The Trump administration has paid more than $2 billion to cancel four offshore wind energy leases, including projects planned by French energy giant TotalEnergies off the coasts of New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, redirecting the developers toward oil and gas investment instead. Seven northeastern US states have filed a lawsuit challenging the arrangement, arguing the cancellations were made without legal justification and threaten both grid reliability and state climate targets. The deals are legally unprecedented — no developer had previously been paid to withdraw wind power leases — and have drawn a congressional investigation as well as a subpoena from California, which says it stands to lose over $100 million in port and infrastructure spending already made in preparation for the now-cancelled Golden State Wind project off its central coast.