President Donald Trump’s administration has admitted in court that it chose to cancel certain grants for clean energy projects because they were set to benefit Democratic-voting states.

The New York Times reported on Friday 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.”

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