Trump’s war on windmills, briefly explained

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump is launching a new attack in his one-sided war against wind farms. What happened? On Monday, the Trump administration announced it was halting leases for five in-progress wind farms off the East Coast over alleged “national security risks,” which it has not explained. The halt means all five projects, near Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, will have to stop construction, and one that is already partially online will have to stop operations. Why does this matter? The administration’s decision Monday is throwing billions of dollars of investments and thousands of jobs into chaos, setting back US progress on expanding clean energy, and doing it all at a time when rising power prices are becoming an increasingly potent political issue. What’s the context? There’s little reason to put much stock in the Trump administration’s fig leaf of “national security risks,” particularly given the lack of specifics. For one, Trump has proved willing to lean on “national security” as a justification for just about anything he wants to do, including his trade war and his ambitions to acquire Greenland. And second, the timing is conspicuous: Earlier this month, a federal judge struck down Trump’s previous effort to block new wind farms as a violation of federal law. What’s the big picture? One of the hallmarks of Trump 2.0 has been a myopic opposition to renewable energy and a transition away from fossil fuels — even if it involves sabotaging sectors of the US economy in the process. This halt also checks a second box for Trump, who has a long-standing aesthetic grudge against wind turbines dating back to his failed effort to stop their construction near his golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. And with that, it’s time to log off… It’s gift-giving season — and in case you still have a little bit of last-minute shopping left to do, we’re going back to the Vox archives with this 2022 story from Eliza Brooke: How to become a truly excellent gift giver. It’s a great piece, and I particularly enjoy the last recommendation: “If you know that someone loves a particular item, just get them a ton of it.” As always, thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!