For months, the White House insisted there was nothing political about who gets federal help after a disaster. Then government lawyers put it in writing.
In a July 15 court filing in a case called Thakur v. Trump, Energy Department attorneys stipulated that decisions to cancel a batch of renewable energy grants were made “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — whether the money was headed to a blue state or a non-blue state.
The Associated Press reported that the admission covers $7.6 billion in canceled grants across 16 states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
That contradicts what Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials had been saying for the better part of a year: that the projects were killed because they didn’t serve the country’s energy needs or weren’t a good use of taxpayer money.
The Blizzard Nobody Got Paid For
The same pattern is playing out at FEMA, and this time it involves snow removal, ambulances, and blocked roads.
In late February, a record-breaking blizzard buried the East Coast. Rhode Island got 37.9 inches in 24 hours — a new state record, confirmed by NOAA. New Jersey set snowfall records in seven counties. Massachusetts set them in three.
Four states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island — asked the federal government for a combined $227 million to cover the cleanup. All four are led by Democrats. All four were denied.
According to emails and documents obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News, FEMA’s own field staff had already verified the damage and signed off.
A FEMA emergency management specialist wrote to Rhode Island officials confirming a “total validated amount” of $19,305,057.13 in storm costs. The state’s federal cost threshold is $2.1 million. Rhode Island cleared the bar nine times over.
Massachusetts documented $45 million against a $13.6 million threshold. New Jersey documented $84.4 million against an $18 million threshold. New York said FEMA validated $79 million — double its threshold.
Trump said no anyway.
A former FEMA official who worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents told POLITICO they couldn’t recall a single example of FEMA denying disaster aid after a state met the agency’s standards.
Since George W. Bush, presidents have approved all 69 snow assistance requests that met FEMA criteria, with one exception in 2016 involving a state under investigation for mishandling FEMA funds.
The Numbers Tell the Story
An Associated Press analysis of FEMA data going back to 1989 found Trump has approved 80% of disaster requests from Republican governors and about 60% from Democratic governors.
Sorted by how states voted in 2024, the gap widens: more than three-quarters approved for states that backed him, less than half for states that didn’t.
He’s also slower than any president in the dataset. It now takes an average of six weeks just to get a decision, and because damage assessments take weeks to compile before a request is even filed, families often wait more than two months for an answer.
For comparison, Obama approved 87% of requests from Democratic governors and 79% from Republican governors during his second term — and his approval rate was identical for states that voted for him and against him.
Notably, this isn’t even consistent with Trump’s own first term, when he approved a greater share of requests from states that opposed him.
Judges Aren’t Buying It
The energy grant cancellations have already lost in federal court. In January, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the terminations violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee, writing that the administration “freely admit” they were denying disaster aid based on whether grantees lived in a state that voted for Trump.
The government, he noted, offered no explanation for how punishing those recipients advanced any actual energy goal — a test so forgiving that failing it is genuinely hard to do.
Mehta has since restored additional grants in follow-on cases.
On July 30, 39 Democratic senators sent a letter to Wright and OMB Director Russell Vought demanding the rest be reinstated.
What Denying Disaster Aid Costs People
Strip away the partisan scoreboard and you’re left with municipal budgets that don’t balance.
When FEMA reimburses snow removal, it covers 75% of eligible costs. Erica Bornemann, who ran Vermont Emergency Management from 2017 to 2023, explained the point: snow gets cleared because buried roads strand drivers and cut people off from hospitals.
Deny the reimbursement and the bill lands on county and city governments — which means it lands on property taxpayers, or it means the plows don’t run as long next time.
On the energy side, California’s hydrogen hub alone lost $1.2 billion in funding for a project officials projected would create more than 200,000 jobs.
Canceled projects also included grid upgrades and transmission line work — the unglamorous infrastructure that keeps the lights on and holds rates down.
Pennsylvania Is In the Crosshairs Too
This isn’t only a New England story. In July, DHS announced it would withhold 20% of federal disaster and public safety grants from states that refuse to hand over unredacted voter rolls.
Gov. Josh Shapiro sued, saying Pennsylvania stands to lose nearly $6 million in Homeland Security Grant Program funding unless it adopts the administration’s election policies.
He also joined an Illinois-led suit with 25 other Democratic officials over the same tactic.
The White House maintains there’s no politics in any of it. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump handles disaster requests “with great care” to make sure federal aid supplements rather than substitutes for state responsibility.
FEMA, for its part, has floated the idea that snow removal is a routine state function — asking, in a written statement, whether garbage collection is next.
That argument might land better if the standard were applied evenly. Instead, the federal government told a judge exactly what it was doing, and the judge told it that’s not something a president gets to do.
Storms don’t check voter registration. Neither should the people we pay to clean up after them.
