Offshore wind developer prevails in court as Trump says the US 'will not approve any windmills'

A federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as President Donald Trump seeks to shut it down.

At the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Senior Judge Royce Lamberth said the government did not explain why it could not take action short of a complete stop to construction on Revolution Wind while it considers ways to mitigate its national security concerns. He said it also did not provide sufficient reasoning for its change in position.

Revolution Wind has received all of its federal permits and is nearly 90% complete to provide power for Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Trump says his goal is to not let any “windmills” be built. Three energy developers are challenging the administration’s freeze of their offshore wind projects in the federal courts this week.

Danish energy company Orsted, Norwegian company Equinor, and Dominion Energy Virginia each sued to ask the courts to vacate and set aside the administration’s Dec. 22 order to freeze five big projects on the East Coast over national security concerns. Orsted’s hearing was first on its Revolution Wind project. Orsted said it will soon resume construction to deliver affordable, reliable power to the Northeast.

The administration did not reveal specifics about its national security concerns, but Trump said Friday while meeting with oil industry executives about investing in Venezuela that wind farms are “losers.” He said they lose money, destroy the landscape and kill birds.

“I’ve told my people we will not approve windmills,” Trump said. “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.”

The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution. Trump began reversing the country’s energy policies his first day in office with a spate of executive orders aimed at boosting oil, gas and coal. A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

The Trump administration paused leases for the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. New York’s attorney general sued the Trump administration on Friday over Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind.

Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind are both major offshore wind projects by Orsted. Rhode Island and Connecticut filed their own request in court to try to save Revolution Wind.

“The law takes precedent over the political whims of one man, and we will continue to fight to make sure that remains the case,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said in a statement.

At Monday's hearing, attorney Janice Schneider, representing Revolution Wind, said the stop work order came at a critical stage of construction, with the project nearly 90% built and weeks away from beginning to deliver power to the electric grid. She said the delay is costing more than $1.4 million per day, and a specialized vessel has just enough time now to install the remaining turbines before its contract is up at the site in February.

Schneider said they take national security issues seriously, but the government has not shared more information about its concerns with their experts who have security clearances, or shared unclassified summaries.

“We do think that this court should be very skeptical of the government’s true motives here," Schneider said, citing Trump's comments from Friday.

Department of Justice attorney Peter Torstensen argued that national security is paramount and protecting against new risks identified in the classified materials outweighs any alleged irreparable harm to the developers.

Work on the Revolution Wind project was previously paused on Aug. 22 for what the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said were national security concerns. A month later, Judge Lamberth ruled the project could resume, citing the irreparable harm to the developers and the demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of their claim. Orsted is building it with Skyborn Renewables.

With four offshore wind projects still stalled, Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, said she's hopeful that they will prevail in court and that the administration will begin to understand "the immense benefits that these nearly complete power sources can bring to our nation’s energy and national security.”

Equinor owns Empire Wind. Its limited liability company, Empire Wind LLC, said the project faces “likely termination” if construction can’t resume by this Friday because the order disrupts a tightly choreographed construction schedule dependent on vessels with very limited availability. Its hearing is Wednesday.

“I would like to think that offshore wind is, and will continue to be, part of an all-of-the-above energy solution, which our country desperately needs,” said Molly Morris, Equinor’s senior vice president overseeing Empire Wind.

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. Its hearing is Friday.

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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FILE - Wind turbine bases, generators and 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)

FILE - Wind turbine bases, generators and blades sit along with support ships 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)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

The grants supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, including battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and efforts to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

The Energy Department said the projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration's action violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.

“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024," Mehta wrote in a 17-page opinion. The administration offered no explanation for how their purposeful targeting of grant recipients based on their electoral support for Trump — or lack of it — "rationally advances their stated government interest,” the judge added.

The ruling was the second legal setback for the administration’s rollback of clean energy program in a matter of hours. A separate federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.

A spokesman for the Energy Department said officials disagree with the judge’s decision on clean energy grants.

Officials “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars,” spokesman Ben Dietderich said. “The American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”

Projects were canceled in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported Harris.

The cuts include up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production, and up to $1 billion for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest. A Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were spared, according to clean-energy supporters who obtained a list of the DOE targets.

The city of St. Paul and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit after they lost grants.

Trump said in an interview last fall with One America News, a conservative outlet, that his administration could cut projects that Democrats want. “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that,” Trump said in the Oct. 1 interview.

Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that filed the suit, said the court ruling “recognized that the Trump Department of Energy vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration, in violation of the bedrock Constitutional guarantee that all people in all states have equal protection under the law.”

The administration’s actions violated the Constitution, foundational American values and “imposed high costs on the American people who rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for healthier lives,” Patton said.

Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the groups that lost funding, said the court ruling would help keep clean energy affordable and create jobs.

“Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that possible,” she said.

FILE - Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks to reporters at the White House, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)