Energy Dept. admits cancelling federal clean energy grants in blue states, in yet another Trump blow to democracy

During a U.S. House science committee meeting in June, Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) asked U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright if federal grant decisions should be based on how a state votes. Wright answered, “They shouldn’t and they weren’t.”

This was in reference to more than $7.5 billion in federal clean energy grants that the Trump administration canceled in October. However, the decisions to cancel those grants were “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” as Energy Department officials themselves stated in a recently publicized court document.

The document comes from a lawsuit filed by a group of California scientists in June 2025 against the Trump administration for terminating their research grants without due process. This admission contradicts Wright’s testimony at the June House Science Committee hearing and serves as further evidence of the ways that President Donald Trump is weaponizing federal resources against states that did not vote for him.

The Trump administration has also repeatedly withheld funding from states that refuse to comply with the president’s anti-voting agenda.

The federal clean energy grants were canceled for similar reasons. According to the court document, in September 2025, the Department of Energy (DOE) sent a list of more than 2,200 clean energy grants issued under President Joe Biden to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Of that batch, the DOE identified 624 that it recommended for termination.

The DOE moved forward with the termination of 284 of those grants as authorized by the OMB, which it announced in October 2025.

The sole criterion for selecting those terminated grants was political, according to the court stipulation, or agreement, between the scientists and the Department of Energy on certain facts to avoid further discovery in the lawsuit.

“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 Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators (‘Blue State’ grants),” reads the document. “The remaining approximately 340 grants proposed for termination were not terminated in October 2025, and they have not since been terminated. All such grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election or has at least one Republican-caucusing Senator (‘non-Blue State’).”

In case there was any doubt about the partisan nature of the grant cancellations, the stipulation makes it clear:

“DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was 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. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.”

DOE officials also admitted in the document that the terminations were not “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor,” even though the original reason stated for ending the grants was to cut costs.

This directly contradicts what DOE Secretary Wright told Rep. Amo at the June hearing.

“We did not involve politics in the decisions,” said Wright. “No decisions were made on politics. I keep hearing that charge. It’s bullshit. We’re going to say it a million times.”

Wright appeared to shift the blame to the OMB, which authorized which grants should be terminated, but it was the DOE that executed the terminations.

The department stated in a press release that the canceled grants “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) noted at the June hearing that Wright’s staff admitted to the House committee that the personnel in charge of reviewing the grant portfolio were “political appointees who approached the review with a subjective, inconsistent analysis for each project.”

However, she also said his staff refused to provide any documentation showing how the grants were evaluated.

“Elevating political appointees over merit-based review sends a clear warning signal: If you want to do business with the federal government, you need to be friendly with the Trump administration,” said Ross. “We’ve seen this process play out repeatedly, from this administration’s shady offshore wind deals to ideological purges of clean energy projects.”

Democratic lawmakers have since spoken out on social media regarding the grant cancellations, with most framing it as another example of the Trump administration’s threats to democracy.

“Using taxpayer dollars to reward political allies and punish opponents is not democracy,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on X. “It’s authoritarianism.”

“This mass partisan retribution is appalling, outrageous, dangerous, lawless, unconstitutional, unpatriotic, and a massive offense against the Republic,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on X.

“This was never about waste,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) on X. “It was political revenge, carried out with billions of taxpayer dollars.”

It appears Energy Secretary Chris Wright was being less than truthful when he told me his department canceled billions in clean energy grants based "on merits and unrelated to politics."

Apparently a clear and direct falsehood while testifying before Congress.

Court documents… pic.twitter.com/D2UgGC4D0W

— Rep. Mike Levin (@RepMikeLevin) July 24, 2026

This is not the only instance of the Trump administration punishing states it deems enemies:

• In July, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would withhold 20% of federal disaster and public safety grants from states that refuse to comply with Trump’s demands for their unredacted voter rolls.
• DHS also stated in July that it will withhold election security resources from states that refuse to comply with these voter file demands. It is also threatening criminal prosecution for election officials in those states.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also announced that it will withhold terrorism-prevention funding from states that will not comply with Trump’s new election security requirements as part of his anti-voting agenda.
• The Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued 30 states, all Democrat-led, over their refusal to hand over private voter registration information. The DOJ has lost 17 of those cases, and no judge has ruled in favor of the Trump administration.
• In February, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in health grants in four blue states.

While these are clear examples of the Trump administration weaponizing federal resources for political reasons, Trump himself attempted to create his own “weaponization” fund earlier this year to compensate people he claimed were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration. Courts have since blocked the fund from taking shape.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, noted the irony of this during the June hearing, where she grilled Wright about the canceled energy grants.

“Maybe the 40 million people of California should apply for funding under this program given the administration’s illegal actions against our citizens,” said Lofgren.