In new legal filings, Trump administration lawyers say decisions to end nearly 300 renewable energy development grants last year were made “solely” based on whether the recipients supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
In a July 15 filing, U.S. Department of Energy lawyers wrote that the decision to deny grants depends on whether the recipient lives in a state that either did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election or is represented by Democratic senators in Congress.
“With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one performance location in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic senators,” the filing states.
“DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October announcement tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grantee’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
According to Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, canceled energy projects totaled nearly $8 billion. The 16 affected states had either a Democratic state legislature or a Democratic governor.
At the time, the Energy Ministry said it canceled the projects because they would not meet the country’s energy needs and were “not economically viable.”
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Energy Secretary Chris Wright later repeatedly testified before Congress that the decision to end the subsidies was not political:
“All 2,270 projects that we evaluated were not evaluated based on their location in any way, shape or form,” he told the House Budget Committee in April 2026. “And all of the people who worked on our project review process did not take any political considerations into account when evaluating these projects.”
Now, Democratic lawmakers have called for a bipartisan effort to address what they say are the Trump administration’s political motivations.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) released a statement on Friday that read in part:
“Secretary Wright swore for months that these project cancellations had absolutely nothing to do with politics, and now his lawyers are saying that, in fact, politics was the only consideration. Arming the federal government in this way is completely un-American, and it is hard-working families who are already struggling with exorbitant costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power.”
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Energy Department officials reiterated Friday that its decisions to end the subsidies were not political, saying court filings did not change that assessment:
“There is no contradiction, and any suggestion of a contradiction is a misrepresentation of the court record,” spokesman Ben Dietderich told The New York Times.
https://www.scrippsnews.com/science-and-tech/energy/energy-department-pulled-grant-money-from-states-that-didnt-vote-for-trump-new-filing-says
