By JENNIFER McDERMOTT, Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island, Connecticut and the developer of an offshore wind farm that would power 350,000 homes in the two states said Thursday they’re suing the Trump administration for stopping the nearly completed project.

The states will file a complaint in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island Thursday, said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha,, who accused President Donald Trump of waging an “all-out assault” on the wind energy industry.

Danish energy company Orsted filed a separate lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., arguing that the administration lacks the legal authority to block the Revolution Wind project. Orsted said it would seek a preliminary injunction that would allow it to move forward with the project, which is 80% complete, with all underwater foundations and 45 of 65 turbines installed.

Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said Thursday that the department doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Work on the project was paused Aug. 22 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop work order for what it said were national security concerns. It did not specify those concerns.

Trump has been hostile to renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, and prioritizes fossil fuels for electricity. Revolution Wind is the second major wind project that it ordered to stop work. The first, an offshore wind project for New York, was later allowed to resume construction.

In separate recent federal court filings, the administration said it was reconsidering approvals for three other wind farms: the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, SouthCoast Wind and New England Wind. Combined, those projects could power nearly 2.5 million homes in Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island with clean electricity.

Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said Trump and his Cabinet “need to end their war on American energy and jobs.”

‘Swarm drone attacks’ cited as a reason for stopping work

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told CNN that he’s concerned offshore wind turbines distort radar detection systems, which could give cover to a bad actor to “launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm.”

Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold called that a “specious and false narrative” pushed by someone with an “overactive imagination in search of a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.” Lippold was commanding the USS Cole when al-Qaida attacked it in a Yemeni port in 2000.

If drones get that close to U.S. shores to be near a wind farm without being detected by the military, he said, “we have had a massive intelligence — a national security — failure.”

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and national security expert, has also disputed the administration’s rationale, pointing to the Defense Department’s involvement in reviewing the project.

When it approved Revolution Wind in 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it consulted with the Defense Department at each stage of the regulatory process for the lease area assigned to the wind farm. The DOD concluded that with some site-specific stipulations, any impacts to its training and activities in the wind energy area would be “negligible and avoidable,” according to the record of decision.

The state and federal reviews took about nine years.

Trump and several Cabinet members repeatedly slammed wind power as ugly and expensive during last week’s Cabinet meeting. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked about the failure of a massive wind turbine blade at a different offshore wind farm under construction off Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Fiberglass fragments of a blade from the Vineyard Wind project broke apart and began washing ashore last summer during the peak of tourist season. Manufacturer GE Vernova agreed to pay $10.5 million in a settlement to compensate island businesses that suffered losses due to the blade failure.

Kennedy’s family famously opposed an earlier failed wind project not far from the family’s Cape Cod estate.

Trump said, “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago.”

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Wind farm was on track to deliver power in 2026

Revolution Wind was expected to be Rhode Island’s and Connecticut’s first large offshore wind farm, capable of providing about 2.5% of the region’s electricity needs.

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast. Rhode Island is already home to one offshore wind farm, the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.

Rhode Island and Connecticut have said that halting construction of Revolution Wind would harm the states, their residents, investments and the offshore wind industry. More than 1,000 people have been working on the wind farm, and Connecticut committed over $200 million to redevelop State Pier in New London to support the industry.

The states said they’re counting on the electricity from Revolution Wind, particularly in the winter, when demand in New England spikes and natural gas is prioritized for heating. The power would cost 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, locked in for 20 years. That’s cheaper than the average projected cost of energy in New England.

The head of Connecticut’s top environmental and energy agency, Katie Dykes, predicts it will cost the state’s electricity ratepayers tens of millions of dollars if the wind project doesn’t come online. She also noted the risk to electricity reliability in New England cited by the region’s independent system operator.

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at ap.org.

By MARK VANCLEAVE and STEVE KARNOWSKI

The shooter who killed two schoolchildren and injured 21 other people at a Catholic church in Minneapolis was caught on video visiting a suburban gun shop the weekend before the attack, but the owner of the store said Thursday that his staff saw no warning signs in his conduct.

The video shows that Robin Westman spent around 40 minutes at Frontiersman Sports in St. Louis Park on Aug. 23. Westman examined several guns and ultimately bought a revolver, owner Kory Krause told The Associated Press. Westman had already passed the required background checks and had a valid permit to purchase the gun, he said.

But the revolver wasn’t one of the guns Westman used in the shootings at the Church of the Annunciation on Aug. 27, when it was full of students from the affiliated Annunciation Catholic School who had gathered for their first Mass of the academic year. Investigators recovered a semiautomatic assault-style rifle, a shotgun and a different handgun at the scene, and said Westman was legally entitled to buy them. Krause said none came from his store.

Westman, 23, attended the school for eighth grade and Westman’s mother formerly worked for the parish, but investigators are still trying to determine a motive. Westman died by suicide after firing 116 rifle rounds through the church’s stained-glass windows.

As first reported by KSTP-TV, the security video shows Westman handling several firearms and talking with employees and other customers. Krause wasn’t in the store at the time, but he said he promptly shared the video with investigators and is cooperating with them.

Krause stressed that nothing in Westman’s conduct raised any concerns among his staffers, who he said are trained to watch for warning signs.

“This person said all the right things, they checked all the right boxes, asked all the questions, they were friendly, talkative, making jokes, laughing, knowledgeable about guns, handled a lot of guns that were not the type of guns you would think are of the interest of somebody looking to do a mass shooting,” Krause told AP.

Krause said his employees have extensive experience in picking out bad actors, straw purchasers, people who are homicidal, suicidal, mentally unstable or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. But he said nothing stood out with Westman.

“We’re still going over it,” Krause said. “We’re still scratching our heads thinking, ‘What did we miss? What could we have done?’ But it always ends with the answer of ‘nothing.’ There was just nothing there. And that’s what makes this situation so unique.”

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said Tuesday he intends to call a special session of the Minnesota Legislature to address gun and school safety, and he suggested that an assault weapons ban would be on his list of proposals, which he is still developing. But it would be very difficult for anything to pass the closely divided Legislature without at least some bipartisan support.

House Republicans on Thursday released a list of proposals that lack any restrictions on access to firearms. It calls for increased funding for school security and for school resources officers, including for private schools. They would also prohibit districts from banning school resource officers, as Minneapolis and some other districts have done. The House GOP also called for more mental health treatment beds, and mandatory minimum prison sentences for repeat criminals who use guns and for straw purchasers of firearms that are used in violent crimes.

Students Demand Action, an arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, is organizing school walkouts across the country for Friday to demand that state and federal lawmakers ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

___

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski reported from Minneapolis.

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By SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press

The Trump administration must release billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress, including money that President Donald Trump said last week he would not spend, a federal judge has ordered.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington ruled Wednesday that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the funding was likely illegal. He issued a preliminary injunction ordering the release of $11.5 billion that is set to expire at the end of the month.

“To be clear, no one disputes that Defendants have significant discretion in how to spend the funds at issue, and the Court is not directing Defendants to make payments to any particular recipients,” wrote Ali, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden. “But Defendants do not have any discretion as to whether to spend the funds.”

Messages to the White House and State Department were not immediately returned. The administration filed a notice of appeal on Thursday.

Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter on Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.

He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That is when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice means Congress cannot act on the request in the required 45-day window and the money goes unspent. It’s the first time in nearly 50 years that a president has used the tactic. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.

Ali said Congress would have to approve the rescission proposal for the administration to withhold the money.

The law is “explicit that it is congressional action—not the President’s transmission of a special message—that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations,” he wrote.

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The money at issue includes nearly $4 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to spend on global health programs and more than $6 billion for HIV and AIDS programs. Trump has portrayed the funding as wasteful spending that does not align with his foreign policy goals, and in January, he issued an executive order directing the State Department and USAID to freeze spending on foreign aid.

Nonprofit organizations that sued the government have said the funding freeze breaks federal law and has shut down funding for even the most urgent lifesaving programs abroad.

A divided panel of appeals court judges ruled last month that the administration could suspend the money. The judges later revised that opinion, reviving the lawsuit before Ali.

In his ruling, Ali said he understood that his decision would not be the final word in the case, adding that “definitive higher court guidance now will be instructive.”

“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for improperly snooping on people’s smartphones during a nearly decade-long period of intrusions.

The verdict reached Wednesday in San Francisco federal court followed a more than two-week trial in a class-action case covering about 98 million smartphones operating in the United States between July 1, 2016, through Sept. 23, 2024. That means the total damages awarded in the five-year-old case works out to about $4 per device.

Google had denied that it was improperly tracking the online activity of people who thought they had shielded themselves with privacy controls. The company maintained its stance even though the eight-person jury concluded Google had been spying in violation of California privacy laws.

“This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said Thursday. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”

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The lawyers who filed the case had argued Google had used the data they collected off smartphones without users’ permission to help sell ads tailored to users’ individual interests — a strategy that resulted in the company reaping billions in additional revenue. The lawyers framed those ad sales as illegal profiteering that merited damages of more than $30 billion.

Even though the jury came up with a far lower calculation for the damages, one of the lawyers who brought the case against Google hailed the outcome as a victory for privacy protection.

“We hope this result sends a message to the tech industry that Americans will not sit idly by as their information is collected and monetized against their will,” said attorney John Yanchunis of law firm Morgan & Morgan.

The San Francisco jury verdict came a day after Google avoided the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to break up the company in a landmark antitrust case in Washington, D.C., targeting its dominant search engine. A federal judge who had declared Google’s search engine to be an illegal monopoly ordered less radical changes, including requiring the company to share some of its search data with rivals.