The Energy Department Admits the OMB Canceled Grants 'Solely' To Punish Trump's Political Opponents

The episode illustrates the president's routine weaponization of government against his enemies.

Last September, the Department of Energy (DOE) recommended cancellation of 624 grants for clean energy projects that had been approved by the Biden administration. After reviewing the list, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) winnowed it down to 284 grants, all but one of which had been awarded to projects in states that were represented by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

"No decisions were made on politics," Energy Secretary Chris Wright improbably insisted during a House hearing on June 10. "I keep hearing that charge. It's bullshit." While that might have been true of the DOE's original list, it was not true of the grant terminations that the OMB ultimately approved. A month after Wright's testimony, DOE Principal Deputy General Counsel Jeff Novak admitted that the OMB's decisions about which grants to cancel were "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state," as opposed to "any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor."

That admission, which The New York Times highlighted on Friday, was part of the DOE's July 15 stipulations in Thakur v. Trump, a case brought by University of California researchers who are fighting to retain their federal grants. In a June 4 lawsuit, the researchers argued that the Trump administration's "mass termination of grants," which was presented as part of the cost-cutting steps taken by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, illegally usurped congressional powers.

To avoid discovery in that case, the Energy Department agreed to a list of stipulations, focusing on the grants that the OMB decided to nix in October. "Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled," OMB Director Russell Vought bragged in an October 1 post on X. Vought listed 16 affected states, all of which had awarded their electoral votes to Harris in 2024.

That was no mere coincidence, Novak confirms. The DOE's "624-grant list included proposals to terminate awards with a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in States that awarded their electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and [had] two Democratic-caucusing Senators," he writes, along with "awards with a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a State that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election or [had] at least one Republican-caucusing Senator." The OMB list of 284 targets, by contrast, omitted grants in the latter category.

"With one exception," Novak says, "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 [had] two Democratic-caucusing Senators." Those canceled grants included awards to two of the plaintiffs in Thakur v. Trump. The remaining 340 grants on the DOE's list, all of which involved states that went for Trump in 2024 or had at least one Republican senator, "were not terminated in October 2025, and they have not since been terminated."

That distinction, Novak concedes, "was not based on a rational connection between the recipient's location and/or place of performance and DOE's past or current agency priorities." Nor was it consistent with the approach that the DOE had taken. "The political identity of the grant recipient's state was not a factor that DOE's program offices considered in evaluating whether to retain, modify, or terminate grants," Novak says. "DOE's program offices had proposed to terminate similarly situated Blue State and non-Blue State grants."

Last December in St. Paul v. Wright, another case involving the OMB's cancellation of DOE grants, the government's lawyers similarly conceded that "the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was influenced by whether a grantee's address was located in a State that tends to elect and/or has recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections." But they argued that "consideration of partisan politics is constitutionally permissible" because "it can serve as a proxy for legitimate policy considerations."

According to Novak's stipulations, the OMB's list not only was "influenced" by whether grant recipients were located in blue states; it was determined "solely" by that consideration. That admission undermines the already dubious suggestion that the OMB viewed a state's "partisan politics" as "a proxy for legitimate policy considerations," especially since Novak says the OMB's decisions were not based on "any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor."

The plaintiffs in St. Paul v. Wright argued that such politically motivated grant terminations are unconstitutional. "Under bedrock equal protection principles, the government must have some legitimate state interest when it treats one group differently from a similarly situated group," they said. "Bare animus, political or otherwise, is not a legitimate government interest. Animus and political retribution are the only explanations for the differential treatment of terminated and non-terminated DOE awardees here."

That lawsuit also contended that the grant cancellations violated the First Amendment. The plaintiffs cited the Supreme Court's unanimous 2024 ruling in National Rifle Association v. Vullo, which involved a state regulator's attempts to discourage financial institutions from doing business with the NRA. "The First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech," the Court said, whether "directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries." In this case, the complaint in St. Paul v. Wright said, "Defendants have targeted private intermediaries—including Plaintiffs—to punish the speech of the citizens of the states where grantees reside or where the DOE awards would be carried out."

In January, Amit P. Mehta, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to pursue the First Amendment claim. But he found in their favor on the Fifth Amendment equal protection claim, saying the government's distinction between blue and red states failed even under the highly deferential "rational basis" test that applies in such cases when they do not involve "suspect classes" such as race.

"The parties do not dispute that Defendants drew a classification between grantees located in Blue States and grantees located in Red States," Mehta wrote. "Without more, there is no reason to believe that terminating an award to a recipient located in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Democratic candidates—and, particularly, voted against President Trump—furthers the agency's energy priorities any more than terminating a similar grant of a recipient in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Republican candidates or voted for President Trump. There is no evidence that Plaintiffs, for example, receive more funding than other grantees or use the funding for projects the agency views as uniquely fruitless. In fact, Defendants concede that Plaintiffs' seven terminated grants are 'comparable' to awards to grantees in Red States that were not terminated."

That decision vacated the termination of seven DOE grants. Last month in American Institute of Chemical Engineers v. Wright, Mehta approved a stipulated judgment that restored 11 more DOE grants.

In both of those cases, the government conceded that "a primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was whether the grantee was located in a 'Blue State.'" The government also agreed that "it would be legally sufficient for equal protection purposes to find that a primary reason for the termination decisions at issue is because of location in blue states."

Leaving aside the equal protection issue, the use of grant cancellations to penalize the president's political opponents is part of a broader pattern. Trump has not hesitated to use the levers of federal power in service of his personal interests, whether to enrich himself or to inflict pain on his foes. He has used regulatory threats to chill constitutionally protected speech, perverted the criminal justice system to punish critics for saying things he did not like, and issued executive orders that posed an existential threat to law firms that had represented clients or causes he abhors. Rescinding grants for partisan reasons is business as usual for a president who routinely weaponizes the government against his enemies.