Judge clears wind farm construction to resume

Boat crews construct Revolution Wind farm off Connecticut and Rhode Island

Boat crews construct the Revolution Wind farm off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island

(Image credit: Business Wire via AP)

What happened

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday allowed construction to resume on a major offshore wind farm serving Connecticut and Rhode Island that the Trump administration ordered shut down in December on unspecified national security grounds. Suspending the nearly complete Revolution Wind project was unlawfully “arbitrary and capricious,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said. A second D.C. federal judge, Amit Mehta, ruled Monday that the Trump administration violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements by killing $7.6 billion in clean-energy grants to states with “one glaring commonality:” they “did not support President Trump in the 2024 election.”

Who said what

“Purportedly new classified information does not constitute a sufficient explanation” for the administration’s decision to “entirely stop work” on Revolution Wind, “costing them one-and-a-half million a day,” Lamberth said. The ruling was a “legal setback for Trump, who has spent the last year seeking to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters,” Reuters said. Revolution Wind was one of five East Coast wind farm projects his administration halted on Dec. 22, and the first to have its appeal heard in court.

“My goal is to not let any windmill be built,” Trump told oil executives at a White House meeting on Friday. “Maybe we get forced to do something because some stupid person in the Biden administration agreed to do something years ago,” but “I’ve told my people we will not approve windmills.”

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What next?

Orsted, the Danish company building Revolution Wind, said construction would resume “as soon as possible” to install the final seven of 65 turbines. Norwegian firm Equinor has a court hearing Tuesday on resuming construction of its Empire Wind project off New York, and Dominion Energy Virginia has a hearing Friday on its suspended Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.