Late last year, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials agreed to make a surprisingly damaging but until-recently little-noticed admission in court: the Trump administration had cancelled several grants worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars largely because the money was slated to be sent to states that did not support the president in the last election.
“A primary reason” for withholding the funds in question was that “the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State,’” the DOJ wrote in a December 2025 court filing called a stipulation, an agreement entered into by the parties involved in a lawsuit agreeing to certain facts.
A review by TPM identified multiple other instances of the administration making the same concession in court. One, from July, was recently covered by the New York Times; TPM found other examples of the same concession, documenting that the administration’s lawyers have been open for several months now about having withheld money in part or entirely to punish the president’s perceived political enemies.
“This is unprecedented to admit, but I also think it’s unprecedented to do,” David Super, law professor at the Georgetown University Law School, told TPM.
Yet in admitting that the reason for the grant terminations was at least partly to do with the states’ perceived partisan bent, attorneys for the Trump administration avoided having to hand over records or sit for depositions that might have revealed something even worse, experts said.
“What the administration is admitting to have done in court is so blatantly illegal and derelict that it has to at least make you wonder what kind of communication passed between the White House and the department, or within the department, that could have led to it,” Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ federal fiscal policy team, told TPM.
It’s a winding story that illustrates the often haphazard nature of Trump II-era retribution under Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought. OMB cancelled the grants during the October government shutdown, trying to strongarm Democrats into caving by revoking millions of dollars for clean energy and other awards in their states. The whole case is a reminder of how directly the White House controls granular questions around grant-making, and how pettily it can wield that newfound power.
In this case, it’s backfired in court. DOJ attorneys were left scrambling to cover up for a decision that came after Vought bragged on X that the administration was “cancelling” “Green New Scam” funding from 16 states, which he listed. They were 16 of the 19 states that voted for Kamala Harris during the 2024 election and that typically elect Democratic candidates statewide. Grantees in at least some of the same states Vought threatened suddenly lost funding administered as part of a Department of Energy (DOE) program to promote green energy.
Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled. More info to come from @ENERGY.
— Russ Vought (@russvought) October 1, 2025
The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA
By December, Trump officials were already bargaining with grantees who were suing to have their funding restored. TPM’s review of court filings and interviews with lawyers involved in the cases found that the Trump administration made the damaging admission as part of an attempt to avoid responding in greater detail to requests from the grantees about how and why their awards were terminated.
“The purpose of this stipulation is, you know, let’s resolve the major factual issues so we can avoid the need for discovery and get this matter consolidated,” one of the DOJ lawyers on the case said in a hearing, according to court transcripts.
On December 23, 2025, DOJ officials admitted that “Blue State” status was “a primary reason” for terminating the grants. In another stipulation in July 2026, Trump officials went further and said that the only reason it cancelled the grants was because the states were blue.
“What seems to be really going on is that the government in these cases is absolutely terrified of discovery,” one attorney familiar with the litigation told TPM.
“Discovery is burdensome for DOJ and client agencies, and this decision streamlined the litigation without prejudicing the jurisdictional and other arguments DOJ made,” a DOJ official told TPM when asked about the stipulation.
The DOE did not respond to a request for comment.
An ‘Unprecedented’ Motive
Since taking office, the Trump administration has focused on cutting federal support to blue states. Acting on Trump’s campaign trail promises of “retribution,” officials have targeted an array of programs, at times intimating that an easy way out of the situation would be for states and cities to cooperate with the federal government’s mass deportation campaign or other Trump administration priorities.
“This is unprecedented to admit, but I also think it’s unprecedented to do.”
David Super, law professor at the Georgetown University Law School
As of this writing, groups of plaintiffs have filed at least three separate lawsuits over the DOE’s green energy cancellations, City of Saint Paul v. Wright, American Institute of Chemical Engineers v. Wright and Thakur v. Trump. The grants covered projects like electric car charging and rewiring buildings to increase energy efficiency. Of the three, the government admitted that the state’s political leaning was a “primary reason” for cancelling the grants in two. In a class-action suit filed on behalf of the University of California, first reported by the New York Times, the government went a step further, admitting in July that grant cancellations were based “solely” on whether they were based in “Blue States.”
What makes these cases unique is that the Trump administration conceded before a judge what its critics have alleged since January 2025: that these cuts were made for purely political reasons. It’s a bare-faced admission that, at least in these cases, the administration was willing to deprive states of grants based on funds collected from the entire country out of partisan disagreement.
That is an “unprecedented” motive for the federal government to admit to in court experts told TPM.
“There will be situations where political favoritism certainly comes in, but very much at the margins,” Super, the Georgetown professor, told TPM, adding that he could recall “nothing remotely on the scale of cutting off funds to states that they dislike and then admitting to it in court documents.”
‘They Were Absolutely Determined to Avoid Discovery’
The first time Trump’s DOE agreed to make this stipulation — in the City of Saint Paul v. Wright case — it admitted in court documents that one of its main reasons for terminating grants was based on whether the grantees were located in “Blue States.”
“A primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State,’” the December 2025 court filing reads.
In that case, the plaintiffs and the government lawyers agreed to a set of stipulations instead of seeking further discovery or a trial. During the back and forth between the two sides, defense lawyers from the DOJ appeared desperate for the case to not go to discovery.
“What the administration is admitting to have done in court is so blatantly illegal and derelict that it has to at least make you wonder what kind of communication passed between the White House and the Department, or within the Department, that could have led to it.”
Devin O’Connor, senior fellow at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Based on those stipulations, the judge eventually ruled in favor of the Saint Paul plaintiffs and ordered the grants in question to be restored.
In another case, American Institute of Chemical Engineers v. Wright, the plaintiffs relied on the stipulations the government already agreed to in the City of Saint Paul case. The plaintiffs and the government basically agreed to the same set of stipulations, with the DOE admitting that “a primary reason” for the cancellation of 11 grants included in this case was “was whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State.’”
The case, similarly, did not go to discovery or a trial. The government effectively agreed to lose the case and restore the grants.
“The parties further agree that, if the Court were to apply its reasoning in Saint Paul to this case, the Court would vacate the termination notices for the eleven awards at issue in this case,” a stipulated judgement reads. “Accordingly, if the Court so-orders this proposed stipulated judgment, the termination notices for the eleven awards will be vacated.”
In the still-ongoing class-action lawsuit involving University of California researchers, Thakur v. Trump, the government went a step further, bolstering the language on the stipulation they have been agreeing to since late last year in favor of the plaintiff.
In a July 15 court filing federal officials admitted that the grants they terminated in October 2025 were based “solely” on whether they were based in “Blue States,” adding that they simply focused on the location of the grant recipient instead of who may be ultimately benefiting from the grant.
“DOE accepts 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 document reads.
Lawyers familiar with the case indicated to TPM that the government seemingly agreed to strengthen the language, again, in an effort to avoid discovery, which would have likely included depositions as well as exchange of internal documents.
“In our case, we had already served extensive discovery, so DOE knew that it was not just a hypothetical that we would seek documents and seek to depose many DOE people with knowledge of what happened prior terminations,” Claudia Polsky, counsel for the University of California researchers in Thakur, told TPM. “And DOE was extremely nervous and approached us about stipulations. They were absolutely determined to avoid discovery by stipulation if they could.”
Polsky added that the language change on the stipulations was also in reaction to the higher burden of proof the judge on the case requested the plaintiffs meet to prove that DOE had no legitimate reason to terminate the clean energy grants.
“When we were negotiating stipulations with DOE, we needed the text to be absolutely unambiguous,” Polsky told TPM. “That this was the sole reason, and we need you to affirmatively state that these grants were not wasteful, that the grantees were performing well and that there was no policy reason for these grants to be terminated.”
The court filing also laid out that the DOE’s “differential treatment” that resulted in the terminated grants were “not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities.”
That was DOE effectively admitting they had no rational policy reason for treating blue states differently.
