties 'within 30 days of the receipt of this letter.'"

While the judge noted that Rollins does have legal authority under 7 U.S. Code § 2026(b)(1)(A) to conduct "pilot or experimental projects designed to test program changes that might increase the efficiency of [SNAP] and improve the delivery of [SNAP] benefits to eligible households," that is "not" an "unfettered power."

And here, Rollins' claims of authority under the Food and Nutrition Act (FNA) as applied to Colorado embraced an "extraordinary power" that failed for the same reason that the U.S. Supreme Court said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act didn't authorize Trump's tariffs — the major questions doctrine, Jackson continued.

"[T]he major questions doctrine precludes finding that the FNA grants the Secretary the 'extraordinary power' asserted here," the judge wrote, citing Trump's Supreme Court loss in the case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and quoting Justice Neil Gorsuch's concurrence: "[When] executive branch officials claim Congress has granted them an extraordinary power, they must identify clear statutory authority for it."

Agreeing that Colorado was "likely to succeed in showing" that the letter violated the FNA, that it was "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and that it violated the Spending Clause of the Constitution by claiming a power to "effectively rewrite the whole of the FNA through the vehicle of compulsory […] pilot projects," Jackson blocked the Trump administration from "compelling Colorado's participation in the pilot project or taking any adverse action against Colorado for its refusal to comply with any of the demands of the Recertification Letter."

The judge took the view that it was no accident that the administration "launched a barrage of threats" that seemed "designed" to "punish" Colorado after he pardoned Peters federally but that clemency neither absolved the former Mesa County clerk of state election tampering crimes nor swayed officials to release her from state prison.

"Although Colorado was not forewarned, the Recertification Letter did not arrive in a vacuum. On December 11th, President Trump announced that he had pardoned former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters for her convictions of state crimes related to her efforts to breach Colorado voting machines and election data," the judge said. "Later that week, at an Oval Office media event, the President attacked 'weak and pathetic' Governor Polis for not releasing Ms. Peters."

Peters remains behind bars to this day, even as Polis has weighed — over opposition from his own party — shortening her sentence.

The Trump administration's "pilot project" letter to Polis would arrive six days after Peters' presidential pardon, as a "flurry" of other seemingly punitive terminations of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding unfolded, Jackson added.

Informing the judge's ruling that the USDA acted "contrary to reasoned and reasonable agency decision-making" was his rejection of the evidence — or lack thereof — that the administration came up with to support its claims about fraud.

Bashing the government's "vague" and "inscrutable reference to 'public reports' of 'apparently illegal activities in Colorado' involving gangs and affecting public benefits" as "easily dismissed," Jackson said that even the USDA "acknowledged it has no direct evidence that SNAP fraud in Colorado is going undetected" but had relied on a belief that Colorado is "more susceptible to fraud because parts of its program are administered at the county level."

That's not the kind of evidence needed to green-light an "immediate, sweeping mandate untethered to any discernible experimental design or evaluation plan" that also "threatens harsh sanctions for noncompliance," the judge concluded.

"The Court also need not turn a blind eye to the fact that the Recertification Letter arrived during a week of apparent punishments and threats aimed at Colorado, nor that the identical Minnesota Letter was accompanied by a taunting social media post from the Secretary," Jackson remarked.

Read the full filing here.