Letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum Blasts Rationale Given by Trump Administration and Demands Classified Briefing To Review Purported Threats
Governors Scoff at Claim Offshore Wind Farms Interfere with Radar Systems Given Years of Reviews
Governors Warn Federal Action Will Harm Economy and U.S. Energy Independence Efforts
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, and Rhode Island Governor Dan Mckee today sent a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum demanding the immediate lifting of stop work orders placed Monday on five offshore wind projects under construction, including Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind in New York.
The Governors in the letter also demand a classified briefing to review the unexplained national security threats used to place the stop work orders.
The letter notes that the targeted projects were approved after undergoing substantial federal reviews and processes, including by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Governors in the letter blast the national security claims and supposed concerns about the impacts offshore wind farms have on radar as pretexts that contradict years of reviews and established practices. They also charge that the Trump Administration is only using the rationale as a “pretexual excuse to justify a predetermined outcome consistent with the President’s frequently stated personal opposition to offshore wind.”
The letter also warns Burgum that by blocking “gigawatts of domestic clean energy, you are effectively throttling the U.S. economy and handing a strategic advantage to foreign rivals who are building power generation as fast as they can. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2025 Annual Report — ironically, also released in November — found that in 2024 alone, China added new capacity equivalent to one-third of the entire United States’ power grid, while the U.S. struggles to meet rising energy demands.”
“With this irrational and erratic action, you are not solving a national security crisis; you are creating both a national security and economic disaster. By obstructing domestic power generation, you are inviting grid failure, surrendering the industries of the future, and threatening the economy and national security.”
The paused Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind projects in New York combined threaten more than 2,600 good-paying union jobs. The two projects combined will also generate nearly more than 1,700 megawatts of power, roughly 10 percent of New York City’s electricity needs, meeting the growing demand for energy.
Here is the text of the full letter:
December 24, 2025
The Honorable Doug Burgum,
Secretary
U.S. Department of Interior
Washington, DC 20240
Dear Secretary Burgum:
The undersigned States are in receipt of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (“BOEM”) Orders dated December 2025, purporting to suspend all ongoing activities related to offshore wind project development along our coastlines based on newly asserted “national security concerns” from a so-called “Department of War” assessment.
The States take national security seriously. These projects have already been subject to extensive federal review, including an assessment that expressly addressed national security considerations. Neither the Department of the Interior, BOEM, nor any other federal agency, including the Department of Defense (“DoD”), informed our respective States of any purportedly new risk prior to these suspensions nor did they account for our States’ substantial reliance interests— our States’ economies is dependent on the power that these projects will generate— in these vital projects that already have undergone many federal approvals, including from the DoD. The absence of such notice undermines our ability to plan effectively and violates basic principles of cooperative federalism. The sudden emergence of a new “national security threat” appears to be less a legitimate, rational finding of fact and more a pretextual excuse to justify a predetermined outcome consistent with the President’s frequently stated personal opposition to offshore wind.
We reject this transparent pretext and demand the immediate rescission of these suspensions for the following three reasons:
1. True National Security is Energy Security.
With this irrational and erratic action, you are not solving a national security crisis; you are creating both a national security and economic disaster. By obstructing domestic power generation, you are inviting grid failure, surrendering the industries of the future, and threatening the economy and national security.
The United States is currently in a race for the industries of the future, including onshoring advanced manufacturing, improving the defense industrial base, and maintaining U.S. technology and energy dominance. All consume massive amounts of power. You cannot run a 21st-century economy on a 20th-century grid. By blocking gigawatts of domestic clean energy, you are effectively throttling the U.S. economy and handing a strategic advantage to foreign rivals who are building power generation as fast as they can. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2025 Annual Report – ironically, also released in November – found that in 2024 alone, China added new capacity equivalent to one-third of the entire United States’ power grid, while the U.S. struggles to meet rising energy demands.
The Orders directly contradict the President’s purported “Energy Independence” goals. By blocking gigawatts of domestic power generation and killing thousands of jobs, you are forcing reliance on foreign energy markets and volatile supply chains. You cannot claim to be building an energy independent nation while actively dismantling its capacity to generate power.
Independent experts and State officials have documented that our region faces reliability challenges and potential future blackouts without this capacity. A grid that is overly reliant on fossil fuels is a soft target and has higher costs that our residents will be forced to carry. Offshore energy is already providing needed electricity at lower prices to our grid. You cannot claim to protect our nation while knowingly turning off the lights; in effect, these Orders heighten reliability concerns across the East Coast and increase the likelihood of rolling blackouts and will place additional financial burdens on ratepayers.
2. “Classified” Pretexts Contradict Science and Years of Public Vetting.
Administrative actions, such as those you have taken here, cannot be based on undisclosed, secret rationales – especially not when thousands of jobs and vital energy projects are at stake. Yet your letter obliquely alludes to undisclosed “new classified information” regarding “adversary technologies” as the reason for this sudden reversal. We demand an immediate classified briefing for our cleared personnel to review this supposed evidence and all information related to this purported rationale.
It strains credulity to believe that vital, substantial projects that underwent many federal reviews and processes, including by the DoD, all of a sudden present new, existential, unforeseen threats. Erratic, unpredictable, irrational actions like these are no way to govern, let alone plan for power generation capacity decades into the future.
Therefore, in this briefing, we formally request the following specific disclosures:
- A clear description of the specific national security risks BOEM and the DoD determined in the purported November 2025 “additional assessment”;
- All information, or a summary thereof, of the information related to those risks;
- Identification of the particular project components, if any, alleged to give rise to those risks;
- An articulation of how the “assessment” applies to these projects in light of previous extensive reviews;
- An explanation of why these risks were not communicated to New York immediately upon their purported “discovery” in November.
You cite a 2024 Department of Energy report to claim that radar mitigation causes “missed targets.” That same report, Mitigating Wind Turbine Radar Interference, concludes that “replacement radar and infill radar solutions enhance degraded radar performance … Infills show less clutter and result in better performance … [and] can serve as a viable mitigation solution.” If “clutter” were a genuine threat, it might also apply to the thousands of oil rigs and other seaborne infrastructure in our coastal waters.
As the report itself notes, for conventional radar, the curvature of the Earth creates a physical radar horizon. You are citing “clutter” from objects that most land-based radars cannot even see because the Earth is round. For long-range over-the-horizon radar systems, the argument is equally flawed, as the report also points out. These systems utilize signal processing algorithms and other techniques to mitigate radar interference. In fact, the current Federal Interagency Wind Turbine Radar Interference Mitigation Strategy explicitly calls for “removing radar interference as an impediment to future wind energy development … while preserving U.S. airways, national security, the lives and property of citizens, and sensitive radar systems”.
The Federal Government, including the DoD, reviewed all information for the offshore wind projects years ago. The military had the opportunity to raise concerns and object. They did not, and further certified there was no threat to national security. To claim a threat exists now, after billions of dollars have been invested in these projects and reviews fully completed, is the height of irrationality.
3. You are Disguising Your Delay.
On December 8, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the federal government’s attempt to arbitrarily halt new offshore wind development. The court explicitly ruled that federal agencies cannot “decline to adjudicate applications altogether… pending the completion of a wide-ranging assessment”.
Your recent Orders are instituting an indefinite delay disguised as a “national security review”. Re-branding the paperwork under the “Department of War” does not cure this defect; it serves only as evidence of pretextual bad faith.
This is a moment for leadership, not obstruction. True national and economic security cannot be achieved by hollowing out our industrial base or leaving our power grid vulnerable to collapse. It requires the courage to build.
We urge you to look beyond bureaucratic games and recognize the real battle being waged: the global race for energy independence, economic dominance, and national security preeminence. Do not be the administration that handed the future to our adversaries by turning off the power at home.
Rescind these suspensions immediately. Let us get back to the work of powering this great nation.
Sincerely,
Kathy Hochul
Governor of New York
Maura Healey
Governor of Massachusetts
Ned Lamont
Governor of Connecticut
Dan McKee
Governor of Rhode Island
cc:
The Honorable Pete Hegseth, Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense
The Honorable Marco Rubio, Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Acting National Security Advisor
Mr. Alex Meyer, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
View a Copy of the Letter Here
See also: GOVERNORS FIGHT BACK AGAINST TRUMP’S LATEST ATTACK ON OFFSHORE WIND
