Loss for Trump as federal judge rules budget chief broke the law to punish blue states

In the fall of 2025, President Donald Trump's administration revoked billions of dollars in in renewable energy projects — all in states that 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won. Now, one federal judge is ruling that those cuts violated the U.S. Constitution.

NOTUS reported Monday that U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta (who was appointed by former President Barack Obama) ruled that the Trump administration will now have to revive seven of the cuts made by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought in 2025. Judge Mehta found that the targeting of blue states was a violation of the Equal Protection clause in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

"The terminated grants had one glaring commonality: all the awardees (but one) were based in states whose majority of citizens casting votes did not support President Trump in the 2024 election," Mehta wrote in his 17-page ruling.

Mehta's decision came about in response to a lawsuit filed by the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota in conjunction with several environmental groups. The projects that were cancelled included solar energy infrastructure, electric vehicle charging stations and reduction of methane emissions. Plaintiffs accused Vought and the Trump administration's Department of Energy of making the cuts based solely on politics.

The U.S. Department of Energy countered in several filings made in response to the lawsuit that the cancellations were only made to implement the administration's energy priorities, and pointed to multiple cuts that were not made. However, Mehta disagreed, writing that the administration made "no plausible rational connection" between cancelling projects in blue states and advancing the president's agenda.

"There is no reason to believe that terminating an award to a recipient located in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Democratic candidates — and, particularly, voted against President Trump — furthers the agency’s energy priorities any more than terminating a similar grant of a recipient in a state whose citizens tend to vote for Republican candidates or voted for President Trump," Mehta's opinion read.

Vought initially announced the cuts in an October post to his official X account, writing: "Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled. The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA."

Click here to read NOTUS' report in full.