The Trump administration acknowledged in federal court that it canceled hundreds of renewable energy development grants last year based on the political identity of recipient states — not on the merits of the projects themselves, according to newly filed legal documents.

In a filing dated July 15, lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Energy wrote that the decision to deny grant money hinged on whether the recipient was in a state that either did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election, or was represented by Democratic senators in Congress.

"With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators," the filing read. The department further accepted that "the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's state, i.e., whether the recipient's location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State."

The canceled energy projects totaled close to $8 billion, according to Russ Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The 16 states affected had either a Democratic state legislature or a Democratic governor.

In the filing, a Department of Energy lawyer said the department had compiled a list of 624 grants slated for potential termination before the final group of 284 was ultimately cut. At the time, the Department of Energy said it had canceled the projects because they wouldn't meet the nation's needs for energy and "were not economically viable."

The court filing stands in direct contrast to previous public statements by department leadership. Energy Secretary Chris Wright had repeatedly testified to Congress that the decision to terminate the grants was not political, telling the House Appropriations Committee in April of 2026: "All of the 2,270 projects we evaluated were not evaluated in any way, shape or form based on where they were," and that "all of the people that worked on our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects."

Democratic lawmakers responded sharply, with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) releasing a joint statement that read in part: "Secretary Wright swore up and down for months that these project terminations had absolutely nothing to do with politics, and now his lawyers are declaring that, in fact, politics was the only consideration," adding that "weaponizing the federal government like this is outright un-American, and it's hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power."

Representatives for the Energy Department reiterated Friday that its decisions to terminate grants were not political and said the court filing did not change that assessment, with spokesman Ben Dietderich telling The New York Times: "There is no contradiction, and any suggestion of a contradiction is a misrepresentation of the court filing."

The underlying litigation remains active, and it is not yet clear how the court will weigh the administration's admissions against its continued defense of the terminations.