Colorado’s senior U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, has been at odds with Republican colleagues and the new Trump administration over multiple issues, including protections for public lands.
In a press call on Thursday, February 13, 2025, Bennet answered reporters' questions about President Donald Trump’s first month in office and outlined how he and his staff are responding to executive orders, cabinet appointments, and the administration’s stated priorities.
Bennet said there are some lawmakers, like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who are ideologically opposed to public lands as a concept, which he says goes against the views of many in the Mountain West.
“There is broad bipartisan support for protecting our public lands, for honoring our public lands. Every single bill that we've put forward is one that has broad bipartisan support,” he said, referencing the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy (CORE) Act and the Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection (GORP) Acts. He said he’s planning to re-introduce the CORE Act in the next couple of weeks.
Trump selected Kathleen Sgamma, longtime head of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry group, to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Advocates say that in her role with the Alliance, Sgamma misrepresented the impact of oil and gas on public lands, and put the fossil fuels industry’s interests ahead of Western communities.
Bennet said that if Sgamma supported efforts to open previously protected lands to oil and gas leasing, like the Thompson Divide in western Colorado, it would be “disqualifying” for him. He also discussed conversations he’s had with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“There are places in Colorado and in the country that we have worked very hard to protect that the American people support,” he said. “And that while there might be places that are appropriate for energy extraction, a place like the Thompson Divide is not one of those. And the coalition that we put together of Republican and Democratic ranchers and others, county commissioners, to achieve that needs to be paid attention to.”
“And he said, ‘Well, there are local voices that have different points of view than this in my state,’” Bennet recounted. “And I said, ‘That may be true, but you're going to have to make sure that you take in the voices of people in communities, of people throughout the Rocky Mountains.’ So that's where we left it.”
Burgum was previously the governor of North Dakota, where he was very friendly to the oil and gas industry during his tenure. Bennet and Colorado’s junior Senator, Democrat John Hickenlooper, both voted to confirm Bergum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fossil fuels executive from Colorado.
Bennet is also concerned about the administration’s ability to help Western states deal with drought.
“Honestly, I've seen nothing out of the administration that suggests that they even know there is a Colorado River,” he said. Bennet also said that in previous administrations, he was used to having multiple conversations a day with federal officials about river negotiations, a trend that has not continued with the Trump administration.
The Colorado River currently operates under a set of interim guidelines established in 2007. Those will expire in 2026, and the Bureau of Reclamation and the seven states that make up the Colorado River Basin are in the process of renegotiating the original 1922 compact, though that process has been contentious, and the new administration has created uncertainty.
“We’re in rough shape because we're going through a 1200-year drought,” Bennet said. “But thank God the people before us thought about us. And thank God they could put their partisan differences aside to do the right thing for the future. That's what we've got to do in this moment.”
He asked constituents to contact his office if they’ve been impacted by the administration’s hiring freeze, threatened tariffs, or other actions. Bennet said his office has been keeping track of programs and constituents impacted by the Trump Administration’s funding freeze.
Though federal courts have blocked the funding freeze, some states and agencies continue to have problems accessing the money. The Colorado Energy Office said last week that they had been unable to access funds contracted to them by the federal government. Colorado has joined 22 other states in asking federal courts to enforce the restraining order, giving states access to the money.
Bennet says impacted programs have been following a theme.
“So far, they tend to be energy or climate-related largely, and things like energy efficiency and conservation,” he said. “Block grant training for residential energy contractors, home electrification and application rebate programs, the grid resilience.”
In addition, he says, the administration’s hiring freeze has made it even harder for federal workers in the West to do their jobs.
“Even before that, we already were having trouble hiring people at the Forest Service, hiring people at BLM, the Western public lands agencies,” he said. “You know, in a world where… how expensive it's become to live in Colorado, and now this is just making it worse.”
He also acknowledged the impact of economic uncertainty caused by proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, reliable U.S. allies and trading partners, especially for agriculture.
“We want to hear from our farmers and ranchers about how they're doing,” he said. “This is a tough time because, while we're dealing with these tariffs, the costs of input to production are going up and up. The cost of labor is going up and up, and it's getting harder and harder to find people. And I am really worried that if we don't pay attention to this, we could lose farms and ranches in Colorado and across the country.”
Bennet said he hoped that Congress could pass the 2025 Farm Bill this session.
He also said congressional Democrats will use every tool at their disposal to fight the administration on their priorities, but they’re also relying on courts and the judicial system to enforce orders to stop illegal actions.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
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