Dive Brief:
- The Trump administration’s cancellation of $7.6 billion in clean energy grants last year was “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” the U.S Department of Energy said in a July 15 court filing first reported by the New York Times on Friday.
- DOE in October 2025 canceled 223 clean energy project grants, all in states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Some of the cancellations have been overturned in court.
- Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called DOE’s filing a “stunning admission” that the Trump administration is “weaponizing the federal funding process,” and further warned that an Office of Management and Budget proposal filed in May would normalize the approach.
Dive Insight:
There is growing outrage among Democratic lawmakers and advocates to the Trump administration’s use of the federal purse to further its political agenda.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed tying grants to states’ willingness to assist in the enforcement of immigration law. And in May, OMB proposed a new process that would give federal agencies more control over federal grants.
DOE’s July 15 filing conceded that none of the 2025 grant cancellations were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor ... 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.”
Details about the grant cancellation process were offered as part of an agreement for DOE to avoid the court’s discovery process.
“This stunning admission from the Trump administration confirms what we have long known: they are weaponizing the federal funding process to punish people who did not vote for President Trump,” DeLauro said in a statement. The administration is “trying to seize complete political control over the federal funding process and use it as a weapon to advance their ideological agenda.”
The Sierra Club promised to continue its fight against the Trump administration’s “retaliatory agenda.”
“The Trump administration is brazenly admitting to a vindictive approach to cancelling much-needed energy infrastructure that ignores the job losses, air pollution, and increasing bills that people are experiencing everywhere,” Sierra Club Chief Program Officer Holly Bender said in a statement.
On Friday, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., led a coalition of lawmakers calling on OMB to withdraw its proposed changes to how federal grants are finalized.
In a letter to OMB Director Russel Vought, Pettersen and her colleagues said the proposed rule “would fundamentally alter how federal grants are awarded by shifting decision-making away from an established, neutral criteria.”
“Instead of relying on statutory requirements, expert agency review, and merit‑based evaluation, the rule would allow appointed officials to decide which communities, institutions, and programs receive federal support. It’s a sharp break from long‑standing Uniform Guidance,” they said.
A DOE spokesperson told The New York Times that an initial review of the 2025 canceled grants was completed without political considerations.
