Trump Admin Concedes It Targeted Democratic States in Grant Purge: NYT

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump’s administration has acknowledged in court that it canceled hundreds of clean energy grants “based solely” on political considerations rather than the cost or performance of the projects, according to a Friday report from The New York Times.

The admission emerged in litigation challenging the administration’s decision to terminate more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era Energy Department grants last October. While the White House publicly framed the cuts as an effort to eliminate wasteful spending, government lawyers later told the court that politics alone determined which projects ultimately lost funding.

According to the Times, an attorney representing the Energy Department wrote that, “With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to [former Vice President] Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”

The filing also acknowledged that the grants were not selected for cancellation “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

The court filing further stated that while the Energy Department initially recommended canceling more than 600 grants spread across both Republican- and Democratic-led states, the White House Office of Management and Budget ultimately terminated only 284 projects concentrated almost entirely in Democratic states. At the time, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought celebrated the move on social media, writing, “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”

The Times reported that the court disclosure came as part of an agreement intended to avoid a broader discovery process that could have required the government to turn over additional internal records. The case is one of several challenging the administration’s cancellation of federal grants approved under former President Joe Biden.

The filing also appeared to conflict with testimony Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave before Congress in June, when he said, “No decisions were made on politics.”

Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich disputed that characterization, telling the Times the department’s initial review of grants was conducted without political considerations and arguing that Wright had been referring to that earlier evaluation process.

“There is no contradiction, and any suggestion of a contradiction is a misrepresentation of the court filing,” Dietderich said.

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