Since taking office in January 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration has made sweeping changes to federal government spending, touting a mission of accountability and efficiency. The newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was tasked with cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, promising to protect taxpayer dollars and streamline federal operations. Yet, as the months have unfolded, critics and watchdogs argue that these efforts have been selective at best—slashing funding for clean energy projects while simultaneously enabling more waste and potential corruption in the oil and gas sector.
On October 8, 2025, the Energy Department announced the abrupt cancellation of $7.5 billion in Biden-era clean energy grants. According to The New York Times, this move threatens more than 1,000 jobs and nearly $500 million in investments in New York State alone. Governor Kathy Hochul’s office provided the first official tally of the local impact, underscoring the disruption to the state’s burgeoning clean energy sector. "By refusing to stand up to Trump, New York Republicans in Congress are stabbing their own constituents in the back," Hochul stated, lamenting the loss of high-paying jobs and economic opportunity for communities across the state.
The cuts have hit Democratic-led states especially hard, with most of the canceled funding in New York targeting Democratic congressional districts. However, several Republican districts in the state, such as those represented by Nick Langworthy and Mike Lawler, also suffered losses. Lawler’s Hudson Valley district, for instance, lost more than $26 million in funding for companies developing advanced batteries. "I’m in New York and I’m a Republican, and obviously this project cancellation impacts my district, so it’s not just Democrats getting impacted," Lawler told CNN. His spokesman, Ciro Riccardi, placed the blame on Democrats, arguing, "None of this would be happening if Senator Schumer and his caucus hadn’t shut down the government at the behest of Hakeem Jeffries."
Other projects, like a $5 million grant for the Bitzer Scroll plant in Central New York, were also axed, halting a $25 million expansion that would have created 20 new jobs. "The whole thing of Trump bringing jobs back to America is completely running in reverse for us," John Allcott, Bitzer Scroll’s vice president for North American operations, told Syracuse.com. "It’s just killing us." The Energy Department, meanwhile, has insisted that it is conducting a thorough review of all financial awards made by the previous administration. "No determinations have been made other than what has been previously announced. Any reporting suggesting otherwise is false," said department spokesman Ben Dietderich in an email.
Yet, the fallout could soon expand. An internal Energy Department document, as reported by The New York Times, suggests that an additional $12 billion in Biden-era awards may be on the chopping block. Among the targeted projects are two large carbon dioxide removal hubs in Louisiana and Texas, initiatives supported by oil and gas companies to help extract more crude from mature oil fields. If canceled, these cuts would impact Republican-led states as well, including the Louisiana district of House Speaker Mike Johnson. The uncertainty has sparked a furious lobbying battle in Washington, with companies and lawmakers scrambling to protect their projects. Vikrum Aiyer, head of global policy at Heirloom, a company working on carbon dioxide removal, said, "We aren’t aware of a decision from D.O.E. and continue to productively engage with the administration in a project review."
The Trump administration’s approach to government efficiency, however, has been far from even-handed. While clean energy projects face the axe, the federal oil and gas program—long flagged as a hotbed for waste, fraud, and abuse—has seen loosened oversight and expanded industry privileges. For 14 years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has placed the management of federal oil and gas resources on its "High-Risk Series" list, citing chronic vulnerabilities. By its own analysis, U.S. taxpayers lose out on $730 million in oil and gas revenue annually due to inefficiencies in the system.
Rather than addressing these issues, the Trump administration has taken actions that, according to watchdogs, magnify the problem. In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued consent orders barring the CEOs of Pioneer and Hess from joining the boards of Exxon Mobil and Chevron, respectively, over antitrust concerns and alleged collusion with foreign oil producers. Yet, just five months later, the FTC under Trump vacated those orders, allowing John Hess to join the Chevron board despite ongoing concerns about his efforts to keep oil prices high.
Conflicts of interest have also come under scrutiny. DOGE appointed Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive with two decades of industry experience, to lead sweeping reforms at the Department of the Interior—without requiring him to divest his energy investments or file an ethics commitment. Hassen’s broad authority to reorganize the agency, free from congressional approval, has raised red flags among ethics experts and environmental advocates.
Financially, the administration’s Big "Beautiful" Bill (BBB) reversed recent progress on royalty rates and leasing practices. Federal royalty rates for oil and gas production on public lands, already below market rates, were lowered back to 12 percent, undoing a 2022 increase. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that raising rates by just 6 percent could have generated $200 million in additional revenue with negligible impact on production. Instead, the gap of federal losses has widened.
The BBB also reinstated noncompetitive leasing, allowing companies to acquire land parcels without bidding, and eliminated a nomination fee designed to curb speculative leasing. These changes have led to repeated auctions of unwanted leases—such as the 11 parcels relisted in April 2025 that failed to attract any bids for a second time—wasting Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resources and taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior is revising rules that would reduce bonding requirements for both offshore and onshore drilling. These bonds are meant to ensure companies cover the costs of compliance and cleanup, but the planned rollback shifts those financial risks to taxpayers. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has signaled his intent to revert bond rates to insufficient levels, despite evidence that actual reclamation costs can reach millions of dollars.
Oversight and enforcement have also been weakened. President Trump fired two of the five FTC commissioners, undermining the agency’s ability to police industry abuses. DOGE shuttered two regional offices responsible for offshore drilling oversight in Louisiana and California—offices that oversaw more than 97 percent of U.S. oil and gas production. The Department of the Interior’s staff has been cut by over 11 percent, reducing the workforce responsible for ensuring compliance with environmental and safety regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency, for its part, can now only shut down energy production in cases of "imminent and substantial threat to human health," further raising the bar for enforcement.
White House Budget Director Russell T. Vought summed up the administration’s position in a recent social media post: "Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled." While the administration frames these cuts as fiscal responsibility, critics argue that the real effect is to stifle the growth of clean energy, entrench fossil fuel interests, and ultimately cost taxpayers billions.
For everyday Americans, the consequences are tangible: lost jobs, stalled investments, and a federal government that seems to be picking winners and losers. As President Trump himself once declared, "The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages." For many observers, the current wave of cuts and deregulation offers a stark window into where those priorities now lie.
