The Associated Press reported that Donald Trump has said his goal is to stop any “windmills” from being built. In December 2025, his administration tried to make that happen by ordering five offshore wind projects already under construction to stop work. Judges allowed all five projects to resume while their cases continued.
The Interior Department responded by changing tactics. If executive orders could not stop the projects, the government would pay their owners to abandon them. On Tuesday, New York led seven other states in two lawsuits over that scheme, while California filed a separate case.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has pledged billions of public dollars to cancel wind projects and steer much of the matching investment toward fossil fuels. Courts will decide whether the deals are legal. The promised money, the canceled leases, and the administration’s purpose are already in plain sight.
Billions for building nothing
The Union of Concerned Scientists counted five developers, 12 leases, and $3.9 billion in promised federal payments. Those leases represented about 21,000 megawatts of potential capacity, enough to power at least 6 to 8 million homes by the group’s estimate.
Reimbursement comes with a condition: the companies must make equivalent investments elsewhere. In March, TotalEnergies agreed to surrender leases off New York and North Carolina worth about $928 million and redirect an equivalent sum into liquefied natural gas and oil and gas projects. April brought deals with Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind worth about $885 million. In June, Invenergy agreed to surrender four leases worth $765 million and put an equivalent amount into gas plants in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, along with geothermal projects in the West. Trade publication gCaptain documented that sequence, and Interior’s own announcement confirms the Invenergy terms.
That is the policy stripped of its slogans: use taxpayer money to retire clean energy leases, then require matching investment largely in the fossil fuel infrastructure Trump prefers. Burgum calls this “energy dominance.” It is government intervention on behalf of gas producers, financed by everyone.
The law does not disappear inside a settlement
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act does not give Interior a blank check to cancel leases. The statute says cancellation follows a hearing and findings that continued activity would probably cause serious harm, that the threat will not fall to an acceptable level soon, and that cancellation offers greater benefits than continuation. It also requires a suspension period before cancellation, unless the lessee requests a shorter one.
The companies agreed to relinquish their leases. The states argue that calling the transactions voluntary settlements cannot erase what the government actually did: use a federal account to reimburse companies for leases that Interior wanted gone. New York’s complaints accuse Interior of misusing the Judgment Fund, an account for valid legal claims against the government, even though the agreements settled no pending lawsuit. California makes the same argument about the $111 million assigned to Invenergy’s lease off its coast.
The plaintiffs also allege that Interior skipped environmental review and the procedures meant to give affected states a voice. Representatives Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin found another problem while investigating the first deal. Their April letter said the national security rationale appeared to have been created after Interior and TotalEnergies had already reached an agreement in principle.
Losing in court does not entitle an administration to buy its way around Congress. A company’s consent does not answer whether Interior had authority to make the payment.
Burgum’s affordability story runs backward
Burgum says the Invenergy deal shifts money toward “dependable, secure energy infrastructure” that will lower utility costs. That is Interior’s stated defense, and it deserves to be taken literally. The department claims gas plants in five Midwestern states will make energy cheaper while canceling projects intended to supply coastal grids.
New York’s energy planners expect the state’s electricity demand to grow 8 percent by 2030 and 24 percent by 2040. The two canceled New York projects were expected to connect directly to New York City’s grid, generate more than 8 gigawatts when counted with the other Invenergy leases, and bring more than $16 billion in investment to the state. Those are New York’s estimates in its announcement of the lawsuits.
The public pays once through the Judgment Fund. It may pay again through a grid with fewer new sources of power as demand rises. Letitia James argues that the resulting scarcity and congestion will raise bills. The lawsuits will test that claim along with the legality of the payments, but Burgum has not explained how power plants hundreds of miles away will replace a canceled source connected to New York City.
The damage starts before any final ruling. Doreen Harris, president of New York’s energy research authority, described the question hanging over future projects: “Who is going to invest?” A developer now has to price in the risk that Washington will halt construction, lose in court, and then offer its competitors public money to leave the industry.
A voluntary deal can still be unlawful
Invenergy says it made a commercial choice in response to unprecedented energy demand. That part is believable. If the federal government offers to reimburse a company for leases and lets it move the same amount into gas projects, taking the deal may serve the company’s owners.
The public interest is a different question. The states did not agree to lose projects around which they planned grid connections and future supply. Their lawsuits argue that Congress did not authorize the Judgment Fund as a permanent account for presidents to finance their preferred energy mix. The lease laws do not vanish when Interior calls a cancellation a settlement.
Trump could not stop offshore wind by decree. Burgum’s answer was to make surrender profitable. Every delayed turbine serves the administration’s goal even if a judge eventually voids the agreements, because power projects need years of planning and investors remember when the government rigs the deal against them.
The lawsuits should force Interior to defend each payment, each procedure the states say it skipped, and each supposed national security concern in public. Until then, the honest description is enough: the federal government has promised billions to destroy planned sources of electricity and steer investment toward fossil fuels. The public supplies the money. Burgum supplies the excuse.