Trump Convenes Cabinet For Coordinated Attack on Wind and Solar

Washington, D.C. – Earlier this week, Donald Trump and his Cabinet spent their afternoon bragging about their coordinated attacks on wind and solar energy. Trump and his sycophants have spent more than a week waging a combined offensive against clean energy, escalating their efforts to gut energy production despite soaring demand and rising prices. Here are the facts:

Trump and his Cabinet spent their meeting ramping up  their baseless attacks on clean energy:

• Donald Trump: “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up. I mean, unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago, we don’t allow windmills.”

• Donald Trump: “It’s so crazy. It’s so crazy. So we’re not heavy into that at all. And windmills, we’re just not going to allow them. They ruin our — they’re ruining our country. They’re ruining everyone — if you look at — I hate to mention countries, but you look at the UK, what’s happened in the UK, they have — energy costs have gone through the roof it’s because of wind.”

• Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy: “I want to talk, because you mentioned the wind farms, we now have an inner departmental coalition a team, which is Doug Burgum and Howard Lutnick and Chris Wright and Pete Hegseth, who are all working on this issue. ZELDIN: And Lee. RFK: And Lee — sorry, Lee. Who are all working together on this issue, we’re meeting together.”

…This meeting is just the most recent example of a growing trend of attacks on wind, solar, and clean energy by Trump and nearly his entire Cabinet. Here’s what more of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries are saying…

• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum: “Renewable projects “hold America back” from achieving “energy dominance,” Burgum said in a news release accompanying the order. Leaders of renewable energy companies have repeatedly said in recent months that solar and wind are often the fastest and cheapest forms of energy to bring quickly online as utility companies grapple with rising power demand.”
• Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins: “The Agriculture Department is curtailing its support for solar and wind energy on farmlands. In a Monday post on the social media platform X, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the department “will no longer deploy programs to fund solar or wind projects on productive farmland, ending massive taxpayer handouts.” The department, on Tuesday, said that wind and solar projects would no longer be eligible for USDA business and industry loan guarantees.” 

• EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin: “INTERVIEWER: What’s behind this? I know this is more of an Interior Department thing, but what’s the problem with this wind farm in Rhode Island? ZELDIN: President Trump’s been very consistent. He’s not a fan of wind, the economics of it. He’s also been outspoken on environmental impacts, impacts to fisheries, and we saw a Section 232 decision from an investigation out of Commerce, which was news over the course of the last day or two, looking at windmill imports from out of the country and analyzing whether it’s a national security threat.”

…And here’s what else Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries are doing to expand their attacks on clean energy.

Department of the Treasury

• Politico, August 15: “Trump administration deepens crackdown on solar and wind tax credits”

Department of Commerce

• Reuters, August 21: “The U.S. Commerce Department said on Thursday it has opened a national security investigation into the import of wind turbines and components.”

• New York Times, August 21: “Trump Starts Investigation That Could Lead to Tariffs on Wind Turbines […] The tariffs would hamper a clean energy industry that the president has often railed against.”

Department of the Interior

• Energywire, August 12: “Interior demands eagle data from wind developers”

• Energywire, August 11: “The Trump administration has taken multiple actions to stifle wind energy projects in recent weeks, including a series of high-profile orders from the Interior Department.”

• Greenwire, August 4: “An order issued late Friday by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that targets wind and solar development has left renewable energy developers and industry observers scrambling to determine whether green energy has any future in the Trump administration. Burgum’s secretarial order requires that Interior agencies evaluating new onshore solar and wind project proposals, as well as offshore wind projects, consider “capacity density,” or how much area the projects cover.”

• Greenwire, August 6: “Burgum nixes ‘thoughtless’ Biden approval of Idaho wind farm”

• Energywire, July 17: “Solar and wind energy projects must now get Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal sign-off to receive permits across the hundreds of millions of federal acres under his department’s control, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.”

Department of Energy

• New York Times, July 23: “The Energy Department on Wednesday said it had terminated a commitment to provide a $4.9 billion loan guarantee to a company building a contentious transmission line across the Midwest. The cancellation may imperil the $11 billion project, known as Grain Belt Express, which would cross 800 miles of farmland and is designed to carry electricity generated by wind farms in Kansas to population centers in Illinois and Indiana.”

Department of Transportation

• Climatewire, August 19: “DOT aims to keep wind turbines away from railroads, highways”

Department of Justice

• Politico Pro, August 25: “The Trump administration said in recent legal filings it intends to vacate a key permit for a planned offshore wind project off the coast of Maryland — its latest action to impede the nascent offshore wind sector. In a motion filed on Friday in a lawsuit challenging the approval of the construction and operations plan for the proposed Maryland Offshore Wind Project, the Justice Department said Interior “intends to move to voluntarily remand and vacate” the approval for the US Wind project.”