Court Rules Trump Illegally Blocked Clean Energy Grants to Democratic States

Updated by Faith Barbara N Ruhinda at 1013 EAT on Tuesday 13 January 2026

A United States judge has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump acted illegally by cancelling $7.6bn in clean energy grants to states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In a decision issued on Monday, US District Judge Amit Mehta said the move violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, finding that the administration unlawfully discriminated against states based on their political affiliation.

“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 in a summary of the case.
The grants were intended to support hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey and Washington state. The initiatives ranged from battery manufacturing facilities to hydrogen technology development.

However, funding for projects in those states was cancelled in October, as the Trump administration sought to increase pressure on Democratic-led states during a protracted government shutdown.
At the time, Trump told the conservative network One America News (OAN) that his administration would target projects closely associated with the Democratic Party.

“We could cut projects that they wanted, favourite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said.
That same month, Russell Vought, the Trump-appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote on social media that “funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” had been “cancelled”.

The cuts included up to $1.2bn for a California-based hub aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and as much as $1bn for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest.

A spokesperson for the US Department of Energy said the Trump administration disagreed with the judge’s ruling.
Officials “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,” spokesman Ben Dietderich said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly pledged to rein in what it describes as wasteful government spending.
Monday’s decision marked the second legal setback in a matter of hours for Trump’s efforts to roll back clean energy programmes in the United States.

Earlier on Monday, a separate federal judge ruled that construction of a major offshore wind farm serving Rhode Island and Connecticut could resume, granting the industry at least a temporary victory as the administration moves to halt the project.

Trump campaigned for the presidency on a promise to end the offshore wind industry, claiming that wind turbines are prohibitively expensive and pose risks to marine life and birds.

He has instead advocated expanding US fossil fuel production, which researchers say is the leading cause of global climate change. Trump has repeatedly challenged the scientific consensus on the issue, describing climate change as a “hoax” on multiple occasions.

Credit to Aljazeera:

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