It’s been clear since his first term in office that Donald Trump has little interest in being a president for all Americans, but his contempt for states that elect Democrats has been supercharged in his second term, informing decisions across the executive branch.
The most recent example came to light last month, when the administration admitted in a lawsuit filing that a 2025 decision to cancel $7.5 billion in grants by the Department of Energy was made solely on the basis of whether the recipient states’ 2024 electoral votes went to Trump or former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Governing in such a manner is contemptible and contradictory to the founding principles that Americans celebrated on Independence Day this year. It not only violates the Constitution and federal law, but represents a dangerous weaponization of presidential authority that two congressional Democrats correctly told the New York Times was “outright un-American.”
In October, the Department of Energy announced that it had terminated federal funding grants supporting 223 clean-energy projects, claiming the move had “saved” taxpayers $7.56 billion. In a social media post, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, listed the 16 states affected — all of which were won by Harris in 2024.
Virginia, where Trump lost in all three of his presidential elections, was spared in this purge, but the White House separately made unsuccessful efforts to halt Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. The Department of Transportation also terminated a $39 million grant for Fairwinds Landing, a more-than $500 million maritime facility in Norfolk’s Lamberts Point, and a $20 million grant to improve the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, which serves the CVOW. (That money had been spent before the Trump administration tried to claw it back.)
The president’s embrace of fossil fuel companies, and disdain for renewable energy efforts, is long-standing and well known. But the administration didn’t target all wind and solar initiatives in its funding decisions, only those led by Democrats, giving rise to the notion that vengeance, not financial stewardship or even policy objectives, were the driving force.
Last month, the New York Times confirmed it — or rather the White House did itself. Responding to a lawsuit filed by California researchers who lost grant funding, the administration confirmed that the Energy Department had compiled a list of 600 projects for termination only to winnow that list to 284 based on one commonality.
“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 states, acknowledging that none of the grant decisions were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”
This petty political vindictiveness is evident throughout Trump’s second term, infecting decisions well beyond clean energy projects. In March, Politico reported that the president had “approved just 23% of disaster funding requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators” since returning to office, compared to 89% for states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators.
The White House has deployed the National Guard to Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans, as well as the District of Columbia, where Trump says troops will remain until 2029 at a cost of at least $1.4 billion. And while the president’s brutal and lawless immigration agenda has left few communities untouched, the most aggressive efforts have primarily occurred in states led by Democrats. Trump last week even dismissed evidence that Iranian hackers had infiltrated utility systems in Minnesota, claiming it was due to that state’s “incompetence.”
It’s not quaint to expect a president to be a leader for all people, but rather a central expectation of our constitutional system and a belief that has tied our very different states together for generations. That this president rejects that sullies the office he holds and demonstrates his loathing for the American experiment.
