Mayor Adams offers rare pushback vs. Trump administration's move to stop Brooklyn wind port

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Apr 17, 2025

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NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams offered rare pushback versus the Trump administration after the president ordered a stop to a Brooklyn project slated to become the country’s largest offshore wind port.

“This is a huge project for us,” Adams said of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal at his weekly news briefing. “Thousands of jobs. Being able to manufacture the wind turbines, it’s a huge project, and we’re going to advocate hard for it, we’re going to ask our unions to step up.”

On Wednesday, the Trump administration ordered an immediate halt to the project, which is currently under construction.

Adams didn’t cite Trump or his administration by name. Still, the comments mark unusual resistance from the mayor to a move from the president.

The mayor has pledged not to criticize the Trump in public, saying that instead he’ll take up any issues with Trump and his administration in private.

He has declined to criticize the president’s moves on funding cuts, tariffs and immigration, among other issues. The resistance Adams has shown has been mild, although he’s sued the Trump administration over a multimillion-dollar migrant funding clawback.

“This is a real “W” for us, and we’re going to communicate and do everything that’s possible to get this project moving forward,” Adams said of the wind port project Thursday.

Once completed, the “Empire Wind 1″ project, by Norwegian energy company Equinor, would be expected to power 500,000 homes and provide more than 1,000 jobs.

The company is considering appealing the feds’ decision to shut down the terminal, according to a Thursday release.

The lease for the wind port was signed in 2017 under the Biden administration, and the project has secured the necessary federal and state permits, according to the company. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told the company to pause the project on Wednesday.

At a news conference in June 2024, Adams praised the sustainable-power facility as an “exciting” step toward a better future by bringing new jobs and clean energy to the area.

“It is going to change the game in this community and it’s going to be done right,” the mayor said at the project’s groundbreaking.

For her part, Gov. Kathy Hochul slammed the president’s move as “federal overreach,” vowing that she would “fight this every step of the way.”

“This fully federally permitted project has already put shovels in the ground before the President’s executive orders — it’s exactly the type of bipartisan energy solution we should be working on,” the governor said in a statement.

The terminal was intended to help meet the state’s goals of phasing out fossil fuels and mandating 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040.