A government that funds its friends and defunds its opponents is using public money as an instrument of loyalty.
This week, Trump administration lawyers admitted in a federal court filing that the Department of Energy canceled 284 grants “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.”
In plain terms: a state voted for Kamala Harris and elected two Democratic senators, so its projects lost their funding. Every spared grant belongs to a state Donald Trump won in 2024 or a state with at least one Republican senator.
The October cancellations eliminated $7.56 billion in energy funding. The filing answers a lawsuit from University of California researchers. The administration made the admission as part of a deal to avoid discovery, the legal process that forces the government to disclose its internal records.
For months, budget director Russell Vought described the cancellations as a cleanup of wasteful Biden-era spending. The filing concedes the decisions were based on no programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance factor but instead were based solely on how citizens in the state had voted.
A government that funds its friends and defunds its opponents is using public money as an instrument of loyalty.
Notes To My Future Self 