Democrat Behind Permitting Deal Warns Trump’s Offshore Wind Fight Could Blow It Up

A Democratic senator behind a bipartisan permitting deal warned that a Trump administration court fight over offshore wind could sink the agreement.

The Justice Department has asked federal judges to send the Biden-era approvals for three East Coast offshore wind farms back to the Interior Department for reconsideration, according to court filings reported by Utility Dive. “This is how you blow up a permitting deal,” Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a cosponsor of the Senate permitting bill, said in an Oct. 21 statement, The Associated Press reported.

“The Department of the Interior is complying with a briefing schedule, not announcing a policy change,” an Interior Department spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “Our position has remained consistent throughout this administration and this filing should not be misconstrued as a shift in the Department’s approach to offshore wind.”

An administration official said in a statement to the DCNF that the cases are lawsuits neighborhood groups brought against the wind companies and the government, that they date back to the Biden administration and that the government must respond on the courts’ briefing schedules. The official added that the administration has kept the offices of Whitehouse and Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich informed about the filings.

Whitehouse wrote on X Oct. 19, “The question of regulatory misbehavior against clean energy does need to be resolved before Democrats will vote for this bill.”

The Justice Department said it had no comment beyond what it has filed in court. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Ørsted, US Wind, Avangrid, the town of Ocean City and the offices of Whitehouse, Heinrich, Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The three projects are Maryland Offshore Wind, New England Wind and Revolution Wind, which began delivering electricity to the region in March. The Justice Department filed its requests in lawsuits that opponents of the projects brought against the government, including a suit by Ocean City, Maryland, officials, Utility Dive reported.

Capito introduced the permitting bill, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, on Sept. 30 with Lee, Whitehouse and Heinrich as cosponsors, according to Congress.gov. S. 5653 was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has no reported action since.

The bill would bar federal agencies from revoking or altering permits held by non-federal project sponsors that were in effect on or after Sept. 16, 2026, according to its text. Exceptions include a court order, a permit holder breaking the law or committing fraud, and new information showing urgent harm.

“Companies need confidence that federal approvals will hold up when administrations change,” Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, told the DCNF in a statement.

“We saw this during the Biden administration, when efforts to cancel offshore oil and gas lease sales faced legal challenges and were ultimately blocked in court,” Milito added. “Capital is mobile, and prolonged uncertainty gives companies more reason to look at opportunities elsewhere.”

“Investors backing 30-year assets need rules that outlast a four-year election cycle,” Matt Mailloux, director of clean energy innovation and permitting at ClearPath Action, said in a statement to the DCNF. He noted that the bill “works the same for every technology: a pipeline, a wind farm, a nuclear reactor or a geothermal plant.”

Tom Opdyke, energy and environment policy director at the R Street Institute, and Jordan Nader, a resident senior fellow there, said in a joint statement that the filings “do complicate the conversation” around the bill.

“It is not tenable to maintain a system that risks a change in permit durability every four years,” they said.

“Offshore wind projects that have cleared federal review are already supporting work at American ports and vessel operators, and those businesses make hiring and investment decisions years before construction starts,” Hillary Bright, executive director of Turn Forward, a nonprofit that promotes offshore wind, said in a statement to the DCNF.

“Sending approved permits back for another round of review can create uncertainty for the suppliers and workers who have planned around those projects,” Bright added.

Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute who served on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, backed the administration’s push. “Whatever needs to be done to end offshore wind development should be done,” he said in a statement to the DCNF.

Milloy called the permitting bill “a bad deal for America” that “would be used to permit more wind and solar while much needed fossil fuel and infrastructure development would remain stuck in endless bureaucratic review.”

In the Maryland case, the Justice Department wrote in an Oct. 13 filing that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had found the project could have major adverse impacts, including on the endangered North Atlantic right whale, scenic views and some commercial fisheries, yet approved its plan anyway.

The Trump administration ordered work stopped on five offshore wind projects in December 2025, Utility Dive reported. The administration has also begun paying developers to surrender offshore wind leases, according to The Associated Press.

Whitehouse told reporters Sept. 30 that senators would take up amendments to the bill once the Senate is back in session in November, Utility Dive reported.

New England Wind, which Avangrid is developing off Massachusetts, calls for up to 129 turbines and has not begun construction, according to The Associated Press.

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