Donald Trump’s administration has admitted that it canceled a block of roughly $7.5 billion in Biden-era clean energy funding “based solely” on the fact the money was flowing to projects in Democratic-led states.
The cuts were not based on “any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor,” the Department of Energy conceded last week as part of early negotiations in a federal lawsuit from University of California researchers.
Instead, the grants were included on a list of cancellations announced in October “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
The department added that with one exception, 284 terminated grants were slated to fund projects in Democratic-led states or states that voted for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. The roughly 340 grants that survived the chopping block were “in a state that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election” or had at least one Republican senator, according to court filings.
The admission set off anger on Capitol Hill.
“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,” Democratic lawmakers wrote in a statement.
“This is an astounding admission that the President and his team corruptly abused their power to kill good jobs and punish hard-working families because of their political views,” they said.
The Independent has contacted the Energy Department for comment.
The striking admission follows the Trump administration’s previous claims that the cuts were not influenced by politics and were instead aimed at ensuring federal funds flowed to effective and reliable energy projects.
“President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement in October.
The Department of Energy added at the time that its review sought to “identify waste” and “safeguard taxpayer dollars.”
Elsewhere in the lawsuit, which was filed last year, the Trump administration admitted to using keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy, and COVID-19 to guide cuts that canceled nearly $2 billion in grants to the University of California.
Around the time the energy grants were canceled, top Trump administration figures used highly partisan language to describe the effort, which was announced the same day as a government shutdown began.
Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote on social media that “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”
The following day, Trump, who moved to slash billions in funding for projects in Democratic states during the shutdown, shared a video on Truth Social depicting Vought as the Grim Reaper, soundtracked by a song that warned Democrats the administration was “gonna tie your hands.”
Secretary Wright has denied partisan politics influenced the funding review.
“No decisions were made on politics,” he testified to members of Congress last month. “I keep hearing that charge. It’s bull****. We’re going to say it a million times.”
A spokesperson for the department told The New York Times on Friday that the initial review of grants, which was later submitted to the White House for further consideration, was apolitical, and that the secretary’s testimony remained accurate.
The allegations of political favoritism in the federal funding process are somewhat ironic, given that the Biden administration’s landmark climate funding law steered investments and incentives towards largely Republican-held districts, a move that advocates hoped would ensure the Inflation Reduction Act proved politically durable.
Instead, Republicans in Congress have gutted the law.
Renewed scrutiny into the grant process comes as the Trump administration is pushing to give political appointees more authority to award federal grants, rather than the current expert-led, peer-review system used in many science- and defense-related opportunities.
“This proposed rule would essentially undermine that process by adding a layer of political review that could undo scientific recommendations for reasons that have nothing to do with science,” Heather Pierce. senior director of science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges, recently told NPR of the proposal.
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