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For Immediate Release
February, 02 2026, 03:48pm EDT
Contact:
Christine Ho, christine.ho@sierraclub.org
Bianca Sanchez, bianca.sanchez@sierraclub.org
Trump Goes Zero for Five Against Offshore Wind
Today, the Trump administration lost yet another legal battle in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This is the fifth and final offshore wind project that has successfully challenged the administration’s stop-work order.
In December—three days before Christmas—Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior halted five offshore wind projects that were all more than 40 percent complete. Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts was nearly 95 percent finished and already delivering power to the grid. Trump’s orders halted fully-vetted, billion-dollar projects and sent thousands of workers home at a time when construction jobs were scarce and energy demand was nearing its peak. Since then, all five stop-work orders have been challenged in court, and in all five times, the courts have ruled in favor of the offshore wind projects.
“The unilateral court victories are evidence of what we’ve known all along—Donald Trump has it out for offshore wind, but we aren’t giving up without a fight. Communities deserve a cleaner, cheaper, healthier future, and offshore wind will help us get there,” said Sierra Club Senior Advisor Nancy Pyne. “Despite the roadblocks Donald Trump has tried to throw up in an effort to bolster dirty fossil fuels, offshore wind will prevail. We will continue to call for responsible and equitable offshore wind from coast to coast, as we fight for an affordable and reliable clean energy future for all.”
“We are glad to see Sunrise Wind’s 800 workers, made up largely of local New Yorkers, get back to work on this critical project,” added Allyson Samuell, Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative in New York. “Once constructed, Sunrise Wind will supply 600,000 local homes with affordable, reliable, renewable energy – this power is super needed and especially important during extreme cold snaps and winter storms like Storm Fern. Here in New York, South Fork has proven offshore wind works, now is the time to see Sunrise, and Empire Wind, come online too.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
'Our Families Feel Hunted': Minnesota Schools Overwhelmed With Fear Amid ICE Rampage
"The fundamental right to go to school and the basic principle of human dignity has been ripped away from our children, our staff, and our families," said the superintendent of the school district in suburban Fridley.
Feb 02, 2026
Teachers slipping to work under cover of darkness. The windows of a school building papered over to stop onlookers from peering in. Classrooms more than half-empty in an eerie echo of the pandemic five years ago.
These are just a few of the scenes that have been reported out of Minnesota schools in recent days amid President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," which has flooded Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding towns with immigration agents who school officials say have left the area feeling like an occupation zone.
As the Twin Cities have reeled from agents' fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, agents with agents with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—including Border Patrol—have been documented detaining, harassing, and in some cases brutalizing students, including US citizens and others with legal status.
The Trump administration has reversed the Biden-era guidance that forbade immigration raids at "sensitive" locations, including schools, churches, and hospitals.
According to the New York Times, "School officials in the Twin Cities say federal agents have appeared at bus stops, and showed up at people’s homes at times when they are coming and going from school."
Some school districts across the state have moved to an e-learning option to accommodate the growing number of students who are too afraid to come to school for fear of being taken by agents.
Minneapolis School Board Chair Collin Beachy told Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul that 6,500 students in the district of around 29,000 had opted to learn remotely on the first day it was offered, which was the Monday after agents were recorded handcuffing staff members at Roosevelt High School before blasting students with chemical irritants.
At one Minneapolis charter school profiled on Monday by the Los Angeles Times, which was left unnamed due to fear of reprisal from the Trump administration, fewer than half of the 800 students, who are nearly all Black or Latino, now report for class in person. Three other charter schools have shut down in-person learning entirely.
For those who still attend in person, the LA Times observes that "Signs of a fearful new normal are all over the school." According to the paper:
Green craft paper covers the bottom of many first-floor windows so outsiders can’t peer in. A notice taped outside one door says unauthorized entry is prohibited: “This includes all federal law enforcement personnel and activities unless authorized by lawful written direction from appropriate school officials or a valid court order.”
"Three students have been detained—and later released—in recent weeks," the LA Times said of the school its reporters visited. "Two others were followed into the school parking lot and questioned about their immigration status. Several have parents who were deported or who self-deported. Latino staff said they have also been stopped and questioned about their legal status."
One student, 16-year-old Alondra, who was born in the US and is a citizen, told the paper that she and her friend had been detained shortly after school while going to purchase medication for her grandmother.
A car swerved in front of her as she entered the parking lot, and four men in ski masks got out with guns drawn. After she was forced to stop abruptly, another car full of agents rear-ended her vehicle. She said agents began attempting to break into her window and tried to blame her for the accident.
Despite showing her identification, Alondra and her friend were handcuffed and taken to a detention facility for hours. Her feet were shackled together, and she was left in a holding facility alone.
“I asked at least five times if I could let my guardian know what was happening, because I was underage, but they never let me,” she said. She and her friend were both released without paperwork about the incident. At the time of the report, she had still been unable to locate her car.
The school has undertaken protocols to protect students from raids that are "more typical of active shooter emergencies," the LA Times said:
Staff coordinate throughout the day with a neighborhood watch group to determine whether ICE agents are nearby. When they are, classroom doors are locked and hallways emptied until staff announce “all clear.” ...
If agents were to enter the building without a judicial warrant, the school would go into a full lockdown, turning off lights, staying silent and moving out of sight.
The school's executive director, identified only as Noelle, told the paper: "Our families feel hunted."
That anxiety has spread beyond the Twin Cities and into the surrounding suburbs, especially at schools with large nonwhite populations.
In the suburb of Fridley, which the New York Times visited for a report published Saturday, school administrators now escort more than two dozen staff, many of whom are international teachers, to school before sunrise each morning.
In nearby Columbia Heights, "more than two dozen parents and four students have been detained by federal agents, including a 5-year-old boy on his way home from school who was detained with his father."
That boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was released from custody this weekend by a federal judge and returned to school in Minneapolis after being shipped to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, where he became extremely ill. Since then, a measles outbreak has been reported at the facility.
In Fridley, school officials are constantly on high alert, fearing that a similar fate could befall their own students.
The school's superintendent, Brenda Lewis, spends the dismissal period circling the neighborhood, looking for agents.
Last week, she and other educators spoke at a news conference denouncing the terror that ICE had inflicted upon her students and community.
"The fundamental right to go to school and the basic principle of human dignity has been ripped away from our children, our staff, and our families,” Lewis said. “None of this is partisan. This is about children—predominantly children of color—being treated as less than human.”
Since she spoke at the conference, she said masked agents have tailed her car on multiple occasions, and that on Wednesday, they came closer to the school campus than usual. Three other members of the Fridley school board said they saw agents parked outside their homes, and another also says they were followed.
"It is my responsibility to ensure that our students and staff and families are safe, and if that means [agents are] going to target me instead of them, then that's what we need to do, and then they can leave our families alone," she told Bring Me the News on Friday. "But at the end of the day, are they trying to intimidate me to stop? Yes. Will I stop? No."
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Platner Raises 3 Times as Much as Mills, Collins Combined in Small Donations in Final Quarter of 2025
"Remember back when the national media said our campaign was dead?" said the Democratic Senate candidate.
Feb 02, 2026
At a campaign event over the weekend, Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner repeated a message that's been central to his campaign since it launched last August: that his goal of serving in the Senate is about "movement politics" more than attaining a position of power for himself.
“If we win this race, with this kind of politics and building this kind of organizational capacity,” Platner told the crowd that had packed into the AmVets hall in Yarmouth, Maine on Saturday, “then we get to point to this and show them it works. We get to inspire others in other states. We get to show them that you can win Senate seats with a working-class movement.”
On Monday, new fundraising numbers released by the progressive candidate's campaign on social media showed that Maine voters are responding to Platner's call to help build people-powered movement.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the veteran and oyster farmer's campaign brought in $3.2 million from people who donated less than $200—about three times the amount collected by Platner's top competitor in the Democratic primary, Gov. Janet Mills, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) combined.
Mills brought in $822,000 in the fourth quarter while the longtime Republican senator reported $230,000 in donations.
Teachers had the most common occupation among Platner's small-dollar donors, according to the campaign.
Platner released the fundraising data soon after announcing the "207 Tour"—a statewide tour currently scheduled to go until at least May with stops in the southern coastal town of York, Fort Kent on the Canadian border, and tiny inland towns like Liberty and Appleton.
Collins has not faced Mainers at a town hall in over two decades, Platner has noted.
"I don't know how we've reached a time when Mainers cannot count on politicians to show up in their communities and openly and honestly answer questions. Our campaign is doing things differently because I'd actually like to hear from you," said Platner last week. "Wherever you are, I'll see you there."
Beyond small-dollar fundraising, the Platner campaign is aiming to mobilize a grassroots army of volunteers across the state and that’s what the slate of town halls in dozens of communities is designed to help build.
The 207 Tour so far appears to offer more proof that Platner's campaign platform—which demands a Medicare for All system to replace for-profit health insurance, a repeal of Citizens United to "ban billionaires buying elections," and a billionaire minimum tax—is resonating with Maine voters.
He spoke to 500 people in Yarmouth, a town of 9,000 people. That same day, 100 people crowded into a venue in South Paris (population: 2,000), and 85 people joined him Sunday at a town hall in Isleboro, a town of fewer than 600 people which is accessible only by ferry.
In Liberty, Platner was greeted with a standing ovation on Sunday.
"Remember back when the national media said our campaign was dead?" he said on social media, referring to stories that broke just as Mills entered the Democratic primary race in October, pertaining to a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol—which had never before raised alarm and which Platner subsequently had covered up—and old Reddit posts he had written that he said no longer reflected his worldview.
The controversies did not slow his momentum, with voters at his campaign events responding positively to Platner's candid comments about how his views have changed throughout his life.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said Sunday that Democratic consultants and pundits who wrote off Platner last fall "shouldn’t be allowed to keep being so wrong all the time and still have jobs."
In overall fundraising in the last quarter of 2025, Platner outpaced both of his rivals, reporting $4.6 million in total donations. He has $3.7 million in cash on hand.
Mills reported $2.7 million for the period and has $1.3 million in available cash after the fourth quarter, and Collins raised $2.2 million and has $8 million in cash on hand.
A number of recent polls have also shown Platner favored to win in the primary and general election.
In recent weeks, Platner has taken Collins to task for supporting a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security even as President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign came to Maine and swept up numerous people who had not committed any crimes—and for taking credit when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were ending "enhanced" operations in the state.
In Yarmouth, Platner acknowledged he has built a reputation as a bit of a "bomb-throwing populist" with some of his campaign rhetoric—"and I am," he promised.
But he also said he does not want to go to Washington, DC just to "get in fights with people" with whom he disagrees—but to push for policies that his growing "movement" is demanding by working with anyone he can.
"When we're talking about policy that impacts people's lives and livelihoods," he said, "things don't happen just because you're holding grudge against somebody."
"The point is to go down there and pass things and build power," said Platner. "Sometimes it's not going to work, but that's also why we need to build that secondary power—the movement power—to impose [our power] at those times when relationships won't work."
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Five-Alarm Fire Warning After Trump Says 'Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting'
"His outbursts are real threats, but they come from weakness," said one critic of the president. "Tough shit, he's going down."
Feb 02, 2026
President Donald Trump on Monday declared that the Republican Party should "nationalize the voting" in the US and take away individual states' power to administer their elections.
While speaking with Dan Bongino, a former FBI deputy director and current podcaster, Trump rehashed the false allegations he's made in the past about Democrats only winning elections through the help of undocumented immigrants.
"These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally!" Trump falsely claimed. "Amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say... 'We should take over the voting in at least... 15 places.' The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."
Trump: "These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. The Republicans should say, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. You're gonna see… pic.twitter.com/H5hT3OvtLE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026
Trump then continued to rehash his lies about winning the 2020 election that he lost to former President Joe Biden.
"We have states that are so crooked, and they're counting votes, we have states that I won that show I didn't win!" he said. "Now, you're going to see something in Georgia, where they were able to get with a court order the ballots, you're going to see some interesting things come out. But, you know, the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. And everybody knows it!"
In fact, Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden at both the national level and in the state of Georgia, which has a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state, and a Republican-run Legislature.
Last week, the FBI executed a search warrant at Georgia's Fulton County election hub and hauled out boxes of ballots as part of an investigation related to the 2020 election.
Some Trump critics reacted to his latest outburst about "nationalizing" the vote by noting how incredibly unlikely the president would be to succeed in such an endeavor.
"Neither Trump nor the GOP in Congress have this power, and the only way they do this is if we decline to stand up for our rights," wrote Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, in a social media post. "He's had a string of electoral defeats and rightfully fears the midterms. His outbursts are real threats, but they come from weakness. Tough shit, he's going down. No Kings."
MS NOW contributor Philip Bump also expressed skepticism about Trump's scheme, which conflicts with Article I of the US Constitution.
"Trump doesn't have the power to federalize elections, which obviously doesn't mean it's OK that he's saying things like this," he wrote. "The stuff about ginning up bullshit in Atlanta—we'll see."
Political strategist Murshed Zaheed likewise advised his social media followers to "take a deep breath" before panicking over Trump's plans.
"Trump cannot change election/voting rules with [executive orders]," he wrote. "Of course they are going to try crazy stuff—but this is desperate attempt to gin up fear."
Other critics, however, said that Trump's remarks needed to be taken as a direct threat to democratic governance.
"He’s saying the quiet part out loud," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). "Trump and MAGA Republicans can’t win with their unpopular policies at the ballot box, so they want to steal the 2026 election."
Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan expressed even greater alarm.
"The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6," he warned, referring to the deadly riots carried out by Trump supporters on the US Capitol that sent lawmakers running for their lives. "This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today."
Trump's comments come as Republicans in Congress push a bill that would enable massive voter purges, impose photo ID requirements, and ban ranked-choice voting, universal mail-in ballots, and the acceptance of mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day.
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