President Trump Orders Immediate Halt on New or Renewed Offshore Wind Leases
Trump rides to the rescue of the East Coast’s whales.

President Donald Trump took significant action against offshore wind projects shortly after his inauguration. He signed an executive order that halts all new and renewed approvals, permits, leases, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.
His sweeping order has a fairly lengthy title that hits all the key elements: “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects.”
The executive order affects all offshore wind development in the U.S., as it takes place in the Outer Continental Shelf under federal control. The directive includes several key provisions:
- A comprehensive assessment of the wind industry’s impacts on the economy and environment.
- Withdrawal of all waters in the Outer Continental Shelf from wind leasing access.
- A review of existing wind energy leases to identify potential grounds for termination or amendment.
- A study to assess the environmental impact and cost of defunct and idle wind turbines.
Trump’s actions align with his campaign promises to end the offshore wind industry upon returning to the White House. In fact, readers of Legal Insurrection may recall my post on his interview with Joe Rogan, in which Trump said he wanted to be a whale psychiatrist.
“They say the wind drives them mad. It’s a vibration issue because those structures are as tall as 50-story buildings… The wind is howling, objects are moving, creating vibrations and noise. You know what I want to be? A whale psychiatrist.
The noise drives the whales absolutely nuts. They are being washed up on the beaches, but oddly, the environmentalists remain silent on this.”
Trump’s concerns about the marine environment are also backed up by a report from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that said whales, dolphins, birds, and more could be exposed to “unavoidable adverse impacts” by the construction of offshore wind farms. The BOEM was required to conduct an impact assessment for six wind farm sites that were previously approved off New Jersey/Long Island.
The whale deaths along the East Coast shores have been concerning. In 2024, at least eight whales have washed ashore in New York and New Jersey:
- Seven whales (including minke whales) were documented in New Jersey by the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
- One humpback whale washed ashore on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island, which was reported as the first such death in the state for that year.
It’s worth noting that in previous years, there were significant numbers of whale strandings:
- In 2023, at least 13 humpback whales were stranded in New York and New Jersey.
- In 2024, 29 minke whales washed ashore along the East Coast
One aspect of this executive order that the elite media is bitterly complaining about is that Trump tasked New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew (Rep) and vocal critic of offshore wind, with writing the executive order.
Van Drew told The Associated Press Wednesday night that he quickly emailed a draft order to Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to be Interior secretary. Van Drew said the draft is written to halt offshore wind development from Rhode Island to Virginia for six months so the incoming Interior secretary could review how leases and permits were issued.
Van Drew said he believes the approvals did not fully take into account the impact on the fishing industry, tourism, whales or Americans’ utility bills, and it’s problematic to rely on foreign renewable energy companies building the wind farms.
As a reminder, we covered the analysis of Dr. Wade Allison, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) researcher, who had a scathing review of the energy generation efficiency of wind power:
Allison delves into the mathematics of wind energy generation, so I will hit some of the highlights. A contrast with nuclear power, a potentially viable fossil fuel option, is made in one section. Allison also focuses on how relatively delicate the wind stations are in very windy conditions.
If the wind speed is 10 metres per second (about 20 mph) the power is 600 watts per square metre at 100% efficiency. That means to deliver the same power as Hinkley Point C (3200 million watts) [nuclear power station in Somerset, England] by wind would require 5.5 million square metres of turbine swept area – that should be quite unacceptable to those who care about birds and to other environmentalists.
And let’s not forget the environmental emergency caused by a blade failure off the Nantucket coast that marred the summer beach season in the region.
It will be interesting to compare and contrast the Trump team’s analysis of offshore wind projects and their environmental impacts after the 6-month pause has concluded. I would also like to see what the marine mammal fatality data is after the pause as well.
The findings should be fascinating, especially as they will be devoid of climate-cult manipulations and green-energy activism.
It’s good to see Trump riding to rescue the East Coast whales.

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Comments
The fact there’s a “whale psychiatrist” involved makes me wary….
No, that was Trump saying he’d like to be a whale shrink (because of all the money he could make ) 😂
Only if he took payment in krill. I don’t think whales have insurance.
The whale issue aside, wind energy is a costly, high-maintenance, unreliable and intermittent energy source that no prudent energy policy should support/contemplate — on land, or, at sea.
As everyone knows, the wind is free. What many politicians and the people who elect seem not to know is that the cost of converting it into usable is uneconomical. (NB Fossil fuels are also free when in the ground. Extracting them from the ground and converting them into usable energy is what drives their costs.)
Exactly. This is a point so many people miss.
Adam Smith pointed out nearly 250 years ago that minerals in the ground are practically worthless, and almost the entire value of a mine comes from the resources put into discovering and developing it.
This is why it’s nonsense to say that the minerals somehow “belong” to the government of the country where the mine happens to be located, and that that government is entitled to a royalty. That governments routinely do demand such payments is just extortion, and it means that many otherwise viable mines are never developed in the first place.
The idea of building these things in the ocean is insane. The cost of doing ANYTHING skyrockets as soon as it is in the water… and salt water is the worst. Anything kept on, or especially in, the water breaks down at an accelerated pace. Then there are the inevitable storms. This is another left wing pipe dream and grift machine. Kill it.
Yeah, I can only imagine what persistent exposure to salt corrosion does to the turbines, and, the towers on which they’re mounted. And, sending a crew to service these things is also an absurdly costly and time-consuming hassle.
Even on land these things have a max expected working life of 20 years. If you amortize the construction cost over 20 years, and add in the eventual cost of decommissioning and disposal, I doubt that any wind installation has ever been profitable.
That photo is missing stirrup, bridle and bit…
Real men ride
barehumpback.Great news for the whales. To the extent that the federal government can, he should do the same for wind farms in the interior on land. As I recall, Professor Jacobson has written before about all the birds that they kill.
I don’t know if environmental impact statements are required for windmill installation. However, if they are or are not obviously they should be. Also impact statements should be required to discuss the effects on all animals that will be in the territory. They should all be done by congressional legislation so that it will survive into future administrations.
It is indeed obvious to all that these windmills are environmental failures in every regard from design, to performance, to destruction of the environment….yet the “environmentalists” insist upon deployment. Isn’t that curious? One begins to think that the environmentalists and their endless lawsuits, climate change hoax, and policies are not really about planet Earth, but rather about destroying the West.
Kamala would have solved the windmill reliability problem by powering their blades with diesel engines.
good one
And why not think that? Owners of electric cars think they’re “green” while their cars are actually being powered by coal, gas, and hydro, none of which do they consider “green.”
“Environmentalists” are as concerned with whaled off the East Coast as they are plowing under millions of acres of desert for solar farms or those bird chopping blenders up and down the west coast.
Damages marine habitat and marine life. Turbines make disturbing sound, like propeller planes warming up on runway before take off. The vibrations confuse marine life, they get killed by inability to navigate. They are just shoving them out there in water, because nobody wants them on their land.
Not to mention they are money losers that don’t pay for themselves.
The elite media can bitterly complain all they want, but they are all in to sacrifice California to wild fires just to save the tiny Delta smelt. Go figure.
A fish that is not native to CA and reportedly has not been seen in 5 years or more.
You’re just loving that AI toy, aren’t you.
Make whales great again
One of many costly boondoggles goes “BOOM!”.
The main problem with wind is that the power generation is generally either comparatively ‘feast or famine’. Further the highest wind generation months do not coincide with the months of highest demand for electricity. This means that the grid must have backup capacity sufficient to compensate for the only partially predictable shortfalls from wind power. Even operating at its best, from a “faceplate” capacity of 30,000 MW the highest amount of actual generation of power in one month was 13,000 MW here in Texas, a leader in Wind Generation.
This begs the question of whether or not costs would fall if the funds used for developing wind power were instead focused on natural gas plants. The nation, using current technology has roughly a 90 year supply. I posit that 90 years is plenty of time to develop alternatives to natural gas.
“Further the highest wind generation months do not coincide with the months of highest demand for electricity”
Just one of several unfortunate anti-coincidences, another being that regions where insolation is most efficient have the greatest demand for refrigeration, overtaxing even the most effective solar collection.
“I posit that 90 years is plenty of time to develop alternatives to natural gas.”
Indeed, governments who believe they must “anticipate” and “promote” alternatives (they prefer) sin by presumption. If they had only stayed out of the way until LED lights were perfected in their own time, we wouldn’t be stuck with all these crap-performing, landfill-poisoning curly bulbs.