Green Energy — News & Analysis

Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics (July 24, 2026)

WASHINGTON — Matthew Daly reports for the Associated Press that the Trump administration has conceded in court filings that it terminated $7.6 billion in clean energy grants "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state" — specifically, the 16 states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The admission directly contradicts the account given repeatedly by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials, who maintained that the projects failed to advance national energy needs or were otherwise poor uses of taxpayer money. The Energy Department had announced last October that 321 funding awards across 223 projects were being terminated following review, citing inadequate advancement of energy needs or a lack of economic viability. The canceled work included battery manufacturing plants, hydrogen technology development, electric grid upgrades and carbon dioxide capture. White House budget director Russell Vought publicized the cutbacks on social media, framing them as ending money for the left's climate agenda. The affected projects were located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — all sixteen carried by Harris — though Wright characterized the terminations as ordinary business decisions.

The court record had already pointed this direction. Government lawyers confirmed in a filing late last year that grant selection was influenced by whether a recipient's address fell in a state tending to elect Democratic candidates, language that appeared in a separate suit brought by clean energy groups and the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. The newer acknowledgment came in Thakur v. Trump, a case running since last spring, in which federal attorneys also conceded that projects were screened using keywords tied to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19. Congressional response has been sharp: Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees respectively, said the administration had admitted in court what was already plain — that nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects were killed because of how their states voted — and called the weaponizing of federal machinery an abuse of power borne by families already facing high costs. They urged congressional Republicans to join in holding the administration accountable. More than two dozen Democratic members, led by California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, had earlier asked the Energy Department's acting inspector general to investigate; that office opened an inquiry in December. Holly Bender, chief program officer of the Sierra Club, said the filing amounts to an open admission of vindictiveness that disregards job losses, air pollution and rising utility bills, and noted the nearly $3 billion the administration has pledged to buy out offshore wind projects in favor of natural gas and coal.