Trump administration acknowledges politically motivated cancellation of $7.6 billion in clean-energy grants
Court documents reveal the administration halted $7.6 billion in clean-energy funding for projects in 16 states that supported the Democratic ticket, contradicting earlier statements that the cuts were based on economic criteria.
The Justice Department disclosed in recent court filings that the Trump administration terminated $7.6 billion in grants for nearly 300 clean-energy projects located in 16 states that voted for Democratic candidates in the 2024 election. The filings state the cancellations were made "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state."
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials had previously argued that the projects were cancelled because they did not sufficiently advance national energy needs or were not economically viable. The Energy Department had announced in October that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were being terminated for those reasons.
Lawmakers and environmental groups have criticized the admission. Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Sen. Patty Murray said the administration had "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." They urged congressional Republicans to hold the administration accountable.
The cancelled projects spanned initiatives such as battery plant construction, hydrogen technology development, electric-grid upgrades, and carbon-capture facilities in states including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. The White House budget director, Russell Vought, framed the cuts as a move against the "Left’s climate agenda."
More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have requested a formal investigation by the Energy Department’s acting inspector general. An internal watchdog began a probe in December after earlier court filings indicated that grant selections were influenced by whether a grantee’s address was in a state that typically elects Democratic candidates.
The latest admission emerged in the case Thakur v. Trump, which has been pending since the previous spring. Federal lawyers also acknowledged using keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen projects that conflicted with administration priorities.