Trump To Cancel Biden-Era Green Energy Grants, but Only for Blue States
The president would be justified in wanting to rescind all state grants. Instead, he's apparently letting states that voted for him keep the cash.
This week, amid a government shutdown, President Donald Trump and his administration are trying to capitalize on the situation. "Trump has made clear he's looking to use this opportunity to make more permanent cuts to the federal work force and its many, many functions," writes Reason's Liz Wolfe.
A week before the shutdown, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advised federal agencies to prepare for permanent reductions in workforce, rather than simply furloughing employees who are then reinstated—with back pay—when the shutdown inevitably ends.
The administration also seems keen to rescind federal funds awarded under President Joe Biden, like the billions of dollars in clean energy grants to states in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
This would be a good idea, if it were applied smartly. Instead, the administration seems to prefer dinging members of the opposing political tribe rather than effecting any sort of across-the-board changes.
"Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled," OMB Director Russell Vought wrote Wednesday in a post on X. While there is not yet an official announcement, he added that there would be "more info to come" from the Department of Energy. Vought said the newly rescinded funds would come from terminating projects in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
If it feels like those 16 states have something in common, it's true: All voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's opponent, in the 2024 election. In fact, other than Maine, Rhode Island, and Virginia, Vought's list includes every single state that didn't go for Trump.
Trump would be justified in wanting to rescind all such grants. Instead, he's apparently content to let states who voted for him keep the cash. This naked partisanship is unseemly, but unfortunately par for the course under Trump. It's also particularly ironic, since red states were much bigger beneficiaries of Biden-era grants.
"The Biden administration has announced hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects since the passage of several landmark government funding bills," CNBC's Rebecca Picciotto wrote in May 2024. "Several of the biggest awards went to battleground states that will be pivotal to the 2024 presidential election between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, including Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan." (Biden exited the race in July 2024.)
Picciotto noted that the 10 largest recipients of Biden-era funding were California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, Maryland, Ohio, and Michigan. Vought targeted only four of those 10 for rescission, leaving tens of billions of "Green New Scam" dollars in red states.
"Growth from post-IRA projects…is particularly pronounced in Republican-led districts and states in the South," according to an August 2024 report from E2, a nonpartisan group that advocates for clean energy. "Nearly 60 percent of the announced projects—representing 85 percent of the investments and 68 percent of the jobs—are in Republican congressional districts."
"Five states are home to 20 or more projects: Michigan, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and North Carolina," the report noted. "Six others are home to at least 10: Ohio, Tennessee, California, New York, Indiana and Arizona." Of those 11 states, only California and New York went for Harris—and only those two will see cuts under Vought's proposal.
Studies often find that Republican states receive more government assistance than states that vote Democrat. "Using non-adjusted and population-weighted numbers, the federal government provides 8 percent more in benefits to red states than to blue states," according to a May 2025 article from the Milken Institute Review. "But taking [cost-of-living adjustments] into consideration, this gap widens significantly: red states receive 23 percent more from the federal government than blue states."
These programs can also take a more sinister form, where lawmakers dole out federal grants for states based on favoritism. "My own research on the way stimulus spending was allocated showed that the party affiliation of a congressional district's representative was a factor," George Mason University economist Veronique de Rugy wrote in 2013, about the 2009 federal stimulus bill. "Districts represented by Democrats got more money than districts represented by Republicans, even controlling for variables such as state capital, income, and unemployment."
As CNBC's Picciotto noted last year, after the states with the largest economies—California, Texas, New York—billions of federal dollars went to swing states that Biden would need if he hoped to win reelection. Now that those states handed Trump the election, he's apparently content to let them keep that cash.