The retreat of the Trump administration is leaving the nation more vulnerable to power outages caused by extreme weather, cybersecurity breaches, and the failure of aging infrastructure, all of which are becoming increasingly common. As climate change causes extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires to become more frequent and intense, it is increasingly important that the grid be able to withstand and quickly recover from damage. In addition, much of the infrastructure of the electric grid is decades old, past its designed lifespan and prone to failure. At the same time, cyberattacks against the electric grid have been on the rise: In 2024 alone, there were more than 1,000 cyberattacks on utilities, a 70 percent increase from the previous year. While the federal government had been working to mitigate these threats and strengthen vulnerable parts of the grid, five recent actions by the Trump administration have put its resilience at greater risk.
1. Cancelling projects to strengthen and modernize the grid
In October, the administration cancelled more than $2 billion worth of funding allocated to communities to harden their energy infrastructure against extreme weather threats through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership program, administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Grid Deployment Office. These cancellations included 26 grants across 25 states, and another 19 grants may also be cancelled according to an internal DOE list shared by Politico.
These cancelled grants were for public utilities, local governments, Tribes, and states, with some projects extending across several states. For example, a cancelled grant for the Minnesota Department of Commerce was intended to fund a significant portion of a huge transmission line upgrades project across the state as well as in South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas. The project planned to carry large amounts of energy to better accommodate increasing demand and reduce the risk of blackouts in the face of extreme weather. The impact of these projects extends even beyond the states where they are located, as due to the interconnected nature of the grid, vulnerabilities and outages in one state can have ripple effects that affect many more.
2. Eliminating funding to prepare the grid for extreme weather disasters
In addition to the cuts for DOE projects, the administration ended a major Federal Emergency Management Agency program for disaster resilience called the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. BRIC provided funding to communities to reduce the risk of climate disasters and other natural hazards from damaging public infrastructure, such as energy, water, and wastewater infrastructure. The elimination of the program revoked more than $3.6 billion in funding that was allocated for community projects across the country, including projects to upgrade the grid such as a project to strengthen electrical poles in Louisiana against hurricane-force winds.
3. Gutting cybersecurity support for the grid
The Trump administration has repeatedly attacked and massively downsized the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a federal agency tasked with protecting critical infrastructure sectors including the grid from cyber and physical threats. As of June, CISA had cut about 1,000 workers—a third of its workforce—while also cancelling the contracts of many private contractors. When the government shutdown started in October, the agency laid off another 176 employees and furloughed two-thirds of the remaining staff, leaving only 900 employees working without pay. In addition, many staff have been reassigned to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection, abandoning the critical work they were performing to secure critical infrastructure. This month, CISA’s acting director admitted that staffing cuts have gone too far and “limited CISA’s ability to fully support national security imperatives,” requiring a course correction.
While it might seem odd that an administration claiming to prioritize cybersecurity would seek to dismantle an agency originally established under Trump’s first presidency to do just that, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security statement and language in Project 2025 suggest that the reason is political retribution. CISA, which also oversaw cyber and physical security for elections, refused to agree with Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged in 2020. In response, the administration has not only ended the agency’s work on election security, but gutted the agency’s protection in other areas by laying off nearly all employees of several offices, including the division that coordinates critical infrastructure upgrades with states, local governments, and businesses. Settling what seem to be personal scores by cutting cybersecurity puts Americans and the entire electric grid at risk to cyberattacks, which have been on the rise, especially from China.
4. Adding unnecessary costs to upgrade aging grid infrastructure
The high tariffs the Trump administration has placed on several materials essential to grid infrastructure is exacerbating supply chain challenges and making it more expensive for utilities to carry out necessary improvements and repairs. Combined with the loss of grants mentioned above, these high and unpredictable costs put utilities in a tough spot, forced to either delay in making necessary upgrades the community relies on or passing the added costs on to their customers.
Over the summer, the administration doubled import tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent and set a new 50 percent tariff on most copper products—all materials necessary to build the poles, wires, transformers, and other components of the grid. The United States does not currently produce enough of these materials domestically to meet demand, particularly for electrical steel used for transformers and aluminum, and relies heavily on imports.
Utilities need to be making upgrades now to replace aging components before their failure and rebuild sections of the grid that have been wiped out by extreme weather. Much of the electric grid was built more than 50 years ago, and many essential components are far past their designed lifespan, struggling to handle growing energy demand because they were built for a smaller, less energy-intensive population. Climate change is causing additional stress, as rising temperatures can lead to faster chemical degradation of transformers and insulating materials, and extreme heat and freezing can cause component failure.
5. Preventing new technologies and energy sources to modernize the grid
Adding clean energy generation and storage to the grid increases its resilience against both extreme weather threats and cyberattacks. When fossil fuel power plants have been shown to fail in response to winter storms and extreme heat, renewables have performed particularly well in extreme temperatures. In addition, transitioning the energy system to more advanced and distributed energy technologies, such as battery storage and virtual power plants (a collection of small-scale energy resources such as rooftop solar panels and electric vehicle chargers) could be an opportunity to eliminate outdated, vulnerable infrastructure and replace it with systems designed to better resist cyber threats.
However, the Trump administration has been working to slow the growth of clean energy by rolling back clean energy tax credits via the Big Beautiful Bill, canceling billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants for planned projects, and decreasing new clean generation additions by more than 50 percent throughout the next decade.
Conclusion
Americans depend on reliable, consistent power, and the administration should be enhancing efforts to secure the grid rather than pulling back on long-overdue upgrades. By cancelling funds for projects already identified to be essential to grid resilience, gutting the agency dedicated to improving the cybersecurity of the grid, and increasing costs for grid improvement, the administration’s actions increase vulnerabilities now and for years to come.
The author would like to thank Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Akshay Thyagarajan, and Kendra Hughes of the Center for American Progress for their contributions to this analysis.
Author’s note: The author summed the list of cancelled Grid Deployment Office projects in this list shared by Politico and cross-referenced the grant amount using the U.S. Department of Energy’s GRIP Project database.