In the following weeks, Varnum, who once identified as a conservative, was hopeful that Maine’s Republican members of Congress would speak up about the funding cuts, but none of them did — not even Sen. Susan Collins, a long-time offshore-wind supporter. He described Collins’ silence as ​“rough,” especially since he had voted for Collins in the past. 

“We’re a poor state. We need industry. To have a new industry that is unique to us, floating offshore wind, now targeted by the feds … It feels like a kick in the teeth,” said Varnum. 

Trump yanked funding in other ways. 

In September, the Department of Transportation pulled back $679 million for infrastructure projects that supported offshore wind, including one that would have cleaned up and revitalized a massive California port. Mandy Davis, a California resident and anti-wind activist, aligns herself with Trump’s false narrative that turbines harm the ocean environment. She was elated by cuts that might block turbine construction in California’s waters, but her joy was short-lived. 

In November, when the Trump administration announced plans for new oil drilling off the California coast, she told me it was a ​“betrayal.”

New England communities, which spent over a decade preparing to build America’s first offshore wind farms, also felt betrayed. Prior to Trump’s December halt, two massive projects had been paused by the Interior Department earlier in the year. One of the projects, Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, was already 80 percent completed. 

“It’s like having the rug pulled out from under you,” Jack Morris, a Massachusetts-based scalloper and Trump voter, told me earlier this year. ​“Nobody understands why Trump did it. I don’t know what Trump’s agenda is.” 

Revolution Wind had employed 80 local fishermen, including Morris, to help with construction. The project’s pause caused Morris and others to lose some of the part-time income that has them pay their bills as fishing revenues dry up.

The stop-work orders for Revolution Wind and New York’s Empire Wind were each lifted or reversed after about a month. But some damage was permanent. According to Harrison Sholler, an energy analyst for BloombergNEF, the orders were a signal to companies that America is not a sound investment. Foreign firms had invested heavily in the sector, lost billions, and are now looking for the door.

Trump’s more sweeping wind halt last week only reinforced that assessment. 

What America lost

“What exactly will America have lost? How do you even begin to answer that question?” pondered Elizabeth Wilson, a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College. 

We could start by looking at how much new electricity capacity won’t be added to America’s increasingly strained grid.

Before Trump was elected last November, BNEF expected 39 gigawatts of offshore wind to be built in the U.S. by 2035. BNEF’s latest forecast is for just 6 gigawatts by 2035 — and even that number could come down thanks to Trump’s latest pause. 

Another lens is employment. Together, the five wind farms currently underway have been slated to generate about 10,000 jobs. Now some of the highly skilled workers who have already trained for those projects face an uncertain future. And the 77,000 offshore wind jobs that the Biden administration had projected the country would see in the coming decades may never materialize. 

Varnum, the laid-off engineer, said that if Maine’s nascent offshore wind industry rises from the ashes sometime in the future, he ​“certainly would want to help. It’s not something I’m turning my back on.” 

He has since found a job working for a hydroelectric company. But Varnum said he fears for America’s energy future and how far Trump might take his broader war on carbon-free energy. The president has already boosted fossil-fuel production and nuclear power while trying to tamp down clean energy. His political revenge against offshore wind may be paving the way for more. 

“The guy torpedoes us on Day One and how far is he going to go? How far will this go?” wonders Varnum.

Wilson of Dartmouth says that Trump’s assault on offshore wind is ultimately a battle over facts and truth. 

Fossil fuel–backed activists and groups have for years been spreading misinformation about wind turbines harming whales. They lit the match and Trump fanned the flames. The president ranted and made false claims about offshore wind throughout 2025, in front of reporters, foreign heads of state, and the entire United Nations General Assembly

Meanwhile, his administration quietly axed over $5 million for research into the impact of offshore wind on the giant mammals, ending the best and longest-running studies on the issue, as Canary Media first reported.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum justified the Trump administration’s pause of the Empire Wind project by claiming the Biden administration approved it based on ​“flawed & bad science” about impacts on marine life, but the Interior Department refused to share the report that supposedly backed that up. The project’s developer and Democrats in Congress are still waiting for an unredacted version. 

“There’s no proof, right? There are no receipts,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, told me in June. He said the administration hid the report and then used the permitting process as a ​“political tool,” something he sees as typical of ​“a banana republic.” 

Without new offshore turbines going up, millions of households across the Northeast will soon pay more money for dirtier and less reliable electricity. According to a recent report, offshore wind power could help keep the lights on year-round in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, especially during harsh winter weather when gas plants can fail. Cuts to planet-warming pollution, mandated by several East Coast states, are also now out of reach. All signs point to Trump’s second term creating a hotter and less affordable future for Americans. 

Few people interviewed for this story expressed hope that the damage from Trump’s war on ​“windmills” could be reversed anytime soon. 

“What Trump really killed was hope,” said Wilson. ​“And what is the value of hope?”