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Trump is back to playing dumb political games with wind energy [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-05-20
Did President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum use a green energy wind project as a bargaining chip to reopen a gas pipeline?
Unfortunately, it seems that way.
In April, Burgum halted Empire Wind 1, a New York-based wind turbine project signed off by Trump in 2017. To justify the decision, he pointed fingers at President Joe Biden for reportedly “rushing through” signing off on the project.
But a month before, Trump met with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to discuss the reopening of the Constitution gas pipeline, which was closed in 2020. The pipeline brought gas from Pennsylvania's drilling fields to New York but was halted due to backlash by environmentalists and politicians.
“Hochul, who’s a very nice woman, she’s coming in tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock to meet on that and other things,” Trump told reporters.
Wind turbines
Making an eerie half-threat, he added, "I hope we don't have to use the extraordinary powers of the federal government to get it done. But if we have to, we will, but I don't think we'll have to."
It’s unclear if halting a $5 billion wind turbine project estimated to bring in thousands of jobs to New York counts as “extraordinary powers of the federal government” or not, but once the pipeline reopened, the wind turbine project resumed as well. And, of course, Burgum took to social media to celebrate.
“Energy Dominance is the foundation of America’s economic and national security. I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity, he wrote on X Monday.
And—likely for very different reasons—Hochul also celebrated the news.
“After countless conversations with Equinor and White House officials, bringing labor and business to the table to emphasize the importance of this project, I’m pleased that President Trump and Secretary Burgum have agreed to lift the stop work order and allow this project to move forward,” she wrote in a press release.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul
Daily Kos reached out to the press offices of Hochul and Burgum for additional comment but did not immediately hear back.
Meanwhile, with Norwegian company Equinor backing Empire Wind 1, officials in Norway have found themselves in the crossfires of an energy bargaining battle.
"This is an agreement about natural gas and wind made in the United States," Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, former NATO secretary general, told reporters Tuesday.
And Equinor is no small fish to cast aside. The gas and green energy company has invested $60 billion U.S. energy projects—primarily in gas and oil.
And for Burgum, the cookie-loving monster has an affinity for dirty energy, signing new oil leases for offshore drilling and pushing for more coal and uranium mines across the United States.
The Trump administration is certainly getting its “energy dominance”—even if it has to bully its way to the bargaining table.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/20/2323397/-Trump-is-back-to-playing-dumb-political-games-with-wind-energy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_8&pm_medium=web
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