Trump Killed Electrical Grid Upgrades And Other Clean Energy Projects Because States Didn't Vote For Him, White House Lawyers Admit

Between starting a disastrous war with Iran and their love of power-hungry data centers, Republicans have been incredibly successful at raising energy costs in the United States. Last month, NPR reported that inflation hit a three-year high back in May, and costlier energy accounted for 60% of that figure. Oil and gas are more expensive, sure, but electricity prices were also up 6% compared to the year before. While we already knew Trump killed billions of dollars worth of clean energy projects that could have helped blunt the impact, the New York Times now reports Trump killed some of those projects just because they'd benefit states that didn't vote for him.

That admission didn't come from Trump himself, but was instead revealed in court documents White House lawyers filed in a lawsuit over an October decision to cancel nearly $8 billion in Biden-era grants meant to fund clean energy projects across the country. At the time, the Republican administration claimed the canceled projects were part of its valiant crusade to stop wasteful spending, but according to the White House's lawyers, they were lying. Instead, the NYT writes that "federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding 'based solely' on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party's presidential nominee, in the 2024 election."

According to the White House's lawyers, former oil/gas executive and current Secretary of Energy Chris Wright had his department put together a list of about 600 energy projects that had received grants from the Biden administration. But Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought only killed 284 of the 600 grants on the list, 283 of which would have benefited states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. In contrast, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act disproportionately benefited Republican districts nationwide. 

A group of researchers affected by the cuts soon filed suit, and when pressed to explain how the White House decided which grants to cancel, Trump's lawyers admitted that little mattered other than partisan revenge. Projects in blue states got cut, while projects in red states did not. The court documents also contradict Energy Secretary Wright's congressional testimony in June, where he plainly stated, "No decisions were made on politics." As the NYT put it:

"With one exception," a lawyer for the Energy Department conceded in a court filing this month, "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 Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators."

The lawyer acknowledged that none of the grants were included in the October terminations "based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor."

In contrast, the administration left untouched hundreds of additional energy grants in states that were represented by Republicans and had backed Mr. Trump in the last election, even though the Energy Department had recommended canceling them, the government confirmed in the July court filing.

The grants that OMB Director Vought took a break from defending Christian Nationalism to kill included funding to upgrade electrical grids in several states, including California and Oregon. Upgrading 100 miles of transmission lines in California probably would have benefited many of the 6 million Californians who voted for Trump — more than twice the population of the entire state of Mississippi — but nope. The grant got killed because more Californians voted for Harris. Capping methane leaks from oil wells sounds pretty important, but because 350,000 more Colorado voters picked Harris, the Trump White House said no. 

Without control of the House, Senate, White House, or Supreme Court, there's little Democrats can do before the midterms, but two senior Democrats have already issued a joint statement, saying, "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." Still, it was at least nice of the Trump administration to so clearly state that the Republican definition of "government waste" is basically just "money not spent helping Republicans."