White House Orders Agencies to Escalate Fight Against Offshore Wind

The White House has taken the extraordinary step of instructing a half-dozen agencies to draft plans to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry as it intensifies its governmentwide attack on a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser, are leading the effort, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Agencies that typically have little to do with offshore wind power have been drawn into the effort, the two people said. At the Health and Human Services Department, for instance, officials are studying whether wind turbines are emitting electromagnetic fields that could harm human health. And the Defense Department is probing whether the projects could pose risks to national security.

Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, said he was working with Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, as part of a “departmental coalition team” to investigate the risks from offshore wind farms.

“We’re all working together on this issue,” Mr. Kennedy said during a cabinet meeting.

Brigit Hirsch, a spokeswoman for Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said on Tuesday that he, too, is involved in discussions about offshore wind at “a high level.”

And Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, last week canceled or withdrew $679 million in federal funding for marine terminals, port improvements and other facilities that were designed to support the offshore wind industry. Mr. Duffy called them “wasteful wind projects.”