Trump’s DOE Canceled Grants in States that Didn’t Vote for Him
NEWS & RESEARCH
In a July 2026 court filing, the Trump administration acknowledged that it canceled billions of dollars in clean energy grants based on how states voted in the 2024 presidential election. In October 2025, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), led by Director Russell Vought, terminated 284 grants worth roughly $7.5 billion, after Vought announced on social media that "Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being canceled." With one exception, every terminated grant was tied to a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris and is represented by two Democratic-caucusing senators. A DOE lawyer conceded in the filing that none of the 284 grants was cut for "any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor"—despite the administration publicly framing the cancellations as a defense of taxpayer money against waste. The admission came in Thakur v. Trump, a lawsuit brought by University of California researchers, and was made under an agreement that spared the government from discovery, the evidence-gathering process that could have forced it to turn over far more revealing records.
SOURCES: New York Times | CNN | NBC | The New Republic | Reason
ANALYSIS & OPINION
This is the most damaging admission yet in a pattern federal courts have already found unlawful. US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in January 2026 (City of Saint Paul v. Wright) that the grant terminations violated the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee, ordering DOE to restore $28 million to seven grantees, and in June the agency settled a second case (American Institute of Chemical Engineers et al. v. Wright), conceding that the blue-state location was "a primary reason" for the cuts and reinstating eleven more grants worth $82.1 million. A month later, in Thakur v. Trump, the government dropped the qualifier altogether: politics wasn't a primary reason, it was the only one, as federal officials acknowledged that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria. That concession also exposes a falsehood. Testifying before a House committee in June, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said flatly that "no decisions were made on politics"—a claim his own department's lawyers contradicted in writing weeks later. The timing points to a potential motive. The cancellations landed in October 2025, while the White House was pressuring Democratic lawmakers to fold in the fight that had shut down the government. Trump was publicly threatening to slash what he called "Democrat agencies," and Vought was announcing further cuts aimed at Democratic-led states. Money appropriated by Congress for hydrogen hubs, grid upgrades and methane controls became leverage in a legislative standoff. Senator Patty Murray and Representative Marcy Kaptur, the top Democrats on their chambers' appropriations panels, asserted: "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."
SOURCES: New York Times | Washington Post | E&E News | E&E News | New York Times
HOW TO FIX IT
Federal action:
Pass the Energy Bills Relief Act, which includes a provision that would require the DOE to reinstate any award terminated after January 19, 2025.
Pass legislation to strike or amend 2 C.F.R. §200.340(a)(4), an OMB regulation created in 2024, that allows federal agencies to cancel grants if they determine that the award "no longer effectuates program goals or agency priorities"—with no requirement for individualized justification. Congress could either remove the provision entirely or add guardrails requiring agencies to document the specific bases for any cancellation made on these grounds.
Litigation:
Thakur v. Trump: Still pending. The government has now admitted what it did, but not what it owes—across all the litigation so far, fewer than two dozen of the 284 cancelled grants have been restored, roughly $110 million out of $7.5 billion. The researchers here aren't seeking damages; their complaint asks the court to void the terminations and order the grants reinstated.
California et al. v. Wright: An ongoing suit filed in February 2026 by a coalition of 13 state attorneys general. It primarily challenges the terminations as a violation of the separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA. Congress holds exclusive powers over appropriations, and the APA requires agencies to give legitimate, grant-specific reasons for their actions. This is the only suit brought by states rather than by researchers and institutions that lost money.
Legislation: H.R. 7977 — Energy Bills Relief Act
