Two Republican senators are blocking three of President Trump’s Treasury Department nominees to protest a new executive order tightening deadlines for federal wind and solar tax breaks.
Kelsey Tamborrino and Josh Siegel report for POLITICO.
In short:
- Senators Chuck Grassley and John Curtis filed procedural holds against Brian Morrissey, Francis Brooke, and Jonathan McKernan, nominees for top Treasury posts.
- The senators demand Treasury keep the year-long construction grace period they inserted into the law that otherwise ends wind and solar credits after 2027.
- Their pushback, echoed by GOP senators Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Mike Rounds, signals Republican worry that canceling projects could leave the grid short of power and private investors in limbo.
Key quote:
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade. Moreover, Congress specifically references current Treasury guidance to set that term’s meaning in law.”
— Chuck Grassley, Republican senator from Iowa
Why this matters:
Wind and solar tax incentives have underpinned nearly every utility scale clean energy build in the United States for the past 15 years. Stripping them away while demand for electricity surges, slowing decarbonization just as global heat records are surging. The dispute also reverberates through rural economies that have come to depend on lease payments and construction jobs tied to turbine and panel installations. Investors say more than $100 billion in planned projects now sits on hold, and engineers warn that delaying new capacity risks reliability shortfalls during summer peaks. The fight tests how far politics can bend the nation’s power transition before the lights flicker.
Related: Trump’s new energy law slashes popular clean energy tax credits
