For the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, the first nine months of the second Trump administration have been full of contradictions.
Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint authored by the Heritage Foundation, calls for eliminating the office altogether, and the administration’s FY26 budget request is a mixed bag, with steep proposed cuts and limited new support. OBBB rewrote much of the LPO’s authority, and several conditional commitments have already been withdrawn. But last week, the office greenlit a major Biden-era project, a $1.6 billion transmission loan for AEP.
While the administration has yet to outline a decisive philosophy or investment strategy for LPO, recent activity out of the office may be an indicator as to its current health — and its future as a cornerstone of federal clean energy financing.
In this Latitude Dispatch with former LPO senior advisor Kyle Winslow, we’ll dig into the contradictions shaping the Trump-era LPO. Latitude founding reporter Maeve Allsup will examine:
- The tension between the LPO’s current mandate and the limits of current budget authority, program guidance, and rulemakings
- How LPO programs can be applied to critical minerals and grid infrastructure
- The implications of supply chain, national security, and affordability pressures
- Opportunities to revitalize — or reinvent — the LPO for a new era

