The coalition seeks a court order to lift the wind permitting halt, while the White House calls the lawsuit a partisan attack on Trump’s energy agenda.
A coalition of 18 Democratic-led states filed suit on Monday challenging President Donald Trump’s nationwide suspension of wind energy project approvals, calling it an unlawful and politically motivated blockade that threatens job growth, energy security, and “climate progress.”
Trump’s directive cites a range of concerns, including potential impacts on marine ecosystems, navigational safety, national defense operations, and what it suggested were destabilizing effects of intermittent wind generation on grid reliability and energy prices.
“We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said on Jan. 20 after returning to the Oval Office for a second term.
“So if you’re into whales, you don’t want windmills either, and they’re the most expensive form of energy that you can have by far. They’re all made in China, by the way, practically all of them. They kill your birds and they ruin your beautiful landscapes.”
According to the complaint, the move has stalled dozens of wind energy projects and forced at least one federally approved offshore development near New York to halt construction.
Related Stories
“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable, and affordable energy,” James said in a statement. “This arbitrary and unnecessary directive threatens the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments, and it is delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.”
The lawsuit contends that Trump’s directive violates the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeds presidential authority by imposing a blanket freeze without statutory justification or due process. The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to immediately restart the permitting process while litigation proceeds.
The coalition said in a press release that the halt undermines states’ ability to meet clean energy mandates and rising electricity demands.
New York, for instance, is legally required to generate 70 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040 under its Climate Law, they noted, adding that the state’s wind sector currently supports over 4,400 jobs and is projected to create 18,000 more in the next decade.
“Those jobs will not materialize if these projects are halted,” James and the co-plaintiffs stated in the press release. “The administration’s indefinite blockade could leave billions of dollars in states’ clean energy investments stranded or underutilized and significantly harm their economic development.”
Besides New York, the other plaintiffs in the case are attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
The White House dismissed the lawsuit as a politically motivated effort to block the president’s agenda to reassert “America’s energy dominance.”
“Instead of working with President Trump to unleash American energy and lower prices for American families, Democrat Attorneys General are using lawfare to stop the President’s popular energy agenda,“ Taylor Rogers, White House assistant press secretary, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. ”The American people voted for the President to restore America’s energy dominance, and Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.”
Trump’s Jan. 20 directive also ordered a government-wide review of all existing wind leases, including the condition and safety of idle turbines, and instructed federal agencies to evaluate whether defunct projects should be dismantled. It was issued alongside a series of executive actions aimed at fast-tracking domestic oil, gas, and mineral extraction and repealing Biden-era climate regulations.
