OPINION:
In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said it wanted to reopen a permit for the New England Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts.
The Justice Department told the court that the Interior Department needs to reevaluate the project’s compliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
Wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Did the administration not just make a similar request last week regarding the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island? Yes, yes, it did.
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Around the same time, the administration put two other projects that have not started construction — Atlantic Shores off the coast of New Jersey and Maryland Offshore Wind — under the microscope and subjected them to judicial efforts to remand their permits.
That makes four offshore wind projects that Team Trump has reeled back in over the past few weeks. In the wake of all that, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse — Rhode Island Democrat and the negotiator who got pretty much everything he wanted in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 — said the administration’s actions were placing that deal in jeopardy.
He is right to worry. All the concessions he obtained from Senate Republicans might go up in smoke if it becomes clear that not everyone in the administration is on board with every provision in the legislation.
As a brief reminder, the core of the proposed legislation is an expansion of the size and scope of the federal government, more specifically the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It gives the commission the ability to impinge on the authority of states over the regulation of electricity transmission, including decisions about where transmission lines are sited and who will pay to build them.
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act will essentially compel utilities to build transmission where, when and how the federal government wants. It will likely maximize conflict among states, the federal government, utilities, and citizens, and will consequently almost certainly increase bureaucratic and legal friction — and costs.
The legislation as negotiated by Mr. Whitehouse is built on the idea that involving more lawyers and more bureaucracies will somehow simplify and speed the process.
Yet as anyone who has ever dealt with bureaucracies or lawyers will tell you, they rarely simplify or accelerate anything.
I have said this before and will repeat it: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the best, most competent, most responsive and thoughtful organization in the federal government. Full stop.
That does not mean, however, that it can make careful, wise decisions of national importance about transmission planning, cost allocation, the disposition of private property and the political preferences of the literally millions of voters who will be affected by the transmission lines that it will plan, approve and permit.
Mr. Whitehouse is not the only one concerned about the administration’s seeming indifference to his negotiated masterpiece. The National Energy Dominance Council noted that “the White House maintains support for permitting reform.”
That certainly seems likely, but there is the small matter of the 230 or so wind projects under consideration in various places across the administration.
Given his historical sentiments about wind power, there is no telling how President Trump will feel about the legislation’s provisions that toss a lifeline to the 200 or so onshore wind and 30 or so offshore wind projects that have thus far been under careful, deliberative and unhurried scrutiny by his team.
Maybe he will be happy, but that might not be the way to bet.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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