By Victoria Fortune

When I was a child, my mother had a painting in her bedroom of a windmill next to the ranch house where she grew up. Painted by a friend, it was a cherished reminder of her childhood in the desert of West Texas, surrounded by cactus and horny toads and tumbleweeds—a place where every living thing is acutely aware of how precious water is. The windmills, which drew water from deep wells and distributed it across the ranch, were necessary for survival.

Windmills have long been a symbol of the American West, because the West could not have been settled without them. They were essential to the railroads that fueled westward expansion and to ranchers and farmers settling in dry areas with no surface water. Since the 1950s, the political right has employed the cowboy and the West as a symbol of independence and self-sufficiency, so it seems particularly ironic that the right has recently decided that windmills are “woke” (that nebulous term no one seems to be able to define, referring to anything the left favors).  

Granted, wind turbines are not windmills. Wind turbines are larger and harness wind to power generators and create electricity, while windmills utilize wind power directly for grinding grain or pumping water. But both harness the power of wind, and it is “wind” that Trump claims to despise. Why is he so determined to destroy a burgeoning industry that is critical to mitigating the “energy emergency” he himself declared?

In one of his first Executive Orders, Trump declared a national “energy emergency” due to the astronomical amount of electricity required to power AI. The EO, which reads as though it were written by lawyers for the oil and gas industry, includes a definition of energy that lists all current sources except wind and solar, as though with the sweep of a pen, Trump can erase the fact that wind and solar currently supply 30 percent of electricity in the United States.

Viewing wind power as “woke” is an example of what I consider to be Trump Derangement Syndrome: the willingness to champion whatever ill-conceived idea Donald Trump throws out, even when it directly harms you, your interests, and the country.

Take Texas for example: the state of Texas, which favored Trump by over 13 percent in 2024, is the biggest producer of wind power in the U.S. In 2022, the Texas Comptroller reported that wind power generation created 26,135 jobs,with an annual salary of $109,826, and generated a GDP of $1.7 billion in 2021. At that point, employment for wind turbine technicians was expected to grow 44% by 2031, one of the fastest growing occupations in the U.S.

Beyond jobs, the industry has been a boon to ranchers struggling to keep working ranches in their families. My mother, a water law attorney who lives on the family ranch in Texas, has been working on a deal with a wind farm to lease part of their ranch for wind turbines. The deal could provide a stable income for her husband’s family for generations to come, allowing them to continue ranching. They could continue to graze cattle among the wind towers. But that deal is in jeopardy now that the Trump administration has declared war on wind. Despite all these benefits, the state of Texas has turned on wind power because Trump hates it.

What’s behind Trump’s obsession with killing wind power? In an off-topic rant alongside EU president Ursula von der Leyen in July 2025, Trump blasted “wind” claiming it’s “very expensive” because it “requires subsidies,” and that it’s bad for the environment, birds and our “beautiful plains.” It’s “ruining the landscape,” he insists.

Let’s examine some of these claims:

1) Wind power requires subsidies:

Government subsidies have been used since the 1700s to help the country transition to new energy sources, whether it was coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. Subsidies are typically highest in the first fifteen years, when a new industry needs help to overcome the inherent advantage of established industries. A study conducted in 2011 concluded that “oil and gas subsidies, including tax breaks and government spending, were about five times as much as aid to renewables during their first 15 years of development; nuclear received 10 times as much support.” Although it no longer needs any help to make substantial profits, the fossil fuel industry has continued to receive subsidies for over a century through tax breaks and bargain-basement leases on public lands.

Under the guise of an “emergency,” Trump justifies additional subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry and the elimination of environmental protections to pave the way for more drilling. At the same time, he has cut all subsidies for solar and wind and added ever more burdensome regulations, with the clear intent of destroying the renewable energy industry. There is absolutely no benefit to regular Americans in doing this. On the contrary, it directly harms us, raising our electricity bills, creating more pollution and more destruction from escalating storms. And we, the taxpayers are on the hook for paying for the cleanup. The only people who benefit from Trump’s policy are the oil executives he promised he would let “write the rules” if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign. That is one campaign promise he has kept.

2) Windmills kill whales:

First, the claim that wind turbines kill whales in significant numbers is unsupported by evidence. Climate change poses the greatest threat to whales, and wind power is one of our best tools to combat climate change.  Further, since when does Donald Trump care about whales?

On March 31, 2026, his administration convened the “Extinction Committee” which has the authority to waive protections of the Endangered Species Act in “extreme circumstances”, when they are at odds with public interest and all other options have been exhausted. Trump’s hand-picked committee voted to waive all endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico to maximize drilling for oil, even though no drilling requests have been denied or hampered by the protections, and drilling in the Gulf is at its highest levels since 1998. The removal of these protections threatens the endangered Rice’s whale, a species that lives year-round in the Gulf. There are fewer than 100 of these whales left. They were severely affected by the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The administration has just approved a new ultra-deepwater drilling project by BP, the same company responsible for the 2010 spill. Trump clearly cares nothing about these whales that are sure to be harmed by the removal of protections.

3) Windmills are “ruining the landscape”:

When Trump refers to “ruining the landscape” what he means is “ruining his view.” Trump’s repeated complaints about the nine wind turbines that can be seen from his Turnbull Golf Course in Scotland are a key to his campaign against wind power. Trump failed to strongarm the Scottish government into removing them, and he cannot tolerate losing. And so, like a modern-day Don Quixote, he is on a quest to battle windmills, except with none of the chivalry or idealism that makes Don Quixote a compelling character. There is only the delusion--a man battling imaginary monsters.

In terms of “ruining the landscape,” wind turbines are one of the least intrusive forms of power when it comes to maintaining a healthy ecosystem. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a survey by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of large wind facilities in the United States found that they use [1] “less than one acre of land permegawatt output of energy.”  In other words, very little of the land on wind farms is actually built upon, leaving the space under and around the towers available for other uses, such as grazing livestock, growing crops, and protecting natural habitat that supports wildlife. This means the ecosystems on wind turbine farms are largely preserved. Trees continue to emit oxygen. Insects thrive, providing food for birds that are essential for seed distribution.

For those concerned about birds, fewer are killed by wind turbines than by house cats, oil derricks, or climate change. In Spain and France, countries that are subsidizing renewable energy and supporting innovation, new turbines have been developed that do not have blades and are much shorter, further reducing their footprint and their impact on birds and bats. The fact is that every form of energy comes with a cost: a disrupted view is far preferable to pollution and the climate change that threatens to make life miserable for future generations.

The data centers Trump is championing are far more ruinous to the landscape than wind turbines. Trump has eliminated environmental regulations to ensure the proliferation of data centers. While these facilities typically do not cover such large tracts as wind turbines, every square inch of the land is clear cut and paved over. It becomes a dead zone. Noise pollution, along with roads and infrastructure around data centers drive away wildlife and harm the health of humans living nearby. And they consume massive amounts of electricity, driving up energy bills in the surrounding community. They also require enormous amounts of water. According to Techtarget, “an average Google data center consumes approximately 450,000 gallons of water per day -- roughly the same amount of water used to irrigate 17 acres of turf lawn . . .  hyperscale data centers may consume millions of gallons daily.” Such excessive resource consumption is far more ruinous to our landscape than wind farms.

Ironically, companies that promote the building of data centers call for renewable energy sources nearby to help offset their massive demand for energy. And yet, Trump is calling for the destruction of renewables while at the same time promoting the unrestricted construction of data centers. Up until Trump took office, AI companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft pledged to use a certain amount of renewable energy to power their data centers, but now that Trump has declared war on renewables, these companies are no longer touting their environmental stewardship or acknowledging their responsibilities toward the public. The result is rising electricity bills for average Americans.

The bottom line is that Trump cannot credibly claim to care about “our beautiful landscape” when he is championing the unregulated construction of data centers, the clear-cutting of national forests, the removal of environmental protections, and drilling in wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries. Greed and petulance are the real reasons for Trump’s war on wind. His energy policy has nothing to do with national security or the best interests of the American people. The only people it benefits are the oil executives and other industries that profit from being able to rape and pillage our natural resources without constraint. Buying his rhetoric when it causes direct harm—that is the true Trump Derangement Syndrome.