WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper made stops in Denver, Estes Park, and Evans last week to call out Trump administration attacks on Colorado’s public lands, small businesses, and rural health care.
On Tuesday, Hickenlooper held a press conference with Colorado business owners at Four Noses Brewing Company to highlight how the Trump administration’s erratic tariff policies are harming local businesses.
“Tariffs cramp businesses and provide a level of uncertainty that is almost untenable and ends up meaning that people can’t make the investments in their business to grow,” said Hickenlooper. “…I think we are perilously close to sliding into a recession or maybe even worse, stagflation.”
Then on Wednesday, Hickenlooper joined Congressman Joe Neguse, public lands advocates, and local elected officials to call out the Trump administration’s threats to Colorado’s national parks and public lands – including Rocky Mountain National Park.
Watch the recap HickTok HERE
“Our lands are under siege… But we fight, we’re beaten, we rise and fight again,” Hickenlooper said at the press conference.
He highlighted the damage caused by the DOGE layoffs at the Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service, and warned that proposed budget cuts could hamstring wildland firefighting efforts. He also criticized the Trump administration proposals to sell our public lands and emphasized the importance of continued collective action to fight back.
Afterwards, Hickenlooper visited Sunrise Community Health at the Monfort Family Clinic in Evans to highlight the dangerous cuts to Medicaid proposed in the House-passed Republican budget. Cuts of more than $700 billion from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage would strip health care from 16 million Americans.
Check out the event coverage below.
WATCH: CBS Denver: Hickenlooper Tours 4 Noses Brewing Company to Highlight Tariffs
WATCH: ABC Denver 7: Senator Hickenlooper Highlights Tariffs at 4 Noses Brewery
WATCH: Fox 31 Denver: Hickenlooper Talks About Tariffs with Area Business Owners
Colorado Public Radio: Hickenlooper Highlights Trump’s Erratic Trade War
Colorado Newsline: Colorado businesses struggle amid uncertainty of fluctuating Trump tariffs (Company leaders tell Sen. Hickenlooper they seek stability)
Colorado small businesses from various sectors have made changes to their operations and even lost customers as a result of uncertainty around Trump administration tariffs.
…Hickenlooper said people well versed in economics tell him that “tariffs have never worked” except in specific situations. He said all tariffs do is create “a level of uncertainty that is almost untenable” and prevents businesses from growing and maintaining supply chain relationships.
“All these tariffs, in one way or another, they’re not bringing manufacturing back to this country,” Hickenlooper said. “What they’re doing is putting an unbearable burden on small businesses like we see here.”
Colorado Times Recorder: Hickenlooper Meets With Small Business Owners Who Face Tariff Uncertainty
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) met with small business owners from across Colorado today, all of whom emphasized that the uncertainty of federal tariff policy has caused market chaos.
…“The fact that we have tariffs at a time when most of the people I know who really understand economics believe that tariffs have never worked except in very surgical situations in the past,” Hickenlooper said. “Tariffs [as they are being implemented] provide a level of uncertainty that is almost untenable and ends up with people being unable to make the investments they need to make for their business to grow. We’ve seen that over the past couple of months. We are perilously close to sliding into a recession or… even stagflation.”
Colorado Public Radio: Hickenlooper highlights the tariff pain inflicted on Colorado companies
President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policy is whipsawing Colorado’s entrepreneurs.
“Predictability matters,” Sen. John Hickenlooper said Tuesday during a press conference with business owners at 4 Noses Brewing Company in Denver. “Being able to count on your relationships with your supply chain, your wholesalers, your retailers, to build a business. Those are the essential characteristics and we’re losing that literally in the blink of an eye.”
No corner of the state’s business ecosystem is untouched by President Trump’s on-again-off-again approach to levying tariffs. Hickenlooper was joined by representatives from a diverse set of Colorado companies, including a pet food manufacturer, a craft brewery, an environmental equipment manufacturer and a machine part manufacturer.
Axios Denver: Colorado breweries fret about tariffs amid trade war
…Driving the news: U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a former Wynkoop Brewing owner, is raising awareness about the tariffs’ potential to hike the price of ingredients, equipment and packaging.
“Tariffs cramp businesses and provide a level of uncertainty that is almost untenable,” Hickenlooper said during a visit earlier this week to Denver’s 4 Noses Brewing, where he sipped a beer fresh from the canning line and listened to local business owners talk about how the tariffs are hurting their businesses.
WATCH: MSNBC: Long lines, dirty bathrooms, overflowing trash – Trump cuts leave national parks in crisis
WATCH: Denver 7: Hickenlooper hosts press conference in Estes Park
Estes Park Trail Gazette: Sen. John Hickenlooper from Lake Estes: ‘Our lands are under siege’
…With the Rocky Mountains serving as his backdrop, Hickenlooper encouraged backers to take to social media and create a groundswell of support for his bill aimed at establishing a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to preventing the use of proceeds from public land sales, and to reduce the federal deficit, according to the bill.
“What we need to do is use social media like we’ve never used it before. We need to make sure our networks of people, tell their networks of people, what this really means, what this could do when you cripple an outdoor recreation economy that is actually paying for the maintenance, the preservation, and the access to these incredible public lands,” Hickenlooper said.
“Our lands are under siege, between what DOGE has done, the firings, if you add the people at the Forest Service, the National Parks, basically the Department of the Interior, all the different components that it takes to run our parks. That’s 6,000 people that have either been fired or pushed out of their jobs,” Hickenlooper said.
“We’re being attacked in every direction, especially in climate change. But we fight, we’re beaten, we rise and fight again.”
Colorado Newsline: Public lands advocates fear for Colorado’s national parks under Trump budget proposals
After the 2013 Colorado floods devastated communities surrounding Rocky Mountain National Park, locals worked tirelessly to get their businesses back up and running in time for the peak fall season.
The federal government shut down for about two weeks shortly after the flood, but U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who was governor at the time, said Colorado agreed to pay the salaries for every employee in Rocky Mountain National Park so the park could still be open to visitors.
“That’s the way the state government, the federal government used to work together around public lands, and I think it’s worth revisiting that it was a team effort, that everyone was on the same page,” Hickenlooper said. “The businesses desperately needed that retail period to be open to maximize the largest influx of visitors’ to Estes Park, and we got it.”
That spirit of cooperation is a far cry from the threatened cuts to National Park Service staff and funding under President Donald Trump’s administration, Hickenlooper and other public lands advocates said in Estes Park Wednesday. Hickenlooper and U.S. House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat, called on Congress and Trump to reverse the cuts and maintain protections for the country’s public lands.
…Hickenlooper said over 6,000 people who work to take care of national parks and national forests across different agencies have either been fired or left their jobs.
“We’re going to see more risk this summer and this spring from wildfires, from extreme weather,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re going to see more risks than we’ve seen before in all … aspects of the droughts we’ve had and the water we have to use, at a time when we’re dramatically diminishing the number of firefighters we’re going to have available to fight fires in the West.”
Outside Magazine: John Hickenlooper: The Fight Over America’s Public Lands Has Become “All Out War”
On Wednesday, May 28, Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper stood alongside state congressman John Neguse near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The two lawmakers spoke about the ongoing fight to protect public lands and the federal agencies that oversee them.
Greeley Tribune: Sen. Hickenlooper visits Sunrise Community Health to discuss Medicaid cuts
If lawmakers in the U.S. Senate vote to pass new Medicaid requirements recently approved by the House, Sunrise Community Health CEO Mitzi Moran estimates about a quarter of patients in the nonprofit health care system could lose coverage.
“Seven thousand to 14,000 of our patients could fall off Medicaid as a result of these changes,” Moran told U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper on Wednesday. “That’s disastrous for them. While they could still come to us because we offer a sliding fee scale, what happens if they have a hospital visit or if they need to see a specialist?”
Hickenlooper visited the Monfort Family Clinic in Evans on Wednesday to discuss the potential cuts with staff and local members of the health care community.
…Though patients would still be able to utilize that sliding pay scale even without Medicaid, Hickenlooper and Moran expressed concerns about how these cuts would still jeopardize the clinic. If Sunrise receives less pay for the care it provides, Moran said it would need to become a very different organization to remain operational.
…Current estimates from the Congressional Budget Office indicate the changes to Medicaid would result in 8.6 million Americans losing coverage, including more than 1 million in Colorado.
“I can’t believe our House members pushed this budget,” Hickenlooper said.“There are four Republican House members from Colorado, and I know they’ve received calls about Medicaid. If all four of our guys voted together, they could’ve stopped it.”
Hickenlooper believes his tour of the Monfort clinic and discussions about the bill’s impacts will help in his fight to stop the bill from being passed in the Senate. However, he is unsure whether it will be sufficient to convince enough senators to push back.
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