‘It Makes No Sense’: Healey Urges Trump to Stop Wind Attacks
(Bloomberg) -- Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey urged President Donald Trump to stop the government’s push to halt offshore wind developments, saying more electricity supplies are needed to help consumers struggling to pay already-high utility bills.
The federal government should be “working with states, not against states, in an effort to bring more power on board,” Healey said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News in Boston. “That’s what I really urge the Trump administration to get back to. It makes no sense.”
Healey spoke hours after the Massachusetts wind industry suffered a new blow when a court filing showed that the US is working to withdraw a permit for the New England Wind 1 and 2 offshore wind projects near Nantucket. Days earlier, the administration moved to review a permit for a separate wind farm off the state’s coast.
Since taking office in January, Trump has issued a flurry of orders designed to stymie the fledgling US offshore wind business, threatening billions of dollars of investments, hundreds of jobs and new power supplies. Healey, in a wide-ranging discussion in which she also assailed Trump’s cuts to university research and his immigration crackdown, warned that upending wind projects would worsen the financial burden on households.
“Everyone in America is dealing with the high cost of energy,” she said, adding that more electricity is also needed to power data centers.
The Trump administration has argued that offshore wind farms are expensive, unreliable and a threat to national security. Earlier this week, Healey and other Democratic governors from the Northeast pushed back, calling on the White House “to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed.”
One project that has seen some reprieve is in New York, where work on a wind farm off Long Island was allowed to resume. New York Governor Kathy Hochul brokered a deal with the Trump administration on allowances for that project after signaling she wouldn’t block other energy projects in the state, opening up a path for new natural gas pipelines.
In the interview, Healey said she’d consider any proposals for new gas pipelines sent her way. She said she supports a 10-year natural-gas contract proposal from Massachusetts utility Eversource Energy as a “near-term solve.”
The governor was alluding to Eversource’s petition this week for state approval of its participation in Enbridge Inc.’s capacity expansion of the Algonquin pipeline system that runs through part of Massachusetts, a Healey spokesperson confirmed after the interview. The vote of support stands in contrast to her comments on the campaign trail that she stopped two gas pipelines.
Immigration, Economy
Healey also took on Trump’s immigration crackdown, warning that the president’s vow to focus on criminals has become a broader drive that’s straining the national workforce and undermining local law enforcement.
“I’ve said I was all in when it came to taking out violent criminals from our streets, our communities. I think every governor has said we’ll help. But that’s not what’s happening,” Healey said. “Construction workers, and nannies, and landscapers, and health aides, right? People taking care of our kids. That’s who’s getting picked up. It doesn’t make any sense economically.”
Politico reported last week that ICE is planning another immigration blitz in the Boston area, citing current and former administration officials that the outlet didn’t identify.
The tension in Massachusetts mirrors flare-ups in other Democratic-led states. In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker warned Tuesday that he expects stepped-up ICE activity in Chicago “in the coming days,” with federal agents being relocated from Los Angeles. Trump has also threatened to send in troops.
“To put the Guard on the streets in a way they were never intended to be used — against our own citizens — that’s not the mission,” Healey said, labeling as “political theater” the president’s threat of deploying troops. “The Guard didn’t sign up for that.”
She also warned of economic damage from the White House’s halt to federal research funding for universities, saying the cuts have had a “disproportionate effect on Massachusetts” because of its concentration of colleges.
US research funding supports more than $16 billion of economic activity in the state each year, according to the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts. Boston’s large array of hospitals also benefits from university ties.
One possible winner from the cuts is China, which is taking advantage of the disruption to try to lure away top professionals, Healey said.
“China’s on our campuses in Massachusetts and around the United States at our research institutions and our hospitals looking to recruit everyone away,” she said. “That’s the shame of it all.”
(Updates with governor’s support of Eversource proposal in eighth paragraph.)
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