The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would pause leases for ongoing offshore wind farm construction projects. A statement from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the halt was “due to national security risks identified” from the Defense Department’s “recently completed classified reports.” It’s another example of the administration’s ongoing war on clean energy production, but the declaration has all the markings of a federal government geared to reverse-engineering justifications for acting on President Donald Trump’s obsessions.
Consider, though, that Trump has openly hated wind farms, both on- and offshore, for decades now.
The newly issued freeze affects five East Coast projects in various stages of progress. Combined, they would provide electricity for millions of homes — that is, if they’re allowed to come fully online. When Trump first returned to office in January, he signed an executive order freezing any new permitting for wind energy projects. In August, the Interior Department moved to kill a nearly completed project off the coast of Rhode Island. The Department of Transportation also halted another $679 million for 12 “doomed offshore wind projects,” leaving in limbo projects for which ports had heavily competed.
Consider, though, that Trump has openly hated wind farms, both on- and offshore, for decades now. His enmity first bloomed when he lost an attempt to prevent a wind farm’s construction off the coast of his golf course in Scotland. While Burgum cited national security as the main reason for the pause, Trump’s main arguments against windmills haven’t reflected that concern. He’s called them out for being a blight on landscapes, and he’s repeatedly warned (often lately without being prompted) that they’re deadly to birds and, somehow even more bafflingly, whales.
Given the unconvincing nature of those claims, the White House has been busy looking for more compelling reasons to back his vendetta. As The New York Times reported in September, government agencies that “typically have little to do with offshore wind power” have been drafted to find reasons to kill the projects: “At the Health and Human Services Department, for instance, officials are studying whether wind turbines are emitting electromagnetic fields that could harm human health. And the Defense Department is probing whether the projects could pose risks to national security.”
The latter effort appears to have won out, but the Pentagon report that Burgum cited as the deciding factor is (conveniently) classified. We’ve seen similar behavior, though, from Trump administration officials in at least two other areas close to his heart: tariffs and his vendetta against his political enemies.
Tariffs don’t work the way that Trump insists they do, but he’s been monomaniacal about imposing them on allies and adversaries alike for years. His sweeping set of tariffs in April came with a series of frankly weird reasoning; the formulas provided to justify them didn’t line up with economic reality. But the internal disagreements over whether the import taxes were even a good idea got swept aside. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that she informed policymakers: “This is where we’re going to end up. So figure out how you can work into what he’s already thinking.” Much like the tariffs fiasco, there are serious policy consequences for humoring Trump’s obsession. Similarly, Trump has insisted that those who crossed him over the years be arrested and prosecuted in retaliation for the criminal cases against him. The result so far has been mixed at best. Cases filed against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James fell apart after the Justice Department brought in an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience to pursue the cases, after career federal prosecutors refused to move forward because of a lack of evidence. It’s hard to think the wind farm claims will hold up in the inevitable court battles that will follow. Already, federal judges have overruled the initial executive order freezing new permits and the attempt to shut down the Rhode Island project. The scant evidence provided publicly, and the fact that the Biden administration had already conducted studies on the projects’ national security impact before approving them, don’t bode well for Burgum’s new order. Moreover, much like the tariffs fiasco, there are serious policy consequences for humoring Trump’s obsession. There’s been a major surge in demand for electricity, not least from an uptick in data centers powering artificial intelligence efforts. Consumer prices around the country are going up at least in part as a result. Meanwhile, the stop-and-go uncertainty about these projects has cost companies millions and prevented the creation of thousands of jobs. The scramble to scuttle wind farms at a time like this only serves to underscore how much Trump’s vendettas are costing this country.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
