Four years after the fire, recovery is still incomplete for some Marshall Fire victims. A Colorado man is joining wildfire survivors from across the country to push lawmakers to make changes and provide support for survivors still rebuilding.

Recently, a historic $640 million settlement was reached with Xcel Energy, but the Coloradans who lost everything in the Marshall Fire might not be receiving all the money that they’re owed. Some settlements could be taxed, while others were paid in full.

“I was the fourth responding fire engine to the Marshall Fire. By the end of the night, I was triaging homes in the neighborhood that I grew up in,” said former firefighter Benjamin Carter. “I’ve seen how much the community’s hurting, and I just wanted to do whatever I could to help.”

Carter is now fighting for those who lost their homes, including his mother. He’s working with an organization called After the Fire, joining up with wildfire survivors in Oregon, Hawaii and California. This week, Carter flew to Washington, D.C., to speak with lawmakers about how they can help survivors rebuild.

In 2024, lawmakers passed the Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act, which exempted wildfire survivors from taxes on related settlements, among other tax relief. But the bill expired last week, shortly after Xcel agreed to settle over the Marshall Fire.

“If the people don’t have to pay taxes on the damages, then it helps them rebuild,” Carter explained. “Some of the smaller attorneys still haven’t received payment, so all those people will be subject to those taxes; all the attorney fees, and what the actual settlements end up being. And, of what they’re actually getting at the end of the day, that’s been a huge challenge.”

Congress has already proposed extension options. But Carter hopes that by sharing their stories, legislators will act before survivors lose anything else.

“With a lot going on in Washington and everything, the representatives don’t always know about all the issues. And so, we want to educate them on this issue and hopefully gain their support,” Carter said. 

Attorney General Phil Weiser on Thursday expanded a lawsuit filed to keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado to now encapsulate a broader “revenge campaign” that he said the Trump administration was waging against Colorado.

Weiser named a litany of moves the Trump administration had made in recent weeks — from moving to shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research to putting food assistance in limbo to denying disaster declarations — in his updated lawsuit.

He said during a news conference that he hoped both to reverse the individual cuts and freezes and to win a general declaration from a judge that the moves were part of an unconstitutional pattern of coercion.

“I recognize this is a novel request, and that’s because this is an unprecedented administration,” Weiser, a Democrat, said. “We’ve never seen an administration act in a way that is so flatly violating the Constitution and disrespecting state sovereign authority. We have to protect our authority (and) defend the principles we believe in.”

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, began in October as an effort to force the administration to keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs. President Donald Trump, a Republican, announced in September that he was moving the command’s headquarters to Alabama, and he cited Colorado’s mail-in voting system as one of the reasons.

Trump has also repeatedly lashed out over the state’s incarceration of Tina Peters, the former county clerk convicted of state felonies related to her attempts to prove discredited election conspiracies shared by the president. Trump issued a pardon of Peters in December — a power he does not have for state crimes — and then “instituted a weeklong series of punishments and threats targeted against Colorado,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit cites the administration’s termination of $109 million in transportation grants, cancellation of $615 million in Department of Energy funds for Colorado, announcement of plans to dismantle NCAR in Boulder, demand that the state recertify food assistance eligibility for more than 100,000 households, and denial of disaster relief assistance for last year’s Elk and Lee fires.

In that time, Trump also vetoed a pipeline project for southeastern Colorado — a move the House failed to override Thursday — and repeatedly took to social media to attack state officials.

The Trump administration also announced Tuesday that he would suspend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of low-income assistance to Colorado over unspecified allegations of fraud. Those actions were not covered by Weiser’s lawsuit, though he told reporters to “stay tuned” for a response.