By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

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The grants supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, including battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and efforts to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

The Energy Department said the projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration’s action violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.

“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote in a 17-page opinion. The administration offered no explanation for how their purposeful targeting of grant recipients based on their electoral support — or lack of it — for Trump “rationally advances their stated government interest,” the judge added.

The ruling was the second legal setback for the administration’s rollback of clean energy program in a matter of hours. A federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.

A spokesman for the Energy Department said officials disagree with the judge’s decision on clean energy grants.

Officials “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars,” spokesman Ben Dietderich said. “The American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”

Projects were canceled in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported Harris.

The cuts include up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production, and up to $1 billion for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest. A Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were spared, according to clean-energy supporters who obtained a list of the DOE targets.

The city of St. Paul and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit after they lost grants.

Trump said in an interview with One America News, a conservative outlet, last fall that his administration could cut projects that Democrats want. “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that,” Trump said in the Oct. 1 interview.

Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that filed the suit, said the court ruling “recognized that the Trump Department of Energy vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration, in violation of the bedrock Constitutional guarantee that all people in all states have equal protection under the law.”

The administration’s actions violated the Constitution, foundational American values and “imposed high costs on the American people who rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for healthier lives,” Patton said.

Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the groups that lost funding, said the court ruling would help keep clean energy affordable and create jobs.

“Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that possible,” she said.

A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to four years in prison for shooting a gun at other motorists in two separate road rage incidents in St. Paul, including one that involved another vehicle with children inside.

James Allen Ameer Smith (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

James Allen Ameer Smith, 24, received his sentence Friday in Ramsey County District Court in connection with the 2024 incidents.

Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of drive-by shooting, and the prosecution agreed to seek no more than 50 months in prison as part of a plea agreement. Four counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon were dismissed at sentencing. Smith also received credit for 407 days he served in custody.

Smith has an open case in Dakota County that alleges he waved a gun at an Eagan motorist the day before he was arrested in the St. Paul shootings.

According to the criminal complaints:

A man reported that Oct. 12, 2024, while in his Jeep with two children, his vehicle was struck by a bullet on Summit Avenue near Lexington Parkway.

He said the driver of a black sedan was tailgating his Jeep and that when he tapped his brakes, the sedan accelerated and passed him, driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Then the sedan’s driver suddenly came to a near stop near the Governor’s Residence on Summit. The Jeep driver passed the sedan, but then that driver again went into the oncoming traffic lane to pass the Jeep.

As they neared Dale Street, the sedan braked hard and came to a stop. Again, the Jeep passed the sedan. As it did, the car’s driver fired a gun and a bullet struck the Jeep. The Jeep driver sped away.

No one was injured by his two children — ages 6 and 9 — were in the vehicle when it was hit.

Investigators found a bullet hole in the front passenger door of the Jeep and saw where the bullet had grazed and made contact with the center console. Surveillance video near the Governor’s Residence captured part of the incident.

Just over a month later, on Nov. 14, another driver, a 33-year-old man, reported a road rage incident to St. Paul police, saying he had been shot at by another driver and that his car had been hit by a bullet.

The man said he was driving south on Snelling Avenue near Selby Avenue when a man driving a black Nissan began tailgating him. The driver “brake checked the Nissan to get the other car to back off,” according to the complaint.

When the driver turned east onto Selby, the Nissan driver pulled up beside him, rolled down his window, fired a gun and then sped away. The driver followed the Nissan while calling 911 and reporting the Nissan’s license plate number.

Officers saw a bullet hole in the front driver’s side fender.

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Smith was arrested two weeks later in St. Louis Park. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing an empty gun holster.

While serving a search warrant, officers found a spent bullet casing on the driver’s side floor, three live rounds of ammunition in the center console, a live round of ammunition on the floor behind the driver’s seat and a loaded Glock handgun beneath the front passenger’s seat.

Smith told authorities he didn’t recall a road rage incident with a Jeep but, “If they are saying it’s my car then I guess it happened.”

He further said,  “I hate driving — all it has caused me is problems — tickets at least for speeding.”

When Smith was told the driver of the Jeep was shot at, he asked, “Is he OK?” When told that there were children in the Jeep, Smith also asked if they were OK.

Citing warrantless arrests, detentions of U.S. citizens based on race and accent, and the “unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul Monday to announce s joint legal action against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and related agencies.

“This has to stop. It just has to stop. We allege the obvious targeting of Minnesota for its diversity … and our democracy … is a violation of the Constitution,” said Ellison, pointing out that the targeting of churches, schools, hospitals, funeral homes and other sensitive locations violates federal administrative procedure.

“This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota,” Ellison said. “This surge has made us less safe.”

To Ellison’s statement that federal agents have caused the state “serious harm,” the White House’s “Rapid Response” account posted on X: “What caused Minnesota tremendous harm was the theft of billions of taxpayer dollars at the hands of Somalis, Keith. If you had done your job, they wouldn’t be there.”

Temporary restraining order also sought

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, alleges violations of the First and Tenth Amendments, the Equal Sovereignty Principle, and the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

“Operation Metro Surge” has drawn federal immigration enforcement agents from multiple agencies within Homeland Security to the Twin Cities in what federal officials have described as the largest DHS operation in national history.

Speaking at Minneapolis City Hall on Monday afternoon, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said in additional to the federal lawsuit, the two cities have asked for a temporary restraining order to curb U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities.

“These are not normal times,” said Frey, noting the city’s police are logging heavy overtime as confrontations escalate between ICE agents and observers. “What we are seeing right now is not normal immigration enforcement. … At times there are as many as 50 agents arresting one person.”

The mayors said some small businesses have lost as much as 50% to 80% of revenue and some schools have closed.

“They’re targeting us based on what we look and sound like,” Her said. “Our residents are scared, and as local officials, we have a responsibility to act.”

Weeks of heightened federal activity

The lawsuit follows weeks of heightened federal activity in and around the Twin Cities, which escalated with a planned 30-day surge of ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents that began around Jan. 4.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem personally accompanied agents on arrests shared on the department’s social media channels, and reports estimate some 2,000 or more agents will be deployed for a combination of immigration enforcement and fraud investigation.

Many of those stopped, questioned or detained appear to have no serious criminal history, Eilison said.

The attorney general and other critics have called the surge political payback because Minnesota did not vote for Trump or certify Trump as the winner in the 2024 election, or because Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, joined the failed Kamala Harris presidential ticket as a candidate for vice president.

Fatal shooting

Protesters and constitutional observers also have demanded accountability after what they’ve described as heavy-handed or blatantly illegal tactics, including the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, who exchanged words with an ICE agent from her car before being shot in the face while attempting to drive away last Wednesday morning.

Noem and others in the Trump administration quickly labeled Good a domestic terrorist and said she was attempting to run over the agent, but Frey and other officials called that take baseless.

Ellison on Monday said Minnesota’s non-citizen immigrant population without legal status stands at 1.5%, far below that of Republican states such as Florida, Utah and Texas, but those states have not been subject to surging immigration enforcement.

“If the goal were simply to look for people who were undocumented, Minnesota and Minneapolis is not where you would go,” Frey said.

Reaction from state legislative leadership

The Minnesota House GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, and Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said the lawsuit was a waste of resources.

“Instead of working with the federal government to target and arrest criminal illegal immigrants, they are wasting state resources on a lawsuit that seeks to override the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law,” they said in a statement. “Minnesotans deserve leaders that allow the removal of violent criminals — not ones that demand they remain in our communities.”

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Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, however, said she “strongly support(s) the action” to get federal agents out of the state.

“This surge of ICE agents has sown chaos in the streets, with countless violations of civil liberties and a dangerous disruption of daily life as Minnesotans know it,” Murphy said in a statement. “Schools and businesses have closed, and many Minnesotans have been forced to avoid unlawful detention. No one is safer because of this, and our neighbor Renee Good is dead … ICE can’t leave our state soon enough.”

To read a copy of the lawsuit go to ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2026.

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of steering a U-Haul truck toward a Los Angeles demonstration supporting Iran’s protests was released after being arrested on suspicion of reckless driving and has yet to be formally charged, authorities said Monday.

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Police first said one person was hit by truck during Sunday’s protest, but on Monday said no one was struck. Two people declined treatment after paramedics evaluated them at the scene, the fire department said.

Messages were sent to the city attorney’s office Monday asking about possible charges against the 48-year-old man. Police say he sped into the crowd of demonstrators, some waving Iran’s lion and sun flag, an emblem of its former ruler, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The protesters gathered Sunday afternoon in Westwood, a neighborhood that’s home to the largest Iranian community outside the country.

Videos shared on social media show demonstrators scrambling out of the truck’s way while a few chase after it. The vehicle stopped several blocks away, its windshield, mirrors and a window shattered. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed police officers keeping the crowd at bay while demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.

Investigators searched the truck, “with nothing significant being found,” the police statement said.

Signs from a Sunday protest, supporting protesters in Iran, are left on a sidewalk Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Police said the protesters tore down a banner on the truck that read “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah,” an apparent reference to a U.S.-backed coup in that year which toppled then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized the country’s oil industry. The coup cemented the shah’s power and lit the fuse for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini usher in the theocracy that still governs the country.

Signs from a Sunday protest, supporting protesters in Iran, are left on a yard Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

From exile in the United States, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who fled Iran just before the Islamic Revolution, has called on Iranians to join the demonstrations. Some Iranians have chanted pro-shah slogans, which were once punishable by death, highlighting the anger fueling demonstrations that began over Iran’s sanctions-crippled economy.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened Iran with military action over its crackdown on protesters in nationwide demonstrations that activists said Monday had left nearly 600 dead across the country.

Associated Press journalists Julie Watson in San Diego and Michael Catalini in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report.