By Kennedy Maize
The Trump administration’s vendetta against wind energy has suffered another blow in federal court. A federal judge in Oregon has overturned Defense Department delays and then a complete halt on reviewing onshore wind projects to assure they don’t harm “military operations and readiness.”
Judge Karin Immergut of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on Aug. 6 issued a preliminary injunction to DoD to resume reviewing wind projects, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stalled.
Congress in 2011 created the “Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse” to review the national security implications of energy projects, as part of a general review of tall construction projects. In her order, Judge Immergut, a 2019 Trump appointee, wrote, “Between 2011 and 2025, this statutory and regulatory framework governed DoD’s review of applications for wind energy projects, just as it governed applications for all energy projects. But beginning in August 2025, DoD incrementally stopped processing proposed wind energy projects, and on May 7, 2026, DoD’s review of wind energy projects ground to a halt.”
The DoD reviews are part of a process that begins with the Federal Aviation Administration’s broad review of major construction projects, including wind turbines and power lines. Proposed construction of any project that extends over 200 feet above ground level must pass muster.
FAA does an “aeronautical study” to see if the construction will have an “adverse impact on the safe and efficient use” of the “navigable airspace.” DOD reviews the project for its military impacts through the Clearinghouse. The Pentagon has cleared no wind projects since August 2025. Prior to that, wind project clearances were mostly routine.
More than two dozen regional and local wind energy groups and projects sued shortly after DOD stopped reviewing projects entirely. Initially, the agency started slow-walking the reviews, never clearing any. Then it stopped them entirely, putting hundreds of wind projects in regulatory no man’s land. The regulations setting up the Clearinghouse have time limits for reviews, but the Trump Pentagon has not met any of them.
The wind interests said the Pentagon’s lack of action has put over 100 proposed on-shore wind projects in 26 states on hold, a potential investment of some $47 billion.
The Pentagon said its reviews indicated that wind projects might obstruct radar signals, allowing enemy drones to reach their target more easily, without presenting any evidence. The fears were entirely hypothetical. The Pentagon argued that “it is against the public interest to force the Clearinghouse to quickly cobble together a methodology, or rely on a prior one, that potentially fails to adequately consider emergent national security risks.”
Judge Immergut rejected this argument. She concluded, “DoD ignores that it is Congress that established the ‘methodology’” that the agency said is a problem. “Congress has already weighed the national security interests on both sides and determined that its detailed statutory scheme best protects national security.
“For that reason, it is not for the DoD, or this Court for that matter, to override the careful choices of the people’s elected representatives. If DoD wishes to alter the statutory scheme, it can ask Congress to do so. Until then, DoD has no power to ‘tailor’ legislation to [its] policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms.”
As in the case of the Interior Department’s failed attempts to stop work on major offshore wind projects, where four federal judges slammed the administration for failing to follow the Administration Procedure Act in justifying their actions, the wind plaintiffs also noted that the Pentagon had sidestepped the APA.
In an analysis, the Snell & Wilmer law firm commented, “The court stayed DoD’s review freeze nationwide by applying the injunction to all pending wind energy applications and ordered DoD to file monthly status reports. The court concluded that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits because DoD violated mandatory deadlines and unlawfully withheld required agency action.”
The law firm added, “This preliminary injunction marks a significant, but interim, victory for the wind energy industry. The merits of the claims remain to be decided, and DoD retains the option to appeal to the Ninth Circuit or seek a stay pending appeal.”
The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics
