Last week, 18 states and the District of Columbia moved to intervene in a lawsuit filed by wind industry companies against the Department of Defense.
The companies and state leaders say that the feds have frozen all new wind projects by refusing to conduct routine national security reviews. The bottleneck has halted more than 155 onshore wind projects, according to the American Clean Power Association.
The attorneys general argued in a court filing that proposed projects with wind turbines over 200 feet tall must be reviewed by the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense for potential national security concerns. Prior to President Donald Trump’s second term, they claim, those reviews were predictable and collaborative.
But in August 2025, the Department of Defense stopped signing agreements or communicating with developers, the states allege, freezing pending projects at varying stages of review.
The attorneys general pointed to specific projects in their states that have been unable to move forward. In Washington state, Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said five projects totaling more than 1,600 megawatts are stuck in limbo.
“The federal government claims we’re in an energy emergency and yet unlawfully stands in the way of projects seeking to harness an excellent renewable source of energy—wind,” Brown said in a news release.
“(The Department of Defense) has not provided a reasonable explanation for its sudden change in policy, accounted for the harm to states, developers, workers, and ratepayers, or considered the major investments made in reliance on its longstanding review process,” the news release said.
Joining the lawsuit were Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.
In a statement, the Defense Department said it was “actively evaluating” projects in a complex process “to balance renewable energy development with the protection and preservation of testing, training, and operational readiness.”
Trump has long been an opponent of wind power and has gone to great lengths to block the development of both offshore and onshore wind.
“I’m proudly telling you that we’re going to try and have no windmills built in the United States,” he said in March.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Oregon Capital Chronicle, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.