WASHINGTON —Donald Trump, who likes to boast he’s a job creator, just killed 1,000 jobs.
The pro-corporate Republican president personally pulled the federal permit for the Revolution Wind project in Long Island Sound and its associated shore facilities. Building trades members constructing the project and its onshore terminal complex, hired by the Norwegian firm Equinor, were thrown out of work. Union leaders are outraged.
The stop-work order and the pulled permit marked the second time Trump schemed to stop Revolution Wind, part of a program trashing “green energy” that’s aimed at pleasing fossil fuel companies and his party’s global warming deniers.
Coal-fired and oil-fired electric power plants are leading producers of the greenhouse gases fueling global warming and the climate crisis. Solar power, hydro power, and wind power are alternative energy sources go in the opposite direction.
Pulling the Revolution Wind permit is essentially a payoff to the GOP’s corporate campaign contributors from fossil fuel firms. Trump gathered that crowd at Mar-a-Lago during last year’s campaign and offered a quid pro quo: Donate $1 billion, and I’ll free you from rules and taxes.
Revolution Wind was scheduled for completion in 2027. It would have produced enough energy to fuel 500,000 homes yearly.
“Let’s call the stop-work order for Revolution Wind what it is,” said an outraged Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions. “President Trump just fired 1,000 of our members who already labored to complete 80% of this major project.
“A ‘stop-work order’ is the fancy bureaucratic term, but it means one thing: Throwing skilled American workers off the job after they’ve spent a decade training, building, and delivering” the new source of needed electrical power, McGarvey said.
“This project isn’t some pipe dream; it’s real steel in the water and $1.3 billion in investment already on the ground. And with the stroke of a pen late on a Friday, President Trump personally signed off on killing these jobs and creating chaos. He pulled the plug on an almost-finished project, taking jobs, paychecks, and food off the tables of working families.”
Trump “keeps talking a big game about energy dominance, but actions like this prove it’s another empty promise from his administration. This is not dominance; this is decline. Energy dominance doesn’t mean taking away jobs. It doesn’t mean halting major projects that are nearly finished. It doesn’t mean making America less reliable for investors.”
McGarvey predicted other projects would come to a halt or never get started, being “frozen by inconsistent rhetoric and direct actions from this administration, while Congress can’t or won’t act.
“These decisions are tanking the construction industry, eliminating thousands of jobs for workers across multiple sectors…. For the first time in 13 years, building trades members are collecting unemployment checks instead of building the energy” alternatives the U.S. needs.
If Trump can personally halt Revolution Wind, “he will do it to more projects in other sectors, too,” McGarvey forecast. He exhorted Congress and Trump to reverse course, approve Revolution Wind’s permits, and let other projects proceed.
“Stop taking away good-paying American jobs. Stop pulling the rug out from under skilled American workers. Fix this now,” he urged.
But the GOP majority in Congress, following Trump’s orders, is unlikely to heed McGarvey or the construction workers. Not only have Trump and his Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, killed other wind and solar energy projects, but the so-called “reconciliation” bill which lawmakers passed on party lines revoked Biden-era tax credits for renewable energy from wind farms and solar arrays.
Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen alliance, a joint labor-environmental movement led by the Steelworkers, saw the cancellation coming the first time Trump tried to stop Revolution Wind. Walsh says Trump wants to go further and kill the whole “green energy” sector of the economy.
“Donald Trump should support the country’s progress and do everything in his power to foster more resources for the people. Instead, he is trying to wipe an entire sector of the energy industry off the board at a time when our electric grid is overburdened and electric bills are rising. Attacking offshore wind will…kill jobs and weaken our energy sector,” said Walsh.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called Trump’s stop-work order on Revolution Wind “an outrage. This project is fully permitted and 80% complete,” thanks to building trades workers. “It is poised to create hundreds of additional jobs while supplying much-needed energy to the region. Now, President Trump has issued an order requiring work on the project to stop, effectively kicking hundreds of union members out of jobs their families and communities were relying on.”
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