The Trump administration has openly acknowledged that it terminated nearly 300 federal research grants solely because the projects were located in states that voted against the president and have two Democratic senators, according to court filings released this month.
The admission came in a legal response to a lawsuit filed by University of California researchers disputing the cancellations. In the filing, the Department of Energy's principal deputy general counsel Jeff Novak provided an uncontested statement of fact: Of 624 grants flagged for termination across the Department of Energy, 284 were identified by the Office of Management and Budget in October 2025 for actual cancellation.
Novak wrote that with one exception, all 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 remaining 340 grants proposed for termination were spared, and those projects were located in states that voted for Trump or have at least one Republican senator.
The department conceded the termination decisions were not based on "programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor." In his filing, Novak stated bluntly: "DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was 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 Department of Energy quickly tried to reframe the filing on Friday. Spokesman Ben Dietderich disputed the characterization, calling it "a misrepresentation of the court filing and of Mr. Novak's words." He insisted that no termination decisions were made on political grounds and pointed to Energy Secretary Chris Wright's Capitol Hill testimony denying partisan motives.
Wright had told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in June: "No decisions were made on politics. I keep hearing that charge. It's bull---t. We're going to say it a million times."
Yet in October, when the 284 grants were canceled, OMB Director Russ Vought posted on social media that nearly $8 billion in "Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda" was being terminated. Vought listed 16 states where projects were canceled, including California, New York, Colorado, Vermont and New Jersey.
The court filing is emerging as the administration pursues a broader agenda to reshape federal grant-making. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed a new rule that would give political appointees sweeping authority over the $1 trillion annually distributed through federal grants. The rule would allow appointees to screen applications to block those they view as promoting "anti-American values" and to terminate existing grants deemed "no longer in the Federal Government's interest."
The Energy Department grant cancellations represent one piece of a wider pattern. Since beginning his second term, Trump has eliminated grants mentioning diversity initiatives and frozen research funding at universities including Harvard over allegations of antisemitism. The president has also threatened to strip federal funding from states that resist his immigration policies or maintain sanctuary cities.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The administration's own lawyers just handed the courts a smoking gun, then spent Friday pretending the document says something else. That's not legal strategy, that's panic."
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