Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based
on politics
[July 25, 2026]
By MATTHEW DALY
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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" — in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat
Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The statement contradicts repeated assertions by Energy Secretary Chris
Wright and other officials that the projects were canceled because they
did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or had other
problems that made them a poor investment of taxpayer dollars.
Democrats and environmental groups seized on the court filing Friday,
saying the administration had “weaponized” the federal government to
kill good jobs and punish working families because of their political
views.
Democrats say what was ‘obvious’ has now been acknowledged
“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 state. Both are high-ranking Democrats
on the House and Senate Appropriations committees, respectively.
“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,” Kaptur
and Murray said.
They called on congressional Republicans to join them in holding the
Trump administration "accountable for the President’s failure to look
out for all Americans.”
The Energy Department announced last October that 321 funding awards
across 223 projects were terminated, saying that after review, they “did
not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not
economically viable."
The cuts, part of broader attacks from President Donald Trump on climate
programs and clean energy funding, slashed federal support for projects
to build battery plants, develop hydrogen technology, upgrade the
electric grid and capture carbon dioxide emissions.
Russell Vought, the White House budget director, highlighted the
cutbacks in a social media post, saying money “to fuel the Left’s
climate agenda is being cancelled.”
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
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Projects from many states were cut
Projects that were cut were located in California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon,
Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported
Harris, but Wright said the cuts were “business decisions" based on
whether the projects were a good use of taxpayer money or not.
The cuts were immediately challenged in court, and more than two
dozen Democratic members of Congress, led by California Sens. Adam
Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, wrote a letter to the
Energy Department's acting inspector general requesting a formal
investigation. The department's internal watchdog launched an
investigation in December.
Government lawyers had p reviously confirmed in a court filing late
last year that the selection of grants in fact “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”).”
That filing came in a separate suit filed by clean energy groups and
the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, over the canceled funding. The most
recent admission came in a case called Thakur v. Trump that’s been
ongoing since last spring. Federal lawyers acknowledged that they
used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and
COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump
administration’s priorities.
Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, said the
latest court filing shows “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.”
Instead of “building the energy projects we desperately need,”
billions of American taxpayer dollars are “going to line the pockets
of a small handful of fossil fuel company CEOs,” Bender said, citing
nearly $3 billion pledged by the Trump administration to cancel
offshore wind projects in favor of fossil fuel projects such as
natural gas and coal.
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