What happened
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) yesterday sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon over the Trump administration’s retaliation for his appearance in a video reminding military members of their obligation to reject illegal orders. Kelly, a retired Navy captain, is asking a federal court to block Hegseth’s “unlawful and unconstitutional” bid to reduce his rank and pension and other threatened punishments “for engaging in disfavored political speech.” 

Who said what
Kelly’s lawsuit “seeks to reverse the administrative rebuke” from Hegseth, the Arizona Republic said, “but it could also establish new clarity on whether the Pentagon can invoke military law to effectively limit what a senator who oversees that agency can say.” The lawsuit says the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee “applies with particular force to legislators speaking on matters of public policy.”

It is “rare, if not jarring,” for a sitting senator to sue the defense secretary, The Associated Press said, but Kelly is the latest of several lawmakers to “push back against what they see as an out-of-control executive branch.” Hegseth “wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay” because he or a future defense secretary “doesn’t like what they’ve said,” Kelly said in a statement. “That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it.”

What next?
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has scheduled a Thursday hearing on Kelly’s request for a temporary restraining order, and the “next steps in the case” could “come quickly,” The Washington Post said. Hegseth directed Kelly to respond to his censure by Jan. 20, but the senator’s lawyers are asking Leon to block the proceedings from moving forward while his challenge is litigated. 

What happened
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., yesterday 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 yesterday 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.” 

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 tomorrow 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.