The Deal

In March 2026, the Interior Department — under Secretary Doug Burgum — announced it would pay TotalEnergies $928.3 million in taxpayer money to cancel two offshore wind leases the company had purchased under the Biden administration.

The larger portion — $795 million — covered a New York project known as Attentive Energy, located roughly 54 miles south of Long Island. The project was expected to power more than 1 million homes and businesses by the early 2030s, according to the Washington Examiner.

The second lease was for a project off the coast of North Carolina.

In exchange, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné agreed to walk away from both wind projects, commit to zero new offshore wind development in the U.S., and invest the reimbursed money into a new liquified natural gas plant in Texas. The company would also invest in offshore oil and shale gas production, according to Just the News.

Then the Administration Continued

In April, the Trump administration announced another nearly $900 million in wind buyouts — paying two more developers to abandon projects off New York and California, according to CNN.

Total cost so far: nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer-funded wind project cancellations.

The Lawsuit

On Tuesday, June 2, 2026, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The coalition includes AGs from Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, according to Just the News.

The complaint names Burgum and other Trump administration officials directly. It asks the federal judge to vacate both the lease cancellation and the settlement agreement with TotalEnergies' subsidiary.

James called it an "illegal agreement" and a "sham deal" in a statement reported by CNN. Her argument: the deal violated federal law, deprived her state of needed power generation, and could raise electricity costs across New England and the mid-Atlantic.

The Administration's Defense

The Trump administration's position, according to the Washington Examiner, is straightforward: this was a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement — the government paid back what TotalEnergies originally spent on the leases. Not a bonus. Not a windfall. A refund.

If the leases were rendered worthless by Trump's executive actions killing offshore wind permitting, the administration argues it created a liability it then settled. Plenty of legal settlements work exactly that way.

But TotalEnergies didn't sue first. This wasn't a court-ordered settlement. The administration proactively offered a deal that included a commitment to invest in fossil fuels. That part doesn't read like a neutral legal settlement. It reads like industrial policy dressed up as a refund.

The Coverage Gap

CNN's framing — "paid a French company $1 billion to NOT build" — is technically accurate but leaves out that these were lease reimbursements for contracts the government was effectively nullifying.

Conservative outlets that are ignoring this story face a different problem: nearly $2 billion in discretionary executive spending with no congressional authorization is the kind of government overreach conservatives have historically opposed. The money is real. It came from taxpayers. And it went to a French corporation.

The Unanswered Questions

First: did Congress authorize this? The administration hasn't pointed to specific statutory authority for making $928 million settlement payments tied to investment conditions.

Second: is this good energy policy? LNG exports to Europe might help allies reduce dependence on Russian gas. But canceling power for 1 million New York homes in the name of energy dominance while paying a French company to do it raises questions about strategy.

Third: TotalEnergies paused the Attentive Energy project the moment Trump won the 2024 election, according to the Washington Examiner. The timeline raises questions about whether this negotiation was inevitable — or engineered.

What It Means for Regular People

If you live in New York, Massachusetts, or Connecticut, power your states planned to add to the grid by the early 2030s is now gone. Less supply means upward pressure on electricity prices.

The lawsuit may succeed or fail on narrow legal grounds. The larger fact is $1.8 billion in unilateral executive spending that restructured the U.S. energy landscape — with no congressional vote, no public input, and a French company walking away with nearly a billion dollars in American taxpayer money.