Littwin: A “smoking-gun” email linking Trump directly to his war on Colorado has a federal judge fuming

I want that email in full, unredacted, in the public record. Not a summary, not a quote in a ruling, the actual document. And I want to know who else was CC'd, who was BCC'd, who received it and acted on it versus who pushed back. This is exactly what FOIA was made for and I hope every journalist in Colorado has already filed.

A SITTING PRESIDENT using the machinery of the federal government to personally PUNISH A STATE because its voters didn't bow to him, and there is an EMAIL, a smoking gun, written proof, and somehow this man is still in the White House instead of in a courtroom answering for it. Impeach him. Remove him. Convict him. Lock him in a room and throw the key into the ocean. This is the same person who screamed about weaponizing government for four years and then the VERY FIRST THING he does is weaponize the entire apparatus of the executive branch against Colorado because he has a grudge. A GRUDGE. Federal agencies as a personal revenge machine. Judge Jackson is right that it makes no sense in a democracy, but here is the part nobody wants to say out loud: he is not trying to preserve a democracy. He never was. And that email is the receipts.

Charlie would have sat with that phrase "makes no sense in our democracy" and asked the judge, quietly, respectfully, which democracy he was referring to. The one where the federal government used every agency at its disposal to target parents at school board meetings? The one where a sitting president had his chief political opponent prosecuted twice? That democracy?

A president communicating with federal agencies about a state that has been openly defiant and hostile to federal immigration enforcement is not a scandal. It is governance. Colorado has been daring this administration to act for two years. When the administration finally acts, suddenly there is a smoking gun. The Colorado Sun writing this up as some grave constitutional crisis is exactly what Charlie used to call the accountability asymmetry. When the left coordinates across agencies and NGOs and media to destroy a man or a movement, that is called "organizing." When a Republican president sends an email, that is called an authoritarian plot.

I miss Charlie every single day when I read headlines like this one. He would have taken the judge's quote and turned it into a teaching moment on federalism that would have reached two million young people by Tuesday. We are all doing our best to carry what he left us. Part of that is refusing to let the Colorado Sun and a Clinton-appointed judge set the terms of what counts as democratic and what does not. Push back. Every time.

Federal agencies exist to serve the country, not to settle political scores with states that didn't vote the right way. That is not a gray area.

I have real disagreements with how Colorado runs things. But a president using executive departments as a personal retribution tool is a different category of problem entirely. The judge is right to be fuming.

This is why I stopped defending the man. You can be for smaller government or you can use the government as a weapon against your enemies. You do not get to do both and call yourself a conservative.

Stinky Pete Hegseth's department is probably in that email. Burgum too. A whole cabinet of yes-men told to kneecap a state because the boss holds a grudge. The judge is furious and they're going to stall, appeal, and lose eighteen months of accountability while Trump posts about it on Truth Social and calls Jackson a radical leftist.

Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!

Me have big IQ me know this!! Judge say no sense!! Me say judge no sense!! Colorado no follow law!! Colorado sanctuary state!! Colorado break federal law!! Trump just make them follow!! That not punish!! That law!!

Judge fume!! Me say so what!! Liberal judge always fume when Trump win!! Every time!! Judge fume, Trump still president!!

Colorado Sun mad!! Me no surprised!! Colorado Sun always mad at Trump!! Me no trust Colorado Sun!! Me trust Trump!!

A federal judge calling something a "smoking gun" is not a phrase those people use loosely. Judges write carefully. When one says an executive action "makes no sense in our democracy," that is a measured person saying something has gone seriously wrong.

What I keep coming back to is the word "punish." If the email actually uses language about punishing a state, or if the judge is reading the intent that way, we are no longer talking about a policy disagreement between Washington and a governor. We are talking about the federal government being pointed at citizens of Colorado because their state did not vote the right way.

I taught civics for thirty years. The whole structure of federalism exists precisely so that no president can do this. States are not subsidiaries. They are not regional offices that answer to whoever holds the White House. That was not a liberal idea or a conservative idea when it was designed. It was the idea.

People will say this is partisan coverage. Maybe some of it is. But a sitting federal judge writing that something "makes no sense in our democracy" is not a partisan statement. That is a warning. It should be read as one.

"Asking federal agencies to help punish Colorado" is just a description of what happened, and a federal judge is furious about it, and somehow this is still a Tuesday in America. The email exists, the judge has read it, and the White House's entire defense is presumably that the president is allowed to weaponize the executive branch against any state that doesn't adore him sufficiently. We used to call that a constitutional crisis. Now we call it a news cycle.