A U.S. district judge has ruled that President Trump’s decision singled out states that voted Democratic in the 2024 election.
Published January 13, 2026
A U.S. judge has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration acted illegally by canceling $7.6 billion in clean energy subsidies to states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
In Monday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration’s actions violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.
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“Defendants freely admit that they base their decision to terminate subsidies primarily, if not exclusively, on whether a recipient resides in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote in the lawsuit brief.
The grant was intended to support hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Washington. The project included efforts to create a battery plant and hydrogen technology.
But projects in those states were halted in October as the Trump administration sought to ratchet up pressure on Democratic-led states as the government shutdown heated up.
At the time, President Trump told network One America News (OAN) that he would target projects closely associated with the Democratic Party.
“They can cut the projects they want, their favorite projects, and they’ll be cut forever,” he told the network.
That same month, Trump-appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, posted on social media that “funding to advance leftist climate change policies” had been “discontinued.”
The cuts include up to $1.2 billion to build a hub in California to accelerate hydrogen technology and up to $1 billion for hydrogen projects in the Pacific Northwest.
St. Paul, Minnesota, was among the jurisdictions affected by the subsidy cuts. The city and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision.
Second legal setback
However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy said the Trump administration disagrees 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 continued expenditure for taxpayers,” spokesman Ben Diederich said.
The Trump administration has repeatedly promised to cut government spending deemed wasteful.
Monday’s ruling was the second legal setback in just hours for President Trump’s efforts to roll back America’s clean energy program.
Another federal judge ruled Monday that work on major offshore wind farms in Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing at least a temporary victory to the industry as President Trump seeks to shut them down.
The US president campaigned for the White House on a promise to eliminate the offshore wind industry, saying electric wind turbines, also known as windmills, are too expensive and harm whales and birds.
Instead, President Trump called on the United States to increase production of fossil fuels, which are believed to be the main cause of climate change. The US president has repeatedly defied the scientific consensus on climate change, calling it a “hoax.”
