The Trump administration has acknowledged in a court filing that hundreds of clean energy grants approved during the Biden administration were canceled based solely on political considerations rather than the cost, performance, or statutory merits of the projects, according to a Friday report from The New York Times.
The disclosure came as part of ongoing litigation over the administration’s decision last October to terminate more than $7.5 billion in Energy Department grants awarded during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
When the cuts were first announced, the White House said the move was aimed at eliminating what it viewed as wasteful government spending. However, government attorneys later told the court that political considerations determined which projects ultimately lost federal funding.
According to The New York Times, an attorney representing the Department of Energy stated in a court filing that nearly all of the canceled grants were tied to states that supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The filing stated, “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 [former Vice President] Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
The court filing also acknowledged that the grants were not selected for cancellation “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”
According to the report, the administration’s internal review process initially identified more than 600 grants located across both Republican- and Democratic-led states as candidates for cancellation.
However, the White House Office of Management and Budget ultimately decided to terminate only 284 grants, with those projects concentrated almost entirely in Democratic states.
At the time the cancellations were announced, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought publicly celebrated the move.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Vought wrote on social media.
The court filing emerged as part of an agreement intended to avoid a broader discovery process that could have required the federal government to produce additional internal records related to the grant cancellations, according to The New York Times.
The lawsuit is one of several legal challenges contesting the administration’s decision to terminate federal grants that had been approved during the Biden administration.
The filing also appeared to differ from testimony Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave before Congress in June regarding the decision-making process behind the grant cancellations.
During that testimony, Wright told lawmakers, “No decisions were made on politics.”
Following publication of the court filing, the Department of Energy disputed suggestions that Wright’s congressional testimony conflicted with the statements made to the court.
Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told The New York Times that the department’s initial review of grant recipients had been conducted without political considerations and argued that Wright’s testimony referred specifically to that earlier evaluation process.
“There is no contradiction, and any suggestion of a contradiction is a misrepresentation of the court filing,” Dietderich said.
The legal dispute continues as courts examine the administration’s cancellation of billions of dollars in clean energy funding that had been authorized under the previous administration.
The case has drawn attention not only because of the amount of funding involved—more than $7.5 billion—but also because of the administration’s explanation for how the final list of terminated projects was assembled.
According to the court filing cited by The New York Times, the 284 canceled grants were selected based on political criteria rather than program performance, cost savings, statutory requirements, or other traditional evaluation measures.
The filing now forms part of the broader legal battle over the administration’s authority to rescind previously approved federal grants, with the courts expected to determine whether the cancellations complied with applicable law.
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