(The Center Square) – State Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Washington against the administration of President Donald Trump over an executive order the president signed on Inauguration Day declaring a “national energy emergency” Brown says doesn’t exist.
This is the 17th lawsuit Brown has filed or joined against the Trump administration since January.
“We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness,” Trump wrote in his executive order. “Caused by the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration, our Nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes.”
Brown said energy production in the country has never been better than it is today, so there is no need for oil and gas companies to bypass environmental regulations.
“Because of the president’s order, federal agencies are now bypassing or weakening critical reviews under the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the historic Natural Preservation Act,” Brown said at a Friday news conference. “All of these actions cause direct harm to Washington and our environment, and all of these actions are intended to undermine efforts to combat climate change and keep us safe.”
He continued: “He [Trump] says it’s an emergency, but he has specifically exempted wind, solar and battery projects from his executive order, despite the fact those projects are some of the cheapest and cleanest energy sources to date.”
Todd Myers, vice president for research at the Washington Policy Center think tank, says the nation’s energy situation is critical.
“The argument from the attorney general is that there’s no emergency in energy production. That’s absurd,” he told The Center Square. “We have a severe shortage of energy production that is almost here and is certainly coming, and that is according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and utilities themselves, who say that in the very near future with electric vehicles, with data centers, and just general growth and demand, we’re very short of the energy production and reliable energy production that we need in the near future.”
Myers said Brown’s claim is contradicted by former Gov. Jay Inslee, who in a May 2024 letter to the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council argued the state should ignore harm to an endangered bird to build a new wind farm.
“Washington faces the stark reality that without a rapid buildout of new clean energy generation and transmission, the dependability of our electricity grid is at risk,” Inslee wrote.
As a result, he encouraged EFSEC board members to ignore the impacts of a proposed wind farm on the ferruginous hawk, an endangered species in Washington, noting “significant impacts [to the hawk] may be accepted as part of this vital Project where they cannot be reasonably mitigated.”
Washington is joined by 14 other states in the lawsuit: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
