A Fortunate Failure

The Trump administration has done its best to hamstring wind power.  Its primary tool for this is stopping required reviews of new wind farms by the Pentagon.

The courts are having none of it.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD’s national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

………

Nothing in that framework allows the DoD to simply stop participating in the process. “If DoD wishes to alter the statutory scheme, it can ask Congress to do so,” Immergut wrote. In the absence of congressional action, the DoD can’t simply ignore the law.

The ruling orders the DoD to resume the process of approving wind projects using the congressionally mandated schedule and to report back every 30 days on its progress.