The Trump administration terminated nearly 300 clean energy projects last October, and for months, Energy Secretary Chris Wright insisted the decisions had nothing to do with politics. A recently unsealed court filing tells a different story.
In documents made public this month, Wright’s own lawyers acknowledged that none of the terminated grants were cut for programmatic, statutory, cost related, or performance based reasons. Instead, the filing states that inclusion in the October termination notice was based solely on whether a grant recipient’s state had voted for President Trump in the 2024 election, distinguishing what officials called blue states from non blue states.
A Pattern of Denials
The admission stands in direct contrast to a string of public statements Wright made over several months. In an interview shortly after the terminations were announced, he told a reporter the decisions were made entirely within the Energy Department and based on facts, denying that blue states were being singled out. He repeated similar denials in testimony before three separate congressional committees between April and June, telling lawmakers that politics played no role in evaluating any of the more than 2,200 projects reviewed and that voting history had no bearing on the outcomes.
The projects in question were tied to roughly $7.5 billion in Biden era clean energy funding. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought had announced the cuts publicly on Oct. 1, listing 16 states, including California, New York, Illinois, and Washington, as the locations affected. The Energy Department followed hours later with its own announcement confirming the terminations.
What the Filing Actually Says
According to the court document, the department will not argue that it considered any factor beyond the political identity of a grant’s prime recipient and their state. The filing states plainly that the department did not look beyond that identity to weigh the geographic or political makeup of anyone who might have benefited further down the line from the funding.
Lawmakers who oversee energy spending seized on the admission. Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrats on the relevant appropriations subcommittees, said in a joint statement that the filing confirms what had long been suspected, that the terminations were carried out solely because the affected states did not vote for the president. They characterized the move as an abuse of power aimed at punishing political opponents and noted that several courts have already ruled against the terminations.
Bigger Stakes Ahead
The episode carries weight beyond the roughly 300 projects already affected. The administration is currently finalizing new rules that would give the president broader authority over more than $1 trillion in annual federal grant funding. Critics argue that if political criteria could be used this openly for one program, similar reasoning could extend to a much wider range of federal spending decisions.
A senior fellow at a budget policy research group who previously served in the Biden administration said the willingness to be this direct about politicizing grant decisions should be taken seriously as a signal of how the administration might approach federal funding more broadly going forward.
As of publication, the Energy Department has not issued a public response addressing the contradiction between Wright’s earlier testimony and the recent court filing.
