December 11, 2025 — The day after President Donald Trump halted construction of a $5 billion wind project off the New York coast, the nation’s top offshore wind developers gathered for a regularly scheduled strategy session in Washington.
The mid-April meeting quickly became heated.
Michael Brown, an outspoken Scotsman who leads the developer Ocean Winds, expressed anger that the industry’s main trade association would not join a blue-state lawsuit challenging Trump’s freeze on offshore wind permitting. American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet pushed back, saying the industry should preserve its political capital at a time when Congress was gearing up to eliminate former President Joe Biden’s clean energy tax credits.
“I can’t even believe that that just happened,” one attendee recalled thinking.
In the end, the clean power group sat out the suit. But Trump’s assaults on wind only accelerated.