Politics

The Energy Department Admits the OMB Canceled Grants 'Solely' To Punish Trump's Political Opponents

The episode illustrates the president's routine weaponization of government against his enemies.

Jacob Sullum | 7.27.2026 9:45 AM

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Last September, the Department of Energy (DOE) recommended cancellation of 624 grants for clean energy projects that had been approved by the Biden administration. After reviewing the list, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) winnowed it down to 284 grants, all but one of which had been awarded to projects in states that were represented by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

"No decisions were made on politics," Energy Secretary Chris Wright improbably insisted during a House hearing on June 10. "I keep hearing that charge. It's bullshit." While that might have been true of the DOE's original list, it was not true of the grant terminations that the OMB ultimately approved. A month after Wright's testimony, DOE Principal Deputy General Counsel Jeff Novak admitted that the OMB's decisions about which grants to cancel were "based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state," as opposed to "any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor."

That admission, which The New York Times highlighted on Friday, was part of the DOE's July 15 stipulations in Thakur v. Trump, a case brought by University of California researchers who are fighting to retain their federal grants. In a June 4 lawsuit, the researchers argued that the Trump administration's "mass termination of grants," which was presented as part of the cost-cutting steps taken by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, illegally usurped congressional powers.

To avoid discovery in that case, the Energy Department agreed to a list of stipulations, focusing on the grants that the OMB decided to nix in October. "Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled," OMB Director Russell Vought bragged in an October 1 post on X. Vought listed 16 affected states, all of which had awarded their electoral votes to Harris in 2024.

That was no mere coincidence, Novak confirms. The DOE's "624-grant list included proposals........

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