During last fallās government shutdown, the Trump administration started cutting energy grants to states, but the only states that were seriously affected were ones Donald Trump lost in the 2024 election. At the time, officials in the affected states accused the White House of āmafioso tacticsā and brazenly abusing its powers by politicizing grant decisions that are supposed to be based on merit.
Team Trump was initially dismissive of the claims. Russell Vought, the White House budget director who terminated hundreds of grants, insisted that he was simply paring back Biden-era federal grants that the White House considered wasteful because as Vought put it, they were part of a āGreen New Scamā ā whatever that was supposed to mean.
It wasnāt long, however, before that posture started evolving.
In December, for example, the Republican administrationās lawyers made no real effort to deny the underlying allegations, instead arguing in a court filing that itās āconstitutionally permissibleā to consider partisan politics when distributing (or canceling) federal funds.
This week, Team Trump gave up the game, effectively admitting in a legal filing that the āmafioso tacticsā claims were correct all along.