A fresh court filing prompted new scrutiny of the decision to cut billions of dollars intended for clean energy projects.
In that filing, President Donald Trump's administration acknowledged that the targeted defunding was connected to projects in states that Democrat Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election.
What happened?
As the Associated Press reported, federal lawyers said the grants were ended "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state." The canceled funding amounted to $7.6 billion and was tied to hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states.
That undercuts Energy Secretary Chris Wright's repeated public explanation that the cuts were "business decisions." He had argued the projects were not strong enough fits for the nation's energy needs or wise uses of taxpayer money.
Battery manufacturing, hydrogen technology, electric grid upgrades, and carbon capture were among the areas hit when the Energy Department canceled 321 awards tied to 223 projects in October, per the AP.
The affected states were all won by Harris, including California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Colorado.
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Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees, said the filing confirmed what "has long been obvious," according to the AP.
Why does it matter?
The projects were tied to jobs, lower energy costs, cleaner air, and more resilient power systems for communities across the country.
When funding for battery plants, grid upgrades, and other major infrastructure disappears, it can mean higher utility bills, fewer job opportunities, and slower progress in replacing heavily polluting systems.
Many households are already dealing with rising costs and climate-fueled weather disruptions.
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The filing also added to concerns that politics, rather than project quality, drove the decision-making. Kaptur and Murray said the administration "terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election," the AP reported.
What's being done?
The cuts were challenged in court soon after they were announced. One of the ongoing cases, Thakur v. Trump, includes the latest admission from federal lawyers.
In a separate case brought by clean energy organizations and St. Paul, Minnesota, the government lawyers said grant selection "was influenced by whether a grantee's address was located in a State that tends to elect ... Democratic candidates in state and national elections," per the AP.
Lawmakers are pushing for oversight. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress — including California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Rep. Zoe Lofgren — asked the Energy Department's acting inspector general to open an investigation. The department's watchdog opened an investigation in December.
When large infrastructure programs are halted, communities can lose out on investments designed to make energy cheaper and cleaner over time.
"Weaponizing the federal government like this is outright un-American," Kaptur and Murray said, while Sierra Club chief program officer Holly Bender said the filing shows "the Trump administration is brazenly admitting to a vindictive approach to cancelling much-needed energy infrastructure."
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