US judge says Trump illegally cut clean energy grants to Democratic states

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration broke the law when it cancelled $7.6bn in clean energy grants to states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, delivering another judicial rebuke to the president’s climate rollback agenda.

In a decision issued on Monday, US District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause by targeting states based on how their residents voted.

“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily – if not exclusively – based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote.

The funding was meant to support hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey and Washington, spanning battery manufacturing, hydrogen hubs and other low-carbon technologies. Those projects were abruptly cancelled in October, as the Trump administration escalated pressure on Democratic-led states during a tense government shutdown.

At the time, Trump was explicit about his strategy. Speaking to One America News, he said his administration could punish political opponents by axing their priorities.

“We could cut projects that they wanted, favourite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” Trump said.

Russell Vought, Trump’s appointee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, echoed the message on social media, declaring that “funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” had been “cancelled”.

Among the biggest cuts were up to $1.2bn for a California-based hydrogen hub and up to $1bn for a similar project in the Pacific Northwest. St Paul, Minnesota, was also hit, prompting the city, alongside environmental groups, to sue the federal government.

The Trump administration rejected the ruling, with the Department of Energy insisting the cancellations were justified.

“We stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars,” spokesperson Ben Dietderich said.

The administration has repeatedly framed its actions as part of a broader effort to eliminate what it calls wasteful spending, particularly on climate programmes.

But Monday’s decision marked the second courtroom loss in a single day for Trump’s efforts to dismantle clean energy policy. In a separate ruling, another federal judge allowed work to resume on a major offshore wind project serving Rhode Island and Connecticut, handing the wind industry at least a temporary reprieve.

Trump has vowed to shut down offshore wind entirely, arguing that turbines are too expensive and harm wildlife, despite a lack of scientific evidence to support those claims. He has instead pushed for expanded fossil fuel production, even as scientists overwhelmingly link fossil fuels to climate change, a phenomenon Trump has repeatedly dismissed as a “hoax”.