Trump Admin Targeted Democrats by Canceling Clean Energy Grants
Brad Reed for Common Dreams
The New York Times reported that attorneys representing the US
Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged in court documents filed earlier this month that decisions
about canceling grants were based “solely on the political identity of the
grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of
performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
The Times described this as a “stunning admission” that
“offered an unvarnished glimpse into the way President Trump has weaponized the
provision of federal education, energy, health, housing, and infrastructure aid
in his second term.”
According to the Times, the DOE last year recommended
canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former
President Joe Biden’s administration.
However, the White House Office
of Management and Budget only
made 284 of the recommended cuts while leaving the rest of the grants in place.
After a group of California researchers challenged the terminated grants in a lawsuit, the DOE acknowledged that “with one exception, 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 DOE also admitted that there was no “programmatic,
statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor” to justify the cuts.
In a social media post,
New York Times reporter Tony Romm noted that the DOE made these admissions “as part of a
process meant to avoid discovery” and “perhaps spare it from sharing more
damaging records” in its possession.
The Times report drew a sharp reaction from Trump
administration critics.
“This is corruption,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.). “It’s how this
administration has acted since day one: punishing states, businesses, and
ordinary Americans who push back on Trump. It’s a major betrayal of our nation
that will lead to higher energy prices and should be condemned by people of all
political parties. It’s un-American and despicable.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) accused the
administration of “the weaponization of government” with its selective grant
cancellations.
“This administration shows us time and time again they only
care about one person,” Kim added, “and that person only cares about himself.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) argued that
the filings prove “what we have long known, that their grant cancellations were
not based on ‘waste’ or sound policy but vindictiveness.”
“It is despicable,” Durbin emphasized, “that the
administration is taking away funding from states that did not vote for Trump.”
Jennifer Victory, political scientist at George Mason
University, described the administration’s scheme as “violations
of the rule of law that
would be sufficient for impeachment in any
other American presidency but aren’t in this one because pathological partisan
loyalty has rotted the constitutional order.”
Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, said that
the DOE’s admission about targeting Democratic states was “something we all
knew and saw at the time and yet still breathtaking to read... in print.”
