The Trump administration has declared it will claw back billions of dollars in federal funding that utilities and other recipients are using to strengthen power grids and reduce electricity prices — almost entirely in states that voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
In a Wednesday post on X, Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, declared the administration would cancel “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” He listed 16 states that would lose project funding — every single one of which voted for Harris last year.
Democrats reacted with fury, saying the Trump administration is abusing its power in an attempt to force Democrats to concede to Republican demands in a congressional budget dispute that has led to the current federal government shutdown.
On Thursday morning, the Department of Energy announced the “termination of 321 financial awards supporting 223 projects,” which it claimed would save American taxpayers $7.56 billion. The DOE has not disclosed which grants or projects it has targeted for termination. The agency did not respond to Canary Media’s requests for comment.
“Donald Trump’s decision to cancel 223 energy projects in 21 states was nakedly political, unhinged, and unlawful,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, the New Mexico Democrat who serves as ranking member on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in a statement. “These are projects that Congress already approved and funded — projects that create jobs, lower electricity costs, and move our country forward.”
Two separate sources have provided Canary Media with a list of the 321 grants being targeted by the DOE. The vast majority are indeed in blue states.
The DOE stated that the terminated projects “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” But the partisan breakdown of cancellations appears to belie that statement.
The list includes 26 grants issued by the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO) under a program created by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to expand the country’s struggling transmission network, harden the grid against extreme weather, build microgrids to protect vulnerable communities during power outages, and deploy technologies to integrate solar, wind, EVs, and batteries into the grid.
The 26 GDO grants slated for cancellation are exclusively in the states that Vought singled out in his Wednesday X post: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
Meanwhile, the DOE’s termination list does not include dozens more GDO grants issued in 2023, August 2024, and October 2024 for utility projects in states that voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Many of those projects are strikingly similar to the ones marked for cancellation in blue states.
“This will result in lost jobs, stranded investments, increasing energy prices — all the things the administration says out of the other side of their mouth that they’re working against,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.
“Even on their own terms — ‘We’re going to damage those Democrats in the blue states!’ — they’re full of shit,” he added. “Energy does not abide by state boundaries. Electrons flow, supply chains flow, markets are often regional or national in nature. Anytime you destroy a project in one part of the country, it’s going to affect another part of the country.”
Great Job Jeff St. John & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
