{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/energy-secretarys-own-lawyers-flatly-contradict-his-repeated-denials", "Energy Secretary\u2019s Own Lawyers Flatly Contradict His Repeated Denials That Politics Played Any Role in Mass Termination of Projects", "2026-07-24", "2026", "2026-07", "Democrat", "House", "OH", "Marcy Kaptur", "K000009", "kaptur.house.gov", "kaptur", "https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "Toledo, OH \u2014 Today, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development issued the following statement in response to a court filing recently made public in which the Department of Energy admits that the only reason the Trump Administration chose to terminate nearly 300 energy projects in blue states last October during the government shutdown is the fact that the projects were located in states that did not vote for the President and that are represented by Democratic Senators:\n\n\u201cThis Administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the President in the 2024 election.\n\n\u201cThis is an astounding admission that the President and his team corruptly abused their power to kill good jobs and punish hard-working families because of their political views.\n\n\u201cSecretary Wright swore up and down for months that these project terminations had absolutely nothing to do with politics, and now his lawyers are declaring that, in fact, politics was the only consideration. Weaponizing the Federal government like this is outright un-American, and it\u2019s hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s good that several courts have already ruled against the terminations, and it\u2019s high time Republicans join us to hold this Administration accountable for the President\u2019s failure to look out for all Americans.\u201d\n\nOn October 1, 2025, as the president was openly threatening political retribution against Democrats during the shutdown, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought posted that nearly $8 Billion in funding for cost-cutting energy projects were being terminated, stating: \u201cThe projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.\u201d\n\nHours later, the Department of Energy announced hundreds of projects had been terminated.\n\nSecretary Chris Wright repeatedly and vociferously denied that the decision to terminate the projects had anything to do with political retribution:\n\nOCTOBER 2: Shortly after the announcement, Secretary Wright toldCNN\u2019s Kaitlin Collins in an interview that \u201cthese decisions are made all in the Energy Department, all based on facts.\u201d When asked \u201care you punishing only blue states?\u201d, the secretary replied \u201cnot at all.\u201d\n\nAPRIL 15: Testimony to the House Appropriations Committee: \u201cSo let me restate again: all of the 2,270 projects we evaluated were not evaluated in any way, shape or form based on where they were. \u2026 And all of the people that worked on our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects.\u201d\n\nAPRIL 16: Testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee: \u201cAll of the 2,240 decisions we made did not involve politics atall.\u201d\n\nAPRIL 22: Testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee: \u201cWe evaluated 2,271 projects, and politics and voting history played no role in any of the 2,271 decisions made. \u2026 The decisions we madewere blind on politics.\u201d\n\nJUNE 10: Testimony to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee: \u201cWe did not involve politics in the decision-making of our review process. \u2026. No decisions, no decisions were made on politics. I keep hearing that charge. It's bullshit.\u201d\n\nBut in a court filing last week that was recently made public, Secretary Wright\u2019s own lawyers attested that none of the terminated grants were terminated \u201cbased on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.\u201d Instead, the Department conceded, \u201cthe inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient\u2019s state, i.e., whether the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.\u201d\n\n# # #", 1, "2026-07-25T07:13:44Z", "2026-07-25T07:15:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/energy-secretarys-own-lawyers-flatly-contradict-his-repeated-denials"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.6770690456032753, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}