Trump’s offshore wind project freeze draws lawsuits from states and developers

Offshore wind developers affected by the Trump administration’s freeze of five big projects on the East Coast are fighting back in court, with one developer saying its project will likely be terminated if they can’t resume by the end of next week.

Norwegian company Equinor and the Danish energy company Orsted are the latest to sue, with the limited liability companies for their projects filing civil suits late Tuesday. Connecticut and Rhode Island filed their own request on Monday seeking a preliminary injunction for a third project.

The administration announced Dec. 22 it was suspending leases for at least 90 days on the five offshore wind projects because of national security concerns. Its announcement did not reveal specifics about those concerns.

President Donald Trump has been hostile to renewable energy technologies that produce electricity cleanly, particularly offshore wind, and has instead prioritized oil, coal and natural gas that emit carbon pollution when burned.

Interior Department spokesperson Matt Middleton said Wednesday that Trump has directed the agency to manage public lands and waters for multiple uses, energy development, conservation and national defense. Middleton said the pause on large-scale offshore wind construction is a “decisive step to protect America’s security, prevent conflicts with military readiness and maritime operations and ensure responsible stewardship of our oceans.”

“We will not sacrifice national security or economic stability for projects that make no sense for America’s future,” Middleton said in a statement.

Equinor owns the Empire Wind project and Orsted owns Sunrise Wind, major offshore wind farms in New York. Empire Wind LLC requested expedited consideration by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying the project faces “likely termination” if construction can’t resume by Jan. 16. It said the order is disrupting a tightly choreographed construction schedule dependent on vessels with constrained availability, resulting in delay costs and causing an existential threat to the project financing.

Orsted is also asking a judge to vacate and set aside the order. The company says it has spent billions of dollars on Sunrise Wind, relying on validly issued permits from the federal government. It said in the filing that its team met weekly with the Coast Guard throughout 2025, and this week, with representatives from other agencies frequently attending, and no one raised national security concerns.

The administration's order paused the leases for these two projects, as well as for the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind in Virginia.

Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, was the first to sue. It's asking a judge to block the order, calling it “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional.

Orsted is building Revolution Wind with its joint venture partner Skyborn Renewables. They have filed a complaint over the order on behalf of the venture.

The filing by Connecticut and Rhode Island seeks to allow work on Revolution Wind to continue.

“Every day this project is stalled costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars in inflated energy bills when families are in dire need of relief,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “Revolution Wind was vetted and approved, and the Trump administration has yet to disclose a shred of evidence to counter that thorough and careful process.”

Avangrid is a joint owner along with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners of the Vineyard Wind project. They have not indicated publicly whether they plan to join the rest of the developers in challenging the administration.

The Trump administration previously halted work on both Empire Wind and Revolution Wind. In April, it stopped construction on Empire Wind, accusing the Biden administration of rushing the permits, then allowed work to resume a month later. Equinor finalized the federal lease for Empire Wind in March 2017, early in Trump’s first term. The final federal approval was in February 2024.

Work on the nearly completed Revolution Wind project was paused on Aug. 22 for what the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said were national security concerns. A month later, a federal judge ruled the project could resume, citing the irreparable harm to the developers and the demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of their claim.

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FILE - Wind turbine blades sit at The Portsmouth Marine terminal that is the staging area for Dominion Energy Virginia, which is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Dec. 22, 2025, in Portsmouth, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

FILE - A sign for the company Equinor is displayed on Oct. 28, 2020, in Fornebu, Norway. (Håkon Mosvold Larsen/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)

FILE - The logo for the Danish company Orsted is displayed on the exterior of the Avedore Power Station in Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Aug. 19, 2025. (Sebastian Elias Uth/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge said Friday that she expects to temporarily block efforts by the Trump administration to end a program that offered temporary legal protections for more than 10,000 family members of citizens and green card holders.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said at a hearing that she planned to issue a temporary restraining order but did not say when it would be issued. This case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protection for numerous groups and comes just over a week since another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work in the United States legally.

“The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” Justin Cox, an attorney who works with Justice Action Center and who argued the case for the plaintiffs, said. “That is incredibly inequitable.”

This case involved a program called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP, and impacts people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. Most of them are set to lose their legal protections, which were put in place during the Biden administration, by Jan. 14. The Department of Homeland Security terminated protections late last year.

The case involves five plaintiffs but lawyers are seeking to have any ruling cover everyone that is part of the program.

“Although in a temporary status, these parolees did not come temporarily; they came to get a jump-start on their new lives in the United States, typically bringing immediate family members with them,” plaintiffs wrote in their motion. “Since they arrived, FRP parolees have gotten employment authorization documents, jobs, and enrolled their kids in school.”

The government, in its brief and in court, argued Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the authority to terminate any parole program and gave adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. It also argued that the program's termination was necessary on national security grounds because the people had not been property vetted. It also said resources to maintain this program would be better used in other immigration programs.

“Parole can be terminated at any time,” Katie Rose Talley, a lawyer for the government told the court. "That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that."

Talwani conceded that the government can end the program but she took issue with the way it was done.

The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry that it was ending the program was sufficient. But Talwani demanded the government show how it has alerted people through a written notice — a letter or email — that the program was ending.

“I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said. “I have a group of people who are trying to follow the law. I am saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to.”

Lower courts have largely supported keeping temporary protections for many groups. But in May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision came after the court allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

The court did not explain its reasoning in the brief order, as is typical on its emergency docket. Two justices publicly dissented.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)