{"id":252532,"date":"2026-06-02T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/252532\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:10:10","slug":"blue-states-sue-trump-admin-over-offshore-wind-lease-cancellation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/252532\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue states sue Trump admin over offshore wind lease cancellation"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York is leading a coalition of seven Democrat-led states that is suing the Trump administration over a buyout deal<\/a> struck earlier this year that resulted in the cancellation of an offshore wind farm<\/a> lease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and state Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced<\/a> on Tuesday that the state is suing the Trump administration<\/a> over its decision to cancel a lease for an offshore wind project off the coast of New York.<\/p>\n

The administration killed the project in March by agreeing to pay French energy company TotalEnergies $928 million in exchange for backing out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democrats argue that the payments amounted to an illegal payoff. The administration has defended the deal by saying the funds were a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement of what TotalEnergies spent on the lease, as well as a second federal water lease for a project off the coast of North Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The New York<\/a> project, known as Attentive Energy, was expected to be located roughly 54 miles south of Long Island, producing enough energy to power more than 1 million homes and businesses by the early 2030s. The company paused the project after President Donald Trump<\/a> won the 2024 election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of the deal with the administration, TotalEnergies agreed to walk away from the project, not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States, and invest in fossil fuel projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democratic coalition is now arguing that this deal is unlawful and violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They claim in their suit that the Interior Department is required by law to hold a hearing and find that continuing the lease would likely cause serious harm to life, property, national security, or the environment before canceling it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pay-not-to-play scheme pressuring a foreign company to forego planned offshore wind projects in America in favor of gas and oil drilling is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars that hurts our ability to meet our energy needs, create good jobs, and help secure American energy independence while reducing emissions,\u201d Hochul said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAttorney General James and I will continue to aggressively fight back against Donald Trump\u2019s overt and never-ending hostility toward offshore wind, including his unlawful use of the most powerful office in the world to get private companies like TotalEnergies to bow to his will,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other states that signed on to the lawsuit are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.<\/p>\n

INTERIOR KILLS TWO MORE OFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS WITH LEASE BUYOUT AGREEMENTS<\/a><\/p>\n

The Trump administration announced a similar deal, killing two offshore wind projects off the coasts of California, as well as New York and New Jersey, in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if the Democratic attorneys general planned to challenge those deals as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York is leading a coalition of seven Democrat-led states that is suing the Trump administration over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,426,9,11,10,49,51,50,655,12195,44568],"class_list":["post-252532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-donald-trump","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-trump-administration","tag-washington-d-c","tag-wind-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}