Fossil fuel–backed activists and groups have for years been spreading misinformation about wind turbines harming whales. They lit the match and Trump fanned the flames. The president ranted and made false claims about offshore wind throughout 2025, in front of reporters, foreign heads of state, and the entire United Nations General Assembly
Meanwhile, his administration quietly axed over $5 million for research into the impact of offshore wind on the giant mammals, ending the best and longest-running studies on the issue, as Canary Media first reported.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum justified the Trump administration’s pause of the Empire Wind project by claiming the Biden administration approved it based on “flawed & bad science” about impacts on marine life, but the Interior Department refused to share the report that supposedly backed that up. The project’s developer and Democrats in Congress are still waiting for an unredacted version.
“There’s no proof, right? There are no receipts,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, told me in June. He said the administration hid the report and then used the permitting process as a “political tool,” something he sees as typical of “a banana republic.”
Without new offshore turbines going up, millions of households across the Northeast will soon pay more money for dirtier and less reliable electricity. According to a recent report, offshore wind power could help keep the lights on year-round in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, especially during harsh winter weather when gas plants can fail. Cuts to planet-warming pollution, mandated by several East Coast states, are also now out of reach. All signs point to Trump’s second term creating a hotter and less affordable future for Americans.
Few people interviewed for this story expressed hope that the damage from Trump’s war on “windmills” could be reversed anytime soon.
“What Trump really killed was hope,” said Wilson. “And what is the value of hope?”