DULUTH — The Trump administration admitted it canceled more than $7.5 billion in federal grants last October, including a $50 million grant to Minnesota Power and nearly half a billion dollars to the Minnesota Department of Commerce, “based solely” on whether the projects were planned in Democratic states.

In a court filing last month, a lawyer for the Department of Energy said the agency “accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.”

Minnesota Power’s grant to offset the nearly $1 billion modernization of a Minnesota Power transmission line linking Hermantown and central North Dakota, and the Department of Commerce grant to support five Midwest transmission projects, have since been reinstated.

The Department of Energy lawyer wrote that the agency had identified 624 grants to be “terminated” or “canceled,” but only 284 of those were announced in October 2025 as terminated.

At the time, Russ Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, boasted of the terminations on X, calling the projects “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.”

He listed 16 states — including Minnesota — that would lose funding for climate-related projects from the Department of Energy. All had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

It was not a coincidence.

“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 lawyer wrote in last month’s court filing. The filing was made as part of a lawsuit brought by California researchers whose funding was canceled under Trump.

As for the 340 other DOE grants that were not canceled?

“All such grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to President Trump in the 2024 election or has at least one Republican-caucusing Senator,” the lawyer wrote.

“DOE accepts that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities,” the lawyer wrote.

Although Minnesota Power and the Department of Commerce are based in the blue state of Minnesota, canceling the grants would have affected Republican-led states too.

The Department of Commerce said its $464 million grant will help it and two regional grid operators — Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool — fund five high-voltage transmission line projects in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota and unlock more than $1 billion in private investment.

And Minnesota Power’s upgrade of the 465-mile HVDC transmission includes substantial work in both Minnesota and North Dakota, with new converter stations planned for both states.

In an emailed statement Monday, Minnesota Power spokesperson Amy Rutledge pointed to the project’s cross-state nature, noting that groundbreaking in North Dakota is planned for Wednesday. She said updating aging infrastructure is needed to meet current and future energy demand, and that federal grant funding helped defray some of the costs.

“We are grateful to the federal delegations in both Minnesota and North Dakota who supported Minnesota Power’s efforts and the interests of our customers to get the grant reinstated while recognizing the value this project brings to our overall region,” Rutledge said.

In an email to the Duluth News Tribune on Monday, the Department of Commerce did not comment directly on the court filings but pointed to its May statement on DOE confirming it would honor the grants after all.

Despite earlier court filings in December in which DOE lawyers said the October 2025 grant cancellations were influenced by whether a state voted for a Democrat, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in June that “No decisions were made on politics,” according to E&E News.

“The Secretary’s statements in his testimony are correct,” a DOE spokesperson said in a statement to the News Tribune on Monday. “None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.”

The DOE told the New York Times last month that Wright was making a distinction between the initial termination review process and the timing of cancellation announcements.

The DOE’s Office of Inspector General in December said it was auditing the agency’s cancellation of grants to blue states, Politico reported.