The Trump administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state. The decision affected 16 states that supported Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
This admission contradicts previous assertions by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials who stated the projects were canceled due to insufficient advancement of national energy needs or other economic viability issues. Democrats and environmental groups have criticized the move, accusing the administration of "weaponizing" federal resources to punish states based on their voting patterns.
"This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, both members of key congressional appropriations committees.
In October, the Energy Department announced the termination of 321 funding awards across 223 projects, citing that a review determined they "did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable." These cuts targeted federal support for projects including battery plants, hydrogen technology development, electric grid upgrades, and carbon capture.
Russell Vought, the White House budget director, had previously stated on social media that funding "to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled."
The targeted states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
The legality of these cancellations was challenged in court. In late last year, government lawyers had confirmed in a separate court filing that the selection of grants "was influenced by whether a grantee’s address was located in a State that tends to elect ... Democratic candidates in state and national elections (so-called ‘Blue States’)."
The most recent admission was made in the ongoing case Thakur v. Trump. Federal lawyers acknowledged the use of keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID-19 to screen projects that did not align with the administration's priorities.
Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, stated that the latest court filing reveals "the Trump administration is brazenly admitting to a vindictive approach to cancelling much-needed energy infrastructure that ignores the job losses, air pollution and increasing bills that people are experiencing everywhere."