Trump Bribes Company $1 Billion To Stop Offshore Wind

Maybe he hates offshore wind projects because breezes
mess up his hair? In any event, Trump, having lost
court battles to stop offshore wind installations,
has resorted to basically bribery with taxpayer dollars.

As we've talked about here a few times, Donald Trump hates wind generation. Especially offshore wind. 

He tried new anti-offshore wind regulations and pronouncements, only to be repeatedly shot down by the courts. So, Trump has gone straight to corruption. He's now successfully stopped an offshore wind installation with what amounts to a $1 billion bribe. 

Here it is from CNN:

"The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel project in the U.S." 

Yes, that's 'your tax dollars not at work. Trump is using tax revenue - and a lot of it to - pay somebody to not do something. 

It's not a direct raid on the treasury. Instead the Trump administration is paying back TotalEnergies for federal leases it bought during the Biden administration. So the money Biden raked in for the federal government is getting pissed away all because wind turbines are against Trump's aesthetics. 

The Trump gang has already stopped approving federal permits for renewable energy projects. That move killed offshore wind projects that were in early development. 

This goes against the wishes of numerous clean energy companies and several state governments. Those entities think offshore wind is a win-win: It generates badly needed electricity while also avoids the fossil fuels that contribute to ever-worsening climate change crisis. 

The more recent bribe, as I insist on calling it,  ries to make sure companies can't continue building under any future administration that has a friendlier attitude toward offshore wind, as CNN reports. 

In any event, Trump's bribe means 4 gigawatts of electricity will not be generated for houses and businesses in the U.S. 

TotalEnergies doesn't even get to decide how to spend the bribe money. To keep the Orange One happy, the company will develop a new liquified gas plant in Texas that will help export U.S. LNG overseas to Europe, per their agreement with the Trump administration.   

The company will also do some oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. and shale oil projects elsewhere in the U.S. 

Burn that fossil fuel, baby!  103 degrees during March in Kansas isn't nearly hot enough. Gotta get that climate really boiling. 

The deal is "an outrageous misuses of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it the most," said Ted Kelly of the Environmental Defense Fund.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says offshore wind is "one of the most expensive" forms of energy and is only produced when wind is blowing. I guess he never heard of batteries that store electricity and keep the juice flowing until the wind blows again. Which it almost always does in the wide open ocean. 

It's true offshore wind power is expensive because it's, well, offshore. But wind has no fuel costs. And CNN points out that states negotiate set power price agreements with offshore wind producers that don't fluctuate like natural gas and oil does. 

As with every stunt Trump and his minions pull, I see lawsuits coming with this. 

Canarymedia com explains:

"....offshore wind experts said that no process exists for Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)  to return the funds it collects from leasing federally controlled waters.

'There are significant questions about under what authority Interior is doing this,' said Elizabeth Klein, who led BOEM from 2023 to 2025 during the Biden administration"

 This Orange Briberymight  create broader problems beyond encouraging fossil fuel consumption, which can only worsen climate change. As NPR points out:

"Industry analysts say the agreement threatens to undermine business confidence in the United States by exerting unprecedented executive power to influence the private sector,"

Back in the day, like it or not, Republicans preferred to leave business alone. Let them do their thing with a little regulation or government interference as possible. So much for that. MAGA has turned that on its head. 

NPR's reporting goes on to explain that by stopping projects he doesn't like, Trump risks messing up infrastructure spending across the economy, not just in offshore wind. The uncertainty this creates could make infrastructure projects move more slowly and become expensive. 

The uncertainly goes into fossil fuel plant and oil production projects, which Trump keeps telling us he loves so much.

"When you're building a power plant or thinking about oil production, you're thinking not just about the current administration, you're thinking about the next couple of decades.....And the pendulum swing is a real policy risk," said Timothy Fox of ClearView Energy Partners. 

All this is one of Trump's few "skills."  His chaos causes so much uncertainty that investors, companies, and just regular people don't know what the next best course of action is.  Ultimately, nothing gets done.

Except Trump and his oligarch friends get ever more richer at our expense.   

Judge Overturns Trump Block On New England Offshore Wind Project

One of the turbines being built buy Revolution Wind, off
the New England coast. The Trump administration keeps
trying to shut it down, but the courts keep allowing
construction to continue. 

 Donald Trump keeps trying to shut down a huge wind energy project off the New England coast, but judges keep shutting down Trump. 

The latest hit came on Monday, when a federal judge overturned an Interior Department order that halted construction of the $6.2 billion offshore wind project.

It looks like Trump and his minions will need to come up with better excuses to shut down wind projects. 

 According to Politico:

"The injunction issued by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia allows construction to resume at Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project capable of powering 350,000 homes. It marks the second time Lamberth has overturned an Interior order seeking to halt construction of the project off Connecticut and Rhode Island .

In September, he rejected Interior's claim that the project constituted a threat to national security, calling it the height of 'arbitrary and capricious action."

His minions at Interior keep coming up with reasons they think will stick when it comes to shutting dow the windmills, like national security or messing with radar or they kill birds. As if Trump was the nation's Ornithologist In Chief or something. 

However, Trump's lifetime of literally tilting at windmills keeps failing because of his inability to keep his mouth shut. 

Trump keeps saying the quiet part out loud. Just last Friday, Trump bragged about stopping wind farms when he met with oil executives.  

Trump has also said, repeatedly, that he would never approve wind energy projects. "I've told my people we will not approve windmills.......Maybe we get forced to do something because some stupid person in the Biden administration agreed to do something years ago. We will not approve any windmills in this country," Trump has said. 

Trumps minion's are almost as bad at this. As Politico reports, "(Judge) Lamberth said his concerns were 'heightened' after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum criticized offshore wind projects in December 'for a variety of reasons unrelated to national security.'"

So, basically, Lamberth saw through all the smokescreens the Trump people were putting up. Lamberth said in his ruling that the government failed to come up with any new information to justify a halt to the Revolution project, which is already about 90 percent complete. 

Revolution wind said they were losing $1.4 million a day, and noted the Defense Department approved the project before Trump returned to office in January, 2025. 

New England states had solidly backed Revolution Wind and were obviously happy with Monday's ruling. "Federal interference has stood in the way of lower energy costs and good-paying jobs, but today's ruling puts Revolution Wind back on track," Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday. 

As USA Today explains, despite Trump's efforts, wind and solar were at least until recently two of the fastest rowing energy sectors in the U.S. Solar and wind produces as much s 17 percent of the nation's electricity in 2024. Land based wind turbines produce around 10 percent of United States electricity. 

Trump hates solar and wind power . He loves oil and coal. But the forces of commerce and business will keep overwhelming him. Probably with the help of the courts. 

Trump Finds New Way To Stop Clean Energy: "Security Concerns" Over Offshore Wind

The Trump administration's latest tack to stop offshore
wind generation is to claim "national security"
Not everyone is buying that argument. 

 The Trump administration has found a new excuse to halt his nemesis: offshore wind installations 

He hates "clean energy" and for some reason loves just LOVES oil and coal. 

He's put out all kinds of false narratives about wind turbines causing cancer, killing off all birds and, being unreliable because the wind doesn't always blow. Maybe he's never heard of batteries? 

Trump keeps losing court cases in which entities sue his administration over efforts to shut down the turbines. Now, we have the latest effort.  

Here's Fox New's lead on the report:

"President Donald Trump's Department of Interior announced on Monday that, effective immediately, leases for all large-scale offshore wind projects being constructed in the United States will be paused.

In a press release, DOI wrote that the pause is due to 'national security risks' identified by the Department of War in 'recently completed classified reports.'"

There were not many hints as to what those supposed security risks are. 

As an aside, Trump and Pete Hegseth want to call it the Department of War, but the legal name of the agency is still Department of Defense

Anyway. the Department of Interior gave these details, which aren't very detailed: 

"Today's action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers."

Well, that word salad doesn't help much. 

The pause on offshore wind farms affect projects off the New England, New York and Virginia coasts

The Interior Department referenced unclassified reports that large offshore turbine blades can cause "clutter" which is radar interference that can obscure moving targets or generate false radar returns. 

In some radar images, wind farms do cause clutter. For instance, on some days, you see what appears to be a persistent, stationary shower on Doppler weather radar over northeast New York. That "shower" is a large wind installation.

However, the Trump administration has been so untrustworthy, you have to wonder if this national security story is legit. Wind turbines have been around for a long time. You'd think the Defense Department would have figured out how to deal with them by now. 

This "national security threat" might be just another tactic to stop the offshore wind installations  

As the Associated Press reports:

"The pause.....is the latest step the administration has taken to hobble offshore wind in its push against renewable energy sources. It comes two weeks after a federal judge struck down President Donald' Trump's executive order blocking wind energy projects, calling it unlawful."

There are other indications that the "national security" might be just an excuse to scuttle wind projects. "The record of decision all show that the Department of Defense was consulted at every stage of the permitting process," said Kirk Lippold, a national security expert and former Commander of the USS Cole. 

Cole noted that the projects had been awarded permits following years of review by state and federal agencies.  You'd think the Department of Defense would have raised red flags ages ago if these wind projects were interfering with our defense capabilities. 

I imagine there will be lawsuits out of this. 

We're already hearing grumblings of some sort of court action. Probably from more than one source. 

The Conservation Law Foundation called the offshore wind development pause "a desperate rerun of the Trump administration' failed attempt to kill offshore wind."  The Foundation, in their statement, already noted courts have already rejected Trump's attempts to kill offshore wind.

Then there's this from Ted Kelly of the Environmental Defense Fund: 

"For nearly a year, the Trump administration has recklessly obstructed the build-out of clean, affordable power for millions of Americas, just as the country's need for electricity is surging.....Now the administration is again illegally kneecapping America's largest source of renewable power, especially the we need more cheap, homegrown electricity"

 Kelly said the Trump administration's actions are especially rich since they're propping up aging, expensive coal plants "that rarely work and pollute our air."

Speaking of things that rarely work, the Trump administration seems to lose most of their court cases, except in the Supreme Court, which is solidly MAGA.  The new roadblock is the "classified documents" The Interior Department claims. It sounds like it could be a way to avoid sharing documents in the discovery phase of any lawsuits.  

In any event, some lawyers are going to have a great 2026, thanks to the Trump crowd.