[Spam] Trump admin pulls floor out from under dozens of Calif. energy projects

Dozens of construction, education and clean energy projects in
California are losing billions of dollars of combined federal funding,
part of a sweeping cut from Donald Trump’s administration targeted at
Democrat-run states. 

The dramatic move yanks more than $3.1 billion of federal commitments
across 79 grants around California, according to an SFGATE analysis of
the Department of Energy’s “projects terminated” list and federal
records of each grant. More than a third of the $7.56 billion the agency
said it had cut across 321 grants was apparently money meant for
California projects. It’s a huge slash that endangers thousands of jobs
and dozens of scientific initiatives. 

In a news release, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s emerged as one of Trump’s
most vocal Democratic critics, skewered one of the cuts in particular:
$1.2 billion meant for a planned hub to produce hydrogen fuel in
California, a project that has garnered more than $10 billion in private
investment and is projected to create over 200,000 jobs. Newsom wrote:
“In Trump’s America, energy policy is set by the highest bidder,
economics and common sense be damned.” 

These cuts further a few of the Trump administration’s aims. They’re a
disinvestment in clean energy construction and research, as Trump’s DOE
fights against the scientific consensus on climate change. They’re a
rollback of Joe Biden-era federal awards. And, amid a bitter party feud
over the federal government’s shutdown, they’re an attack on states that
didn’t cast their electoral votes for Trump. 

Just a few awards are being cut in red states, and projects in Texas and
West Virginia that are nearly identical to the slashed California
hydrogen grant aren’t losing their promised cash. Still, some of the
districts where the California money and jobs would actually have gone
voted for Trump last year — including Rep. Kevin Kiley’s eastern
California district. 

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate
agenda is being cancelled,” Russell Vought, the White House’s budget
chief,  wrote on X. He added: “The projects are in the following states:
CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.” 

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a longtime oil and gas executive,
wrote in his department’s news release that many of the awards had been
“rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration” and
that the cancellations “protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s
supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy.” The news release
noted that award recipients have 30 days to appeal the decisions and
that some projects have already begun the appeals process. 

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/trump-attack-energy-projects-californ
ia-21083305.php