WASHINGTON — In a striking admission, the Trump administration has confirmed in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants — affecting hundreds of projects — “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.” The 16 states targeted were all states that cast their electoral votes for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The acknowledgment directly contradicts previous statements from Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other administration officials, who had maintained that the projects were eliminated because they failed to adequately serve the nation’s energy interests or were not a sound use of taxpayer funds.
Democratic lawmakers and environmental advocates responded swiftly to the court filing on Friday, accusing the administration of “weaponizing” the federal government to destroy jobs and punish working Americans for their political leanings.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state — both senior Democrats on their respective chamber’s Appropriations committees — issued a joint statement: “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.”
The two lawmakers added, “Weaponizing the federal government like this is outright un-American, and it’s hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power.” They urged congressional Republicans to join them in holding the administration “accountable for the President’s failure to look out for all Americans.”
The Energy Department had announced last October that 321 funding awards tied to 223 projects were being terminated, saying a review found they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable.” The canceled projects included efforts to build battery manufacturing plants, develop hydrogen technology, modernize the electric grid, and capture carbon dioxide emissions.
White House budget director Russell Vought highlighted the cuts in a social media post, writing that money “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”
The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The states where projects were eliminated include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state — all of which supported Harris in the 2024 race. Despite that pattern, Energy Secretary Wright characterized the cancellations as “business decisions” based on whether projects represented a good investment of public money.
The cancellations were quickly challenged in court. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress — led by California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren — sent a letter to the Energy Department’s acting inspector general requesting a formal investigation. The department’s internal watchdog launched that investigation in December.
In a separate court filing late last year, government lawyers had already acknowledged 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.” That admission came in a lawsuit brought by clean energy organizations and the city of St. Paul, Minnesota.
The most recent admission came in a case known as Thakur v. Trump, which has been active since last spring. Federal attorneys acknowledged using keywords tied to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID-19 to screen out projects that conflicted with the administration’s priorities.
Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, said the latest filing reveals that “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.”
Bender argued that instead of “building the energy projects we desperately need,” billions in taxpayer dollars are “going to line the pockets of a small handful of fossil fuel company CEOs” — pointing to nearly $3 billion the administration has pledged toward canceling offshore wind projects in favor of fossil fuel alternatives such as natural gas and coal.
