One of President Donald Trump’s many January 20 executive orders paused permitting and leasing for offshore wind projects in the United States, a victory for anti-renewable energy activists who have vilified the technology for years.

The order follows years of Fox News bashing offshore wind farms based largely on falsehoods repeated by the president and self-proclaimed conservationists with ties to fossil fuel interests. In addition to his so-called conservation efforts, Trump has promised to halve energy costs in his first year in office, and he immediately declared a “national energy emergency” with the intent of doing so. Economists and energy experts say he won’t succeed. 

Offshore wind opponents, contradicting insights from marine mammal experts, maintain that the development of offshore wind farms along the East Coast is causing large whale die-offs. This poorly understood phenomenon has affected several whale species in the area since 2016. Trump and Fox News personalities, and other right-wing media figures, have characterized these projects as particularly destructive to wildlife, including birds. 

Yet while they are feigning concern for whales, right-wing media are not mentioning offshore drilling for oil and gas — an activity that Trump has encouraged, and one that harms marine life. During these segments praising Trump's move to pause wind projects, they also haven’t focused on the jobs that would likely be eliminated if new offshore projects fail to materialize, while job loss has been a key focus of theirs in coverage of former President Joe Biden’s 2021 cancellation of an extension on the crude oil Keystone pipeline.  
 

• During his inaugural address, Trump amplified the baseless claim that “if you’re into whales, you don’t want windmills.” Trump specifically implied whale mortality events in New England were due to offshore wind projects in the region. [The Washington Post, 1/21/25, Newsmax, The Record with Greta Van Susteren, 1/21/25]
   
• Scientists say there is no evidence that offshore wind is contributing to whale deaths, but fishing gear entanglement, vessel collisions, and the changing migration patterns of whale prey could be contributing. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution writes there is “no evidence” to support the claims that offshore wind projects are responsible for an uptick in whale deaths. “Of all the right whales that have died over the last several decades, the cause of death for juveniles and adults is always vessel strike or fishing gear entanglement,” according to Woods Hole whale biologist Mark Baumgartner. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports support these findings. [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 5/9/24; Yale Environment 360, 3/8/23; Factcheck.org, 3/31/23; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, accessed 2/3/25]
   
• Some types of sonar can harm marine life – but those technologies are not used for offshore wind surveying. As biologist Scott Travers explains for Forbes, seismic blasting used for oil and gas exploration can harm marine life because it is “loud enough to penetrate hundreds of miles into the ocean floor.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that sound produced by high-resolution geophysical surveys used by offshore wind energy companies “produce much smaller impact zones because, in general, they have lower noise, higher frequency, and narrower beam-width.” According to Travers, the technology used for offshore wind surveying is less harmful because developers are “primarily interested in what’s on the seabed, not what’s beneath it.” [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, accessed 1/30/25; Forbes, 4/25/24]
   
• Scientists say climate change is harming whale populations. According to Woods Hole, scientists also suspect climate change has been “changing the distribution” of prey sought out by the whales. “Following their prey, the whales traveled farther north than they had before, into areas without protection. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to protect them in these locations, simply that no one expected the whales to show up there.” While scientists feel that more research and careful monitoring is needed, reporting from NPR’s WCAI radio station and science reporting effort Science Friday found that “more than a half dozen scientists and right whale conservation advocates interviewed for this story said the biggest risk to right whales and other endangered species is the very danger offshore wind is designed to address: climate change.” [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 5/9/24; Science Friday, 3/29/24]

• On Newsmax’s Savage Nation, guest Tucker Carlson praised the executive order targeting offshore wind power and complained about “the amount of destruction that it’s wrought to the environment,” mentioning whales specifically. He also claimed without evidence that “it’s proven — we know that wind turbines, offshore wind turbines, kill whales,” adding, “I really hope the president, by executive order, will end the destruction of nature in the name of green energy.” [Newsmax, Savage Nation with Michael Savage, 1/28/25]
   
• While discussing Trump’s initial executive orders, Fox host Mark Levin compared wind turbines to “old-time tombs and other things that these past ancient people built” and said, “They’re killing birds, they’re killing whales, they make noise, and they do ... not a damn thing.” He praised Trump for promising to “end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our national landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.” [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 1/27/25]
   
• Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy and climate denier Marc Morano claimed Trump is “saving the whales.” Campos-Duffy said that Trump debunked “the left’s claim that wind energy is better for the environment.” She told Morano that she “hates windmills,” labeled them as “bird murderers” and “whale murderers,” and declared, “I think Donald Trump is like the whale whisperer. He’s saving the whales.” Morano said that “Donald Trump is turning out to be the greatest environmental hero of the 21st century,” not just because of “endangered species in terms of especially offshore wind and whales,” but also because he is “bringing in more fossil fuels from the western world.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 1/25/25; DeSmog, accessed 1/30/25]
   
• Fox anchor Bret Baier and correspondent Bryan Llenas highlighted various attacks on offshore wind turbines, including Trump’s claim that they are “ugly, unreliable, and expensive,” “interfere with military radars,” and “kill whales.” Llenas said: “President Biden gave a billion dollars in government subsidies to the Danish energy company Orsted back in 2023 just to see them pull the plug on two wind projects off the coast of New Jersey, citing the high costs. Now, critics have raised concerns that wind turbines interfere with military radars, conservationists claim they disrupt fish migration and kill whales.” Right-wing media celebrated when Orsted scrapped those projects, even though they would have created 15,000 jobs over their lifetimes. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 1/24/25; Media Matters, 11/14/23]
   
• On his new One America News show, former Republican lawmaker Matt Gaetz called offshore wind “a whale torturing project.” [OAN, The Matt Gaetz Show, 1/21/25]
   
• On Fox Business, National Review writer Carolina Downey claimed that Trump will “drill, baby, drill, as he promised to the American people,” adding that “he's also going to save the whales because he's cutting into those wind projects which we know are affecting the whale population.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 1/21/25]

• In 2023, Fox News aired 54 segments falsely linking offshore wind to whale deaths. That year alone, at least 15 programs on the network reported on the false link between offshore wind and whale deaths, including the network’s so-called straight news program Special Report With Bret Baier. [Media Matters, 1/18/24]
   
• Fox News has played a key role in the proliferation of offshore wind misinformation by regularly airing false claims about the technology and providing a platform to groups that are bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. A 2023 report from the Center for American Progress illustrated how the fossil fuel industry is bankrolling offshore wind misinformation, “with money flowing through interest groups, think tanks, and astroturf groups to achieve its ultimate goal of slowing, if not stopping, the expansion of offshore wind in the United States.” Fox has amplified several of these groups, including Protect Our Coast NJ and people associated with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Environmental Progress. The latter group’s founder and president, Michael Shellenberger, has appeared frequently on Fox News to spread offshore wind misinformation. [The Center for American Progress, 12/11/23; Media Matters, 1/18/24, 1/12/23, 2/3/23, 8/29/23]
   
• Fox News began linking offshore wind projects to whale deaths as early as 2022. In August 2022, Meghan Lapp, a fisheries liaison for the fishing company Seafreeze, whose campaign to stop offshore wind development has been bankrolled by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime. [Distilled, 1/31/23; Foxnews.com, 8/26/22]

• Blocking offshore wind projects would hurt American manufacturing. According to Oceanic Network, “64% of manufacturing and supply-chain investment” supporting the offshore wind industry is in Republican districts. Felicia Sanchez, a partner with the law firm K&L Gates, pointed out to Utility Dive that “it’s hard to say ‘we’re going to end offshore wind’ when you’re also impacting a vast supply chain that has already been going for the last few years that has been implemented — when ports have been developed, and vessels have started to either be under construction or have come out of the yard ready to work in offshore wind.” [Canary Media, 1/28/25; Utility Dive, 1/21/25]
   
• Fox News personalities expressed outrage about job losses for more than a year and a half after then-President Joe Biden decided not to proceed with the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline project. According to AP News, “The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to be an expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline, which runs about 2,687 miles from Alberta to Illinois and Texas, and is operating.” In 2021, in the first nine days after news outlets reported that Biden would be scrapping the project, Fox News made misleading claims about jobs 74 times. The network offered several misleading or decontextualized estimates for how many jobs would be lost, ranging from about 11,000 to 42,000. The numbers were a far cry from the State Department’s actual estimate of just 35 long-term jobs. Meanwhile, Trump’s executive order will impact many wind energy projects, not just one. [Media Matters, 6/29/22, 1/28/21; AP News, 3/17/22; PolitiFact, 7/21/22]

• Trump declared a national energy emergency, which unlocked special authorities to boost the “production and sale of a wide range of energy resources” and “to expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated infrastructure, energy, environmental, and natural resources projects.” [S&P Global, 1/22/25; Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25]
   
• Trump’s national energy emergency counterintuitively excludes certain renewable energies, including offshore wind. The executive order does not mention solar or wind in its definition of the “energy resources” Trump wants to expand. Director of the Harvard University environmental economics program Robert N. Satvins told The New York Times, “If there really were an energy emergency, then the right thing to do would be to increase supplies of all forms of energy, and to try to use energy conservation initiatives.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; The New York Times, 1/21/25]
   
• Experts are skeptical that Trump’s declared energy emergency will fulfill its purported goal of lowering energy costs for Americans. Trump cannot force energy companies to produce more, and currently, it would not be profitable for them to do so because crude oil is abundant. In October 2024, the World Bank predicted an “oil glut next year with a supply-demand gap that's been this large only twice before” in part because Chinese consumers are pivoting away from gas-powered cars. And despite a predicted increase in power demand from AI, experts also say the technology could ultimately boost supply and hurt oil prices. [The New York Times, 1/24/25; Axios, 10/29/24; Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Reuters, 9/3/24]
   
• Trump cannot reverse the transition to renewable energy. In a recent report, Citigroup analysts wrote that, despite uncertainties, “Clean energy is cheaper, more widely available, and more efficient. … For advocates of clean energy transition, the power of economics will prevail.” In October, BloombergNEF found that even “a total repeal of the IRA’s tax credits” — a scenario BNEF called “unlikely” — “would not entirely stymy the US’s clean power momentum.” [Fortune, 1/27/25; BloombergNEF, 10/31/24]