President Trump’s overarching embrace of fossil fuels includes repealing a landmark Biden legislative achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has helped support major investments in clean energy infrastructure.

While this will be the 55th time Republicans will have tried to roll back part or all ofthe $370 billion IRA, a Mother Jones analysis shows that most of the spending under the bill—and its associated jobs—went to areas represented by Republicans in Congress.

As the Biden White House explained, the 2022 law aimed to make sure the U.S. remained “the global leader in clean energy technology, manufacturing, and innovation.” That logic—and the jobs and tax credits spun off by the spending**—**conviced 18 Republican House members to sign a letter last summer asking their GOP colleagues not to go through with a “full repeal” of the bill, a move that was largely seen as an effort to appeal to voters ahead of the 2024 elections.

In the end, three of the Republicans who signed the letterwere unseated in November. Last month, 21 Republicans, many who signed on to the summer letter, released an updated plea to preserve parts of the Inflation Reduction Act.

At least two thirds of the announced jobs were for projects in districts now represented by a Republican.

Still, given Trump’s priorities, the world’s largest investment in climate and clean energy remains on the chopping block. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he hopes to approach the IRA with something “between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.”

But data published on January 15, 2025 on Energy.gov documenting $300 billion in investments unleashed under Biden helps explain why some Republicans are pushing Johnson against a complete elimination of the IRA. By plotting announced projects catalogued in the Biden administration database to Congress’s current district boundaries, our analysis shows how the bill benefited conservative voters.

Of the total investment, at least 57% went to districts currently represented by GOP House members, or about $171 billion. Republican districts saw nearly three quarters of private investment underwritten by the IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

By region, the Midwest saw more funding for energy projects than any other, and over three times as much as the East Coast.

The Biden administration compiled dataset tracks 209,268 jobs created at private energy projects subsidized or covered by $163 billion in IRA and BIL funding. At least two thirds of the announced jobs were for projects in districts now represented by a Republican. The median number of jobs announced in Republican districts was 600—exactly double the 300 jobs in the median Democratic district.

The top three districts to receive the most money in energy investments under Biden are currently represented by Republican representatives Richard Hudson of North Carolina, Victoria Spartz of Indiana, and Mark Amodei of Nevada, who, like all lawmakers mentioned in this story, did not respond to requests for comment.

While Hudson’s North Carolina district has benefited the most from IRA spending—with over $17 billion dollars in investment, mostly going toward a major Toyota battery plant—he has never been a fan of the law. In a 2022 statement committing to vote against it, he said the “bill would raise taxes [and] throw money at woke climate and social programs that won’t work.”

Spartz’s district got some $13 billion in IRA spending, largely thanks to a battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana. She also voted against the bill, and argued it would trigger “energy inflation, and recession.”

But Amodei, whose district was the third largest recipient of these funds, has signed both letters urging GOP powerbrokers to keep parts of the Inflation Reduction Act alive. The districts represented by the Republican lawmakers who signed the March letter received over $22 billion, or about seven percent of the total invested. Amodei’s district, which got $9.7 billion, made up roughly 40 percent of the funding received by the letter’s signatories.

Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican leading the repeal charge, saw his own district receive nearly $400 million in funding. Other co-sponsors of the bill pushing repeal saw over $9 billion in energy funding, mostly in private investments supported by the bill’s tax credits. One, Rep. Andy Biggs, was elected from an Arizona district which was the twelfth highest recipient of funding.

In 2022, Biggs attacked the IRA in a video to constituents, warning that they were “going to start feeling the pains of this legislation soon.” But the month before Biggs shared that video, the faltering economy had forced a delay in the construction of a battery manufacturing factory planned for his district. The following year it received $5.5 billion through Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and is set to open later in 2025. Biggs has hailed the plant’s construction and job creating potential as “fantastic news” for his constituents.

The data used for this analysis is available here.

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