BOSTON — Worker unions and politicians in New England are pushing back against the Trump administration’s move to implement a 90-day freeze on five industrial-sized offshore wind projects off the East Coast, including the Vineyard Wind 1 windfarm off of Nantucket.

Ironworkers Local 7, which represents over 3,600 workers across New England, including a total of 50 who were contracted to work on the affected offshore wind projects, has called on the administration to reverse its decision.

“We are thoroughly disgusted and furious that this administration has chosen to put hard-working tradespeople out of work just before the holidays and put the prosperity of middle class union members in peril. The Trump administration’s cancellation of several New England offshore wind projects is destroying American jobs. Fifty union ironworkers have been laid off and their families are now facing an uncertain future,” the union said in a written statement.

“Whatever your political ideology, it is undeniable that Vineyard Wind is already providing much needed power to 400,000 homes and businesses across Massachusetts. We need energy diversification to lower bills for working Americans and Vineyard Wind is a shining example of a project that is working,” the union added.

But according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, just one natural gas pipeline would produce substantially more power than the five offshore wind projects combined.

“This is the most expensive form of energy we’re producing is offshore wind. It’s not reliable, it only works when the wind is blowing, it is expensive, and of course, it depends on foreign suppliers almost completely for this industry,” Burgum explained Monday during an interview on Fox News. “And we have a solution in New England, right there, which is natural gas from Pennsylvania, which would generate power five-to-ten times more than all these five wind projects together.”

Burgum’s comments come just a week after Gov. Maura Healey again changed her stance on if she’s responsible for stopping two natural gas pipelines from coming to Massachusetts when she was attorney general. It’s a topic that has turned into a game of political football between Healey and her three Republican challengers in 2026, with the governor now acknowledging she stopped the pipeline projects.

“They were a lousy deal for ratepayers and I’ve got to stand up for people in Massachusetts. I thought it was wrong for ratepayers, people, residents, taxpayers in Massachusetts to foot the bill for those pipelines, instead of the pipeline companies,” Healey said.

Healey is now joining other Northeast governors reacting to the decision to pause the wind farm projects.

On Tuesday, Healey, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a joint-statement against the Trump admin’s move, saying it will result in higher costs for American ratepayers.

“The Trump administration’s announcement yesterday pausing offshore wind leases is its latest egregious attack on clean energy and it lands like a lump of dirty coal for the holiday season for American workers, consumers, and investors. Pausing active leases, especially for completed and nearly completed projects, defies logic, will hurt our bid for energy independence, will drive up costs for America ratepayers, and will make us lose thousands of good-paying jobs. It also threatens grid reliability that is needed to keep the lights on,” the group of governors said.

“This baseless, reckless and erratic action from the Department of Interior will also inject further uncertainty into the markets, making it harder for states and private companies to secure financing for public works projects if investors know they can be stopped at any time despite having gone through all the necessary local and federal approval processes,” they said.

The Trump admin says the temporary pause on the projects are due to national security concerns and will allow the Interior Department, which oversees the projects, the necessary time it needs to work with the Defense Department on mitigating security risks.

No specific national security risks have been mentioned by the administration. However, the Interior Department has said unclassified documents show the spinning of the massive turbine blades paired with the reflection from the towers causes issues with radar systems, according to the Associated Press.

“Modern warfare is drone warfare and the radar interference caused by these massive, gargantuan projects, understanding that a single one of these towers can be one-and-a-half times taller than the Washington Monument. The blades themselves, the diameter of the blades is bigger than the Statue of Liberty, two-and-a-half football fields,” Secretary Burgum also said during his Monday interview on Fox News.

“These things are moving at 150 miles-per-hour and our ground-based radar is designed to pick up movement. If you wanted to attack a population center on the East Coast of our country, you would send a swarm of drones right through one of these wind farms,” he said.

U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are demanding access to the classified documents and reports cited by the Trump admin. In a letter Tuesday to Burgum and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the senators demanded they respond by the end of the week to set up a date and time when “we can view these documents.”

“These purported lease pauses will have the effect of putting Americans out of work, destabilizing our energy grid, and causing electricity prices to soar during the expensive home heating season. According to our regional grid operator, Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE), ‘canceling or delaying these projects will increase costs and risks to reliability in our region,’ ” Warren and Markey said.

The Vineyard Wind project had been using the Port of New Bedford as a wind turbine manufacturing hub, offering a close and direct route to the Vineyard Sound for installation, employing hundreds of workers in the area. Mayor Jon Mitchell sounded off Tuesday on the impact the decision will have on his city.

“People can debate whether offshore wind is a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. But my concerns are primarily parochial. There is literally hundreds of millions of dollars of new port investment here that wouldn’t have happened if offshore wind hadn’t been in the offing,” Mitchell said on local radio outlet WBSM.

“And so when the president, in a swipe of a pen, says, stop the project, it kicks people off the job three days before Christmas, and says it’s about national security, even though the national security implications of that development have been vetted decisively over the last 15 years, to me it’s a shame,” he said.

The Vineyard Wind project is located 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and claims it could power 400,000 homes and businesses while reducing carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year.

---------

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.