King Don has been breaking the law since his first day back in office. So says federal Judge Patti Saris in vacating Trump’s illegal January 20 executive order that blocked wind farm leases on federal lands and waters:
In a 47-page ruling on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris declared the executive order, which also demanded an environmental and economic review of existing leases, was unlawful.
Judge Saris pointed to federal laws that require the agencies that permit offshore wind farms to handle applications as they come in within a reasonable time. But under the executive order, no work is being done while the federal government undertakes its review, which Trump administration lawyers earlier this fall admitted has no set end date.
“An indefinite halt on issuing (or denying) all authorizations related to wind projects violates the statutory requirement that agencies must ‘proceed to conclude . . . matter[s] presented to’ them ‘within a reasonable time,’” the judge wrote.
…In her decision, Judge Saris wrote that the President may direct a reappraisal of permitting practices after the change of an administration, but the Department of the Interior, which oversees offshore wind, can’t decline to adjudicate applications altogether for an unspecified time period.
“Not acting at all is not a lawful option,” Judge Saris wrote.
…Much of Judge Saris’ opinion dealt with whether Massachusetts and the other states were going through the proper channels to fight the Trump administration’s executive order. The states argued that the pendulum swing under the President upended years of planning without any explanation.
Judge Saris agreed with this sentiment, saying that a departure from decades of precedent required the federal government, at a minimum, to provide a reasoning for the change of course [Ethan Genter, “Judge Finds Trump Wind Energy Ban Is Illegal,” The Vineyard Gazette, 2025.12.09.
The victorious, law-abiding plaintiffs emphasized the economic harm of Trump’s illegal order:
Andrea Joy Campbell, the Massachusetts attorney general, hailed the ruling as a victory for green jobs and renewable energy.
“Massachusetts has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into offshore wind, and today, we successfully protected those important investments from the Trump administration’s unlawful order,” Campbell said in a statement.
[New York Attorney General Letitia James said she was grateful the court stepped in “to block the administration’s reckless and unlawful crusade against clean energy”.
“As New Yorkers face rising energy costs, we need more energy sources, not fewer,” James said. “Wind energy is good for our environment, our economy, and our communities.”
…The coalition that opposed Trump’s order argued that Trump does not have the authority to halt project permitting, and that doing so jeopardizes the states’ economies, energy mix, public health and climate goals [“U.S. Judge Strikes Down Trump Order Blocking Wind Energy Projects,” AP via The Guardian, 2025.12.09].
The Environmental Defense Fund joined nine other environmental groups in May in filing a friend of the court brief supporting the lawsuit. EDF offers more details on Trump’s economic sabotage:
- Wind energy provides more than 10% of U.S. power and employs more than 130,000 in all 50 states.
- The top four wind-producing states are Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which all have electricity prices below the national average.
- As a result of the federal permitting ban, at least seven offshore wind projects in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have been paused, as well as several others in earlier development.
- Offshore wind is particularly important for the Northeast’s energy supply because the region gets most of its electricity from natural gas, which is subject to major price fluctuations. A recent study found that offshore wind turbines can boost the reliability of power grids during peak demand in the winter because ocean winds in the Northeast are at their strongest and steadiest in winter months.
- Earlier this year, BloombergNEF slashed its forecast of new offshore wind power to come online by 2035 by 56%, as a result of the Trump administration’s policies [Ted Kelly, “Court Strikes Down Trump Administration’s Reckless Wind Energy Permitting Ban,” Environmental Defense Fund, 2025.12.08].
Breaking the law, dragging the U.S. energy economy backward while other countries take the lead on vital clean energy technology—those sound more like the actions of someone working for our enemies, not for us.
The wind blew and the sheit flew. There came the lying trump and crew.
I do know tnis, the windfarm around me, 214 turbines in all, at least 60 will be getting newer more powerful turbines in the next year or two the felon be damned.
Several utilities are based in South Dakota because of the state’s regressive tax structure — Northwestern Energy and Black Hills Energy among them. In South Dakota the three elected Republicans on the PUC have taken a position opposed to net metering and the state’s Koch-soaked legislature has considered but declined to pass legislation on the issue. No corporate taxes, a compliant regulator, a dearth of environmental protection and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal and eyesores like wind farms.
Ice storms and other calamities driven by anthropogenic climate hijinx routinely knock out electric power often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem but the addition of virtual power plants or VPPs can change that handling some twenty percent of peak power demand by 2030.
And, the cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting, maintaining then removing and disposing of just one wind turbine eyesore bat and bird killer would take a thousand subscribers to energy self-reliance. Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard.
Utilities are not your friends so don’t tie your photovoltaic system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the utility that reads your meter.