It’s not the same as a press release or a speech when it comes to how it reads. A court filing, which is written by lawyers and is cautious and hedged, tends to hide admissions in passive voice and qualified language. In the DOE clean energy grant lawsuit filed on July 15, something more unusual was included: a clear admission that the Department of Energy had suggested ending grants based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.” It tells you whether a state backed Trump or Harris in 2024.
Background is important here. Starting in late 2025, the Trump administration started looking over hundreds of grants that were given out by the Biden administration for clean energy projects across the country. These included research programs, solar installations, and efforts to update the power grid. At first, the Energy Department marked more than 600 grants from both Democratic and Republican states as possible cancellations. Then Russell Vought took over as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Out of those more than 600 suggestions, 284 grants were actually cut off. Vought said it on X and named the states that would be affected: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Every single state voted for Kamala Harris.
Hundreds of the grants that were not paid out were in states that lean Republican. This is because the DOE’s own review said they should be canceled. The administration has said over and over that the decisions were not made for political reasons. It was June, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a House committee, “No decisions were made on politics.” That statement is now next to the filing from July 15, and the two don’t go well together.
The lawsuit itself was brought in June 2025 by a group of researchers at the University of California whose funding had been cut off quickly. At the time, it seemed like their claim—that the terminations were a politically motivated clean out of spending that had been approved by Congress—would be hard to prove. Things like this usually get sorted out slowly, over months and years, in court filings. Instead, the administration’s lawyers sent in language that mostly agreed with the main point of the complaint. It’s still not clear if this is a formal legal admission in the way that the plaintiffs will argue, but it’s hard to read the filing and think that the government has a good case.
The way the administration is responding is strange as I watch this happen. It was false in the filing, according to a DOE spokesperson, who said that the admission about political identity only related to the “timing of the announcement, not of the decisions themselves.” That’s a small difference, and it might be important legally. But you have to believe that after a department looked at 600 grants and suggested that they be cut across party lines, you then had to watch as a political appointee went through them and cancelled only the ones from blue states, with politics having nothing to do with the decision.
It’s harder to ignore the bigger picture. There was an issue with FEMA disaster aid earlier this year, an attempt to freeze $10 billion in social services funding for blue states, and a plan for a federal rule that would say all grants must “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.” The lawsuit over the DOE clean energy grant is one thread, but it’s also part of a bigger plan to change how federal money flows and who gets to decide where it goes.
Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, said it was “unprecedented Trumpism.” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said it was a “deep betrayal.” It is important to understand that those are political statements made by people who are against the government. However, the court document that goes along with the argument is not a political statement. It’s written down. It does what it says.
