Justice Department fights back after federal judge blocks Trump’s wind energy freeze
The Trump administration is appealing a federal judge’s order that voided Donald Trump’s day one memorandum pausing offshore wind energy projects, setting up a high-stakes court fight over green energy initiatives the president has long derided.
The Department of Justice gave notice of the appeal on Wednesday after Judge Patti Saris sided with 17 blue states and a slew of environmental groups in finding that Trump’s memorandum was unlawful.
Trump has been skeptical of offshore wind energy because of concerns about how it jibes with affordability and about its supply chains and effects on wildlife. But Saris, a Clinton appointee, said delaying wind energy projects improperly affected states’ tax revenue.
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"The Commonwealth of Massachusetts alone invested millions of dollars into the wind industry in 2024; it is a ‘rational economic assumption that returns on those investments are imperiled by an indefinite suspension of wind permitting," Saris wrote in December.
The appeal comes as Trump has routinely bashed wind farms, calling them the "SCAM OF THE CENTURY" in a Truth Social post last year and repeatedly raising worries about windmills’ effects on birds and other marine life.
"You want to see a bird graveyard? … Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life," Trump said at a rally in 2019.
Trump has also alleged that states relying more heavily on wind and solar power are seeing electricity and energy costs go up.
On the first day of his second term in office, Trump signed a presidential memorandum temporarily blocking all coastal areas from taking on any new offshore wind energy leases. The memorandum ordered a government-wide review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices and instructed federal agencies to indefinitely stop issuing new or renewed permits or loans for wind projects pending an assessment by the Department of the Interior.
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The blue states and climate groups who sued argued that Trump’s memorandum flew in the face of his vows to prioritize domestic energy development.
"The Wind Directive has stopped most wind-energy development in its tracks, despite the fact that wind energy is a homegrown source of reliable, affordable energy that supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, creates billions of dollars in economic activity and tax payments, and supplies more than 10% of the country’s electricity," the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
DOJ lawyers argued in response that the states and climate groups made claims that amounted to "nothing more than a policy disagreement over preferences for wind versus fossil fuel energy development" and that the court did not have jurisdiction over the matter.
The DOJ lawyers said with the emergence of artificial intelligence and "geopolitical uncertainty" in the energy sector, domestic energy production was crucial and that Trump had valid concerns with wind energy, in particular.
"To ensure federally permitted wind energy production may continue in a reliable, affordable, and environmentally responsible manner, President Trump directed federal agencies to temporarily refrain from issuing wind energy permitting authorizations while the Department of the Interior leads a review of federal wind energy permitting and development practices," the lawyers said.
The appeal was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. The next step in the process is for the appellate court to set deadlines for the administration and plaintiffs' to submit arguments before deciding how to proceed.