The Trump administration admitted that it terminated nearly 300 federal research grants “solely because” the projects were connected to states that voted against President Donald Trump in 2024 and had two Democratic senators in office, according to court filings.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The administration made the admission in a court filing this month responding to a lawsuit brought by University of California researchers challenging the cancellation.
In the filing, the administration wrote as an undisputed statement of fact that on a list of more than 2,300 financial assistance awards across the Department of Energy, 624 grants on these lists were designated either “termination” or “cancel.”Of those 624 grants, Jeff Novak, the principal deputy general counsel of the Department of Energy, wrote that in October 2025 the Office of Management and Budget identified 284 specific grants that were marked to be terminated.Novak wrote that 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.”Novak added that the remaining 340 grants proposed for termination were ultimately not canceled in October 2025 nor since then.
“All such grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election or has at least one Republican-caucusing Senator,” Novak wrote of the unterminated grants.Novak wrote that the decision to cancel the grants listed in the October notice tranche — those 284 — was not “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”“DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant r...