Late last year, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials agreed to make a surprisingly damaging but until-recently little-noticed admission in court: the Trump administration had cancelled several grants worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars largely because the money was slated to be sent to states that did not support the president in the last election. 

“A primary reason” for withholding the funds in question was that “the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State,’” the DOJ wrote in a December 2025 court filing called a stipulation, an agreement entered into by the parties involved in a lawsuit agreeing to certain facts. 

A review by TPM identified multiple other instances of the administration making the same concession in court. One, from July, was recently covered by the New York Times; TPM found other examples of the same concession, documenting that the administration’s lawyers have been open for several months now about having withheld money in part or entirely to punish the president’s perceived political enemies.