1. New England (and Maryland) – The Trump administration is still messing with offshore wind farms, even while trying to pass a permitting reform deal. Examining the court filings reveals why they may feel empowered to do it — and I’m not sure how this ends.

• Last Friday, in a legal case brought by anti-wind activists, the Justice Department submitted a motion in federal court to send the construction and operations plan for Orsted’s Revolution Wind project in New England back to the Interior Department for more analysis. On Wednesday, the DOJ entered a similar motion in another case challenging the construction and operations plan for U.S. Wind’s MarWin project off the coast of Maryland in a lawsuit brought by the state’s coastal community of Ocean City.
• Trump’s actions led some to question whether the president was sabotaging the deal, and others to claim the media coverage itself was an attempt to kill it. Going further, supporters of the bipartisan bill claimed the DOJ's motions were precisely why the bill should become law, implying it would guard offshore wind farms against this sort of maneuver.
• However, for the bill’s backers, it’s worth considering why the Trump administration believes it has the legal authority to do this. It’s also time to ask whether the bill would actually protect these wind farms against this tactic.
• To answer those questions, you have to rewind. On May 1, 2025, the Interior Department withdrew a Biden solicitor’s opinion instructing the agency to “strike a rational balance” between wind power and fishing interests. This revocation document is technically not in effect at the moment; one year later, a federal court ruled the opinion was potentially illegal as a part of a preliminary injunction on five anti-renewables actions requested by solar and wind trade groups. The Trump administration is contesting that ruling, and the administration has filed a notice of appeal.
• In August, despite that opinion being in doubt, a federal judge granted Trump permission under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to remand the construction and operations plan for the now-defunct Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in the waters of New Jersey. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb specifically wrote that Atlantic Shores failed to demonstrate the federal government had limitations under OSCLA on revisiting these plans and that the injunction from the litigation on appeal “did not prohibit all reevaluation of agency action.”
• In the recent Revolution and MarWin filings, Trump’s Justice Department argues the construction and operations plans should be remanded under OSCLA without being vacated. The DOJ motions include claims that previous decision documents did not adequately explain impacts to commercial fishing and other industries that use OSCLA waters. It’s not clear if the administration will win these motions.
• The bipartisan permitting bill would bar the Interior Department and other federal agencies from taking “any new action that would revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, or alter a federal authorization or permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026,” or “any other action to interfere with or prevent the construction or operation at full capacity of a project that has secured all necessary federal authorizations and permits.” The restriction exempts cases where “the agency is required to take such action by order of a court.” As I wrote in our lengthy piece explaining the bill, this provision has a damages component that allows companies impacted by violations to pursue financial compensation.
• Here’s the billion-dollar question I expect we won’t have answered unless the bill language is enacted and then litigated: Would the court order exception apply to rulings that grant these motions? Or would the developers be able to sue for damages?

2. Columbia County, N.Y. – New York’s renewable energy permitting office has rejected an upstate solar farm on farmland as a House Democrat representing the area joined hands with the Trump administration in publicly railing against the project.

• The Office of Renewable Energy Siting on Wednesday denied the construction permit for Hecate Energy’s Shepherd’s Run project in the small town of Copake on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border. ORES interim executive director Jason Zehr wrote in a final decision that Hecate’s application failed to adequately address wetlands and floodplain concerns.
• This is the third time ORES has rejected a renewable energy project’s permit applications, according to the agency, and the second time they’ve done so to Shepherd’s Run. This comes after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins publicly supported halting development of the solar farm after being questioned in Congress. “I’m not sure that there’s a more righteous battle than to battle to save this farmland,” Rollins said in June at a House hearing after Josh Riley, the Democratic Representative for the area, asked for her support fighting against the project.
• Also worth noting: Shepherd’s Run was one of more than two dozen renewables projects Governor Kathy Hochul celebrated the state contracting with last year. Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman visited Copake in April and opposed the solar farm. Maybe things are changing and bipartisanship is coming back to New York.

3. Cumberland County, N.J. – The Vineland data center project is impacting the sector’s reputation in the Garden State.

• If you aren’t familiar with this story yet, DataOne’s project in the small South Jersey city of Vineland is one of the more notorious data center development noise pollution stories. In late September, state regulators fined DataOne for the alleged culprit: more than 60 gas generators brought on site, allegedly without state permits as required. The state Department of Environmental Protection said it was the largest single penalty ever levied against a data center in New Jersey.
• Now, residents are suing Vineland for approving the data center, alleging the city looked past the project’s likely stormwater management issues. It is lawsuit number two after a separate case was brought in May over the noise complaints. And now the Vineland situation is reportedly being brought up in other data center fights.
• Vineland is in the congressional district of Jeff Van Drew, one of the biggest offshore wind opponents in Congress. His Democratic opponent, Bayly Winder, is running on a national AI data center moratorium and has focused on the DataOne site during his campaign.

4. Hood County, Texas – It looks like this corner of Hill Country is going back to court over a data center.

• At least that’s what Sailfish Investors, a developer trying to build a data center near Dinosaur Valley State Park, told the Hood County Commission this week after it voted to reject what Sailfish called compromises, including reducing the project size, property setbacks, and closed-loop cooling.
• The battle over data center development in Hood County is an issue in the U.S. Senate race, as the county commission sought legal support against other projects from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. That appeared to be to no avail. On Thursday, Paxton’s office said it sent letters to more than 150 data center developments in the state requesting compliance with water use reporting standards, including at least one in Hood County, per his office’s news release. But that’s a different story entirely, and his office did not publicly release the letters.