A federal judge just ruled that the Trump administration illegally yanked $7.6 billion in clean energy grants from 16 states—and the common thread? Every single one voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
That’s right. The administration openly admitted to cutting hundreds of clean energy projects based on how those states voted. Battery plants, hydrogen technology, electric grid upgrades, carbon capture efforts—all axed in California, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and 12 other blue states.
WHAT’S GOING ON: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn’t mince words in his 17-page ruling.
“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote.
The administration offered exactly zero explanation for how punishing states based on their votes “rationally advances their stated government interest.” The Energy Department had claimed the projects “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs” or weren’t “economically viable.”
Meanwhile, White House budget director Russell Vought celebrated on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.” Quiet part out loud, as usual.
THE DETAILS: The cuts hit some massive projects: up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub, up to $1 billion for a Pacific Northwest hydrogen project.
But here’s the tell—a Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project covering West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania? Those were spared. Red states get to keep their clean energy money. Blue states get nothing.
The targeted states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
BUT BUT BUT: Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich said officials “disagree” with the ruling and claimed they “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually.” They’re framing this as fiscal responsibility—”the American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”
Except the judge explicitly called out that the administration’s own admissions proved they were targeting grants based on electoral outcomes, not project merit.
WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t just about clean energy. It’s about the administration using federal funding as a weapon against states that didn’t vote for Trump. The Constitution’s equal protection clause exists precisely to prevent the government from punishing citizens based on their political choices.
Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, which sued over the cuts, told the AP: the administration “vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration.”
BOTTOM LINE: This ruling came the same day another federal judge allowed an offshore wind farm project to resume after Trump tried to shut it down. Courts are starting to push back on the administration’s war on clean energy—and its blatant political retribution against blue states. Whether those rulings actually stick is another question entirely.