Trump administration admits canceling clean energy grants to Democratic states

In October, the White House budget office announced the cancellation of $8bn in clean energy projects in 16 states, including California. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen In October, the White House budget office announced the cancellation of $8bn in clean energy projects in 16 states, including California. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Trump administration admits canceling clean energy grants to Democratic states Court fillings show grants denied to states if they didn’t back Trump’s re-election, but administration claims it’s a ‘misrepresentation’ US politics live – latest updates The Trump administration has admitted scrapping more than $7.5bn in federal grants for clean energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election. US federal officials appeared to acknowledge in court documents last week that they had terminated the funding last October “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris . The administration previously framed the move as safeguarding taxpayer dollars from “waste” and continues to insist it was not politically motivated. Two dozen states sue Trump White House for politicizing Fema disaster aid Read more “[The Department of Energy] accepts that neither the inclusion of the ARCHES grant nor any other grants in the October notice tranche was based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor,” government lawyers said in the filing. “[The Department of Energy] accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, ie, whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. “[The Department of Energy] 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.” The apparent admission was first reported by the New York Times . In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for the US energy department said of the report: “That is a misrepresentation of the court filing. None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.” The acknowledgment of political considerations “was referring to the timing of the announcement, not of the decisions themselves”, the spokesperson claimed. The filings stem from a lawsuit , filed last June, by a group of six University of California faculty and other researchers challenging various federal agencies that halted Biden-era funding. The plaintiffs said in a press release at the time that the abrupt cancellations of already-awarded grants had been a part of a “political ‘cost-cutting’ agenda and ideological purity campaign” waged by the administration. It comes as the White House seeks to exert even greater cont