On the menu today: Today is the end of an error — pardon me, era — and you can read our David Zimmermann on Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons of Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and the lawmakers and staff who served on the January 6 committee; our Haley Strack on Biden’s commutation of the sentences of nearly 2,500 drug offenders; our Jack Butler on the unfinished business of “draining the swamp”; our Dominic Pino on a step in the right direction for Trump’s Department of Labor; and the editors on the need for the new administration to enforce the TikTok ban.
But today’s newsletter focuses on another dramatic policy reversal coming our way soon. After four years of an administration that wanted to approve and fast-track every offshore wind-energy project it could, Trump and his team intend to put a stop to them — which may well decide the fate of the North Atlantic right whale species. Yes, Donald Trump is attempting to save the whales, which was once the rallying cry of environmentalists, greens, left-wingers, and the crew of the Starship Enterprise.
The Irony of Trump’s War on Offshore Wind
President Donald Trump is likely to begin his second term with carpal tunnel syndrome, as he’s scheduled to sign a slew of executive orders today — more than 200, according to Fox News.
Soon a Trump-signed executive order will temporarily halt offshore wind-turbine construction along the East Coast and lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects, according to New Jersey Republican representative Jeff Van Drew:
“These offshore wind projects should have never been approved in the first place,” said Congressman Van Drew. “The Biden administration rammed them through the approval process without proper oversight, transparent lease agreements, or a full understanding of their devastating consequences. They are an economic and environmental disaster waiting to happen. The Biden administration’s reckless green agenda put politics over people, and that ends now. President Trump is committed to stopping these harmful projects and is taking decisive action. This executive order is just the beginning. We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
Van Drew says the proposed order is expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration.
At his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum was noncommittal when asked about keeping offshore wind projects.
“As you may know the capacity factor of offshore wind is significantly higher than terrestrial wind,” Senator Angus King of Maine said during Burgum’s questioning. “I hope that your department will continue with the projects that are already underway. Will you commit to that?”
“I’m not familiar with every project that the Interior has underway, but I’ll certainly be taking a look at all of those. And if they make sense, and they’re already in law, then they’ll continue,” Burgum answered. “I think the key is — and I think President Trump’s been very clear in his statements — that he’s concerned about the significant amount of tax incentives that have gone towards some forms of energy that have helped exacerbate this imbalance that we’re seeing right now.”
According to a U.S. Department of Energy assessment published in August, two offshore wind projects are fully or partially operational — South Fork Wind Farm off Rhode Island was fully commissioned on March 14, 2024, and the Vineyard Wind 1 project, which achieved first power in January 2024 with the installation of several operating turbines. Three more are under construction: the rest of Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind, and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. On December 23, Biden administration approved its eleventh commercial-scale wind project. Wind projects are overseen and regulated by the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Proponents of these projects point out that a combination of stronger offshore winds and larger size — usually twice the size of wind turbines built on land — can generate more electricity.
But bigger turbines and bigger blades also mean bigger problems when something goes wrong:
On Saturday, July 13, a newly installed turbine at the Vineyard Wind farm started undergoing routine testing before it could send power to the grid. It had been operating for six hours when an alarm sounded at 4:21 p.m., signaling a “high vibration” on blade 1, and prompting a turbine shutdown.
About one hour later, a helicopter team got eyes on the cause of that vibration: one of the 350-foot blades had snapped, an incident that would send fragments of foam and fiberglass into the ocean and onto beaches for weeks to come.
The blade failure — described with these new details based on documents The Light obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — was not the first broken blade for this blade model. Nor was it the last broken blade for the Haliade-X, manufactured by GE Vernova. Several weeks earlier, at Dogger Bank Wind Farm off England in the North Sea, a blade had failed due to an “installation error.” Weeks later, another blade failed at Dogger Bank. All three breaks were unrelated, the company has said.
There are also persistent concerns from environmentalists that the development of offshore wind projects off the coast of the New England states endangers the habitat of the North Atlantic right whale. According to NOAA, the right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, and, “There are approximately 370 individuals remaining, including about 70 reproductively active females. Human impacts continue to threaten the survival of this species. The number of new calves born in recent years has been below average.”
(“Right whales” are not the same as “whale rights,” which is Wesley Smith’s department.)
Project advocates insist their construction has never killed a whale, and for what it’s worth, NOAA concludes, “At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths. There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”
But back in 2022, Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, urged BOEM to create a buffer zone between the possible locations of the wind turbines and where the right whales are likely to find zooplankton, the tiny sea animals that make up the right whale diet:
Right whales need dense aggregations of prey to make foraging energetically worthwhile, and disruptions to prey aggregations in the only known winter foraging area for right whales could have significant energetic and population consequences
“However, unlike vessel traffic and noise, which can be mitigated to some extent, oceanographic impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project, unless they are decommissioned,” the letter states.
Research has found turbines will likely affect tidal currents and the water column in which zooplankton (right whales’ food) are found. Whales require dense collections of zooplankton, and any disruptions to that could have “significant energetic and population consequences,” Hayes wrote, particularly for their winter feeding area.
Thus, we have the odd spectacle of green-energy enthusiasts dismissing the concerns of other environmentalists who are attempting to preserve an endangered species. Our David Zimmermann wrote a terrific in-depth article on the contradictions on December 9:
The “extreme number” of whale deaths has been “deemed an unusual mortality event,” ACK for Whales board member Amy DiSibio told National Review. “We’re seeing it, and it correlates perfectly with the offshore wind survey work and all of this construction.”
“For some reason, the agencies are not willing to make that the hypothesis and do the real testing,” DiSibio continued. “They just turn around and say things like, ‘There’s no proof that this is caused by offshore wind.’ That’s a really easy thing to say because they haven’t studied it. There’s also no proof that it isn’t caused by that. But when we see this high correlation, it’s shocking that nobody takes pause on that. It’s actually completely reckless.”
So there you have it; “save the whales” was almost a cliched left-wing rallying cry back in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, incoming president Donald Trump is attempting to save one of the most endangered species of whales from energy projects approved by Joe Biden.
I’m reminded of what Conan O’Brien said in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “Well, I’ve officially lived a long life because people are excited Germany is rearming.”
Biden’s Most Shameless Promise, Unkept
As of this writing, Joe Biden has just a few hours left to keep his June 11, 2019, promise: “I’ve worked so hard in my career that, I promise you, if I’m elected president, you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America: We’re going to cure cancer.”
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it over the weekend, now the New York Times tells us that access to President Biden, and what he was told about all kinds of topics, were highly restricted by six people: First lady Jill Biden, son Hunter Biden, longtime Biden aides Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, and senior first lady aide Anthony Bernal.
Even in an article that is allegedly exposing how the inner circle of a doddering, forgetful, lost-in-a-fog president pulled off an Edith Wilson, the Times still offers excuses for Biden, stating, “He was exhausted from not one but two trips to Europe and a fund-raiser in California in the weeks before his debate with Mr. Trump on June 27.”
As I wrote the first time this nonsensical excuse reared its ugly head, Biden did not leave the east coast between June 16 and 27, and had no public events on his schedule from June 19 to 27. Those trips had been eleven days earlier! If you can’t recover from jet lag within eleven days, you cannot handle the duties of the president.
Also, as a few readers pointed out, it’s not like Biden was stuck in the middle seat in row 34 on Frontier Airlines with a kid kicking his seat behind him and a crying baby next to him. Air Force One has a bedroom!