Donald Trump has now spent more than $2.6 billion in taxpayer money buying out wind energy leases, killing projects that were already under construction and employing thousands of union workers. The White House's official position is that none of this has had any impact on jobs whatsoever. The workers who got stranded on boats in the Atlantic Ocean when stop-work orders dropped might disagree.
A Christmas Gift Nobody Asked For
Thomas Kilday is a furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island. His job involves working 28-day shifts offshore on a vessel in the Atlantic, taking helicopters out to work on wind turbines. It is, by any measure, a skilled, dangerous, well-paying union job — exactly the kind of work that politicians across the spectrum claim to love.
In August of last year, Kilday was mid-shift on the Revolution Wind Project when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order. A federal court blocked it in September. The administration came back in December with another 90-day stop-work order, citing national security. Kilday found out right before Christmas.
"I just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about," he told the Guardian. Six months a year away from home, and the one stretch he gets back, he's spending it wondering whether his job still exists. A second judge issued an injunction in January to block that order too.
Revolution Wind announced in March that it began delivering power to New England, built by more than 1,000 local union workers. It's now over 90% complete and expected to power over 350,000 homes and businesses. The project survived Trump's sabotage. Not every project will.
The $2.6 Billion Middle Finger to Working People
Here's the part that should make your blood pressure spike. The Trump administration has now completed four deals to simply buy out wind project leases outright, paying energy corporations to walk away. According to the Guardian, that includes $765 million to Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York, and Maine, and nearly $900 million to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California.
This is your money. Federal dollars, handed to corporations, in exchange for them agreeing to not build things that would have employed thousands of union workers and powered hundreds of thousands of homes. The administration abandoned its legal effort to freeze all wind permitting in June after a judge tossed Trump's executive order, so buying out the leases is now the strategy.
"What the Trump administration is doing is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology," Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. Crowley also pointed out that Rhode Island labor has beaten the administration in court five times on stop-work order challenges. Five for five. The policy keeps losing in court and costing a fortune, and they keep doing it anyway.
A Personal Grudge With a Very Expensive Price Tag
Will Gonzalez, a construction laborer with Laborers' local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, worked on the Vineyard Wind 1 project off Martha's Vineyard. That project is now complete and fully operational despite the administration's attempt to halt it in January. Gonzalez has a pretty clear theory about why Trump is so obsessed with killing wind energy.
Trump spent years trying to block a wind turbine project near his golf course in Scotland. He lost that fight in court in December 2015. "It's a personal vendetta," Gonzalez told the Guardian. The federal government is now spending billions of dollars and disrupting thousands of jobs because the president has a decades-long grudge about his Scottish golf course views. You genuinely cannot make this up.
Gonzalez and his coworkers are now sitting on unused training and certifications because there are no new projects to move to. "All of us that worked on that Vineyard Wind 1, obviously, we would have loved to segue right into another project," he said. "We're fully trained, ready to go, willing and able, so it directly affected us."
The Department of Interior's Response Is Peak Gaslighting
When the Guardian asked the Trump administration to comment on the job impact of stop-work orders issued to projects that were actively under construction, a Department of Interior spokesperson said the cancellations and stop-work orders have had no impact on jobs. No clarification was offered. The question about Trump's documented personal animus toward wind projects went unanswered entirely.
So to be clear: workers stranded mid-shift on boats in the Atlantic when stop-work orders landed, union members spending Christmas worrying about their paychecks, laborers sitting on unused certifications with nowhere to work, and the official government position is that none of this affected employment. That is not a mischaracterization. That is what they said.
Over the years, Trump has blamed wind turbines for killing birds, killing whales, causing cancer, and posing national security threats. He has deployed all of these arguments at various points to justify the crusade. The birds-and-whales argument has been the most durable, which is remarkable, given that the fossil fuel industry's track record with both species is not exactly spotless.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what has happened here. The United States federal government has spent more than $2.6 billion in public money paying corporations to abandon energy projects. Those projects would have employed union workers in skilled trades, delivered power to hundreds of thousands of homes, and reduced carbon emissions. The money went to the corporations, not to the workers. The workers got uncertainty, interrupted shifts, and canceled projects.
This is being done to appease a president who, if you believe the workers closest to the situation, is prosecuting a personal vendetta that traces back to losing a court fight over his Scottish golf course view in 2015. And the official government response to questions about job losses is that there were no job losses. In a functioning political environment, spending $2.6 billion to blow up union jobs while claiming it had no effect on employment would be a five-alarm scandal. We are not in a functioning political environment.
Crowley, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO president, asked the right question: these are good-paying union jobs that provide long-term stability for working families, and the administration is torching them. "Why take those jobs away?" is what Gonzalez asked. The honest answer, based on available evidence, is: because the president doesn't like windmills near his golf course, and nobody with any power has made him stop.
