Thomas Kilday was 28 days into an offshore shift on the Revolution Wind Project when the Trump administration's stop-work order landed like a bomb. The furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was working on a vessel miles off the Atlantic coast, commuting by helicopter to turbines he helped install. The uncertainty was crushing.
"You plan your whole life around being gone for 28 days, and to come out here and have it thrown up in the air, worrying what does this mean for me, for my pay for the next four weeks," Kilday said. "There's a lot of uncertainty."
Since Trump returned to office, his administration has issued an executive order halting all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted multiple stop-work orders on projects under construction, and spent more than $2.6 billion buying out wind-energy leases to kill them outright. The collateral damage: hundreds of workers watching their livelihoods evaporate.
The attack on wind power is relentless. When a federal court blocked Trump's first stop-work order on Revolution Wind in September, the administration simply issued another one in December, citing national security. That came just as Kilday was home for Christmas with his family, money already spent on gifts, and another four-week shift looming.
"I just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about," he said. "Six months out of the year we're away from home, and for what little time we do have at home, not to be able to spend just focus all of that time and energy on our families, it's tough."
Yet Kilday stands by the work. The Revolution Wind Project announced in March that it began supplying power to New England, powering over 350,000 homes and businesses. More than 1,000 union workers built it. Construction is over 90 percent complete.
When Kilday drives down his street at home, he looks up at the power lines. "I helped create the power that's running through those power lines, and I'm proud of that," he said.
The administration's legal strategy collapsed in June when it abandoned efforts to halt all wind projects and leases nationwide after a judge rejected Trump's freeze on wind permitting. So the White House switched tactics, paying corporations to walk away from already-approved projects.
The Department of Interior has completed four lease buyout deals totaling more than $2.6 billion. Invenergy received $765 million to abandon four wind projects in California, New York, and Maine. Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind got nearly $900 million combined to cancel offshore leases in New York and California.
"I think it's a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases," said Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. "These projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they're providing good-paying union jobs for thousands."
Crowley noted that the Trump administration has lost in court five times trying to halt wind projects in Rhode Island. "We're five for five taking on the Trump administration," he said. "What the Trump administration is doing is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology."
Will Gonzalez, a construction laborer with Laborers' local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, built the Vineyard Wind 1 project off Martha's Vineyard. The Trump administration tried to halt it in January, but it's now fully operational. Gonzalez and his coworkers completed specialized training they can no longer use.
"It's a personal vendetta," Gonzalez said, referencing Trump's long-running battle against a wind project proposed near his golf course in Scotland, which he lost in 2015. "Good union jobs, we shouldn't be trying to take those off the table. That just doesn't make any kind of sense. Why take those jobs away?"
The Department of Interior denied the cancellations and stop-work orders affected employment. "No jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment," a spokesperson said, claiming the administration prioritizes existing infrastructure that creates jobs faster.
The claim ignores workers like Kilday and Gonzalez, already hired and on active projects. It also ignores the court orders blocking Trump's stop-work attempts. In January, a second judge issued an injunction halting the administration's second stop-work order on Revolution Wind.
Author James Rodriguez: "Spending billions to kill jobs while claiming to create them is a strategy only possible when the courts keep blocking the legal end-runs."
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