President Donald Trump’s Interior Department plans to revoke a federal permit issued late last year for construction of a contested wind farm about 10 miles off the coast of Ocean City, administration attorneys said in a court filing Monday.

The decision is a major blow to Maryland’s only federally permitted offshore wind project, further dimming the hopes for a local offshore industry with rapidly narrowing paths to construction in the foreseeable future.

Since taking office in January, Trump has attempted to block and roll back offshore wind development across the country. Monday’s step, though, marks a significant escalation in his administration’s position on the industry off Maryland’s coast, where turbines have yet to take root.

In their filing, attorneys for the U.S. Department of the Interior informed a judge for the U.S. District Court of Maryland that the agency intends to pull back its construction approval for the Ocean City project no later than Sept. 12. The filing does not explain the government’s legal justification for the move.

Ocean City and other jurisdictions first sued the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in October over the siting of the wind farm.

A project of the Baltimore-based US Wind, the development received its federal permit in the final weeks of former President Joe Biden’s presidency.

But with Monday’s filing, the Trump administration adopted a legal strategy predicted by some industry observers early in Trump’s term, in which the Interior Department signaled an intent to side with its opponents in court rather than defend the permit it issued.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior declined to comment on the court filing.

In a statement Monday night, the project’s developer, Baltimore-based US Wind, expressed confidence that its permits will hold up in court.

“Our construction and operations plan approval is the subject of ongoing litigation, but we remain confident that the federal permits we secured after a multi-year and rigorous public review process are legally sound,” said Nancy Sopko, US Wind’s vice president of external affairs, in an email.

Still, the company’s project already faced intense headwinds and resistance.

Trump has made his antipathy for offshore wind turbines clear while taking aggressive steps to curtail the industry nationally. Late last week, the administration brought construction to a halt on a nearly-completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

Additionally, the president’s domestic policy and tax bill passed earlier this summer phased out Biden-era tax credits seen as critical for offshore wind development. Under the new law, offshore wind developments that do not go into service by the end of 2027 or begin construction by next July cannot qualify for substantial tax incentives.

This new posture toward the Maryland project isn’t surprising, said Timothy Fox, managing director of the energy consultancy Clear View Energy Partners, who pointed out that Trump has deployed less traditional tactics to block wind projects elsewhere.

Only offshore wind projects that are far along in their development seem to have a viable path forward under Trump, said Fox, who said he underestimated the president’s willingness to take “muscular action” to block offshore wind projects.

The US Wind venture has been in the works for close to a decade, but with political headwinds continuing to mount Fox predicted the company could soon pull the plug.

“The administration is creating substantial — perhaps insurmountable hurdles — for this and other projects," he said.

Two other companies have leased waters off the Delmarva Peninsula for offshore wind development, but those ventures remain in early stages and lack federal approvals.

Offshore wind development is considered critical to Maryland’s effort to transition away from fossil fuels and slash its contributions to climate change, not to mention a state aim of developing 8.5 gigawatts of wind turbines in the ocean by 2031.

The Trump administration’s decision comes as the president and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore have sparred publicly in recent days over crime in Baltimore.

A spokesman for the governor said in a statement Monday night that cancelling the US Wind project would bring a halt to $1 billion in local investment and lead directly to higher utility costs for customers on the region’s stressed power grid. Once completed, US Wind’s project is expected to provide over two gigawatts of zero-emissions power.

“To choose a path away from offshore wind is for the Trump administration to admit that it cares more about satisfying his promises to those who bankrolled his campaign than about what is in the best interest of Marylanders — or the country as a whole," Moore spokesperson David Turner said in an email.

Maryland Republicans, meanwhile, have long criticized offshore wind development as a waste of taxpayer money, harmful to the environment and a blight on oceanfront views — similar arguments to those deployed by Ocean City in its court challenge.

Republican Rep. Andy Harris, who represents Ocean City in Congress, applauded the Trump administration’s action for heeding years of community concerns about the project.

“US Wind’s approval in Maryland was rushed, lacked transparency, and completely ignored the voices of the people who actually live and work on the Eastern Shore,” he said.

While based in Baltimore, US Wind is largely owned by Renexia SpA, a subsidiary of Italian energy company Toto Holding SpA, and funds managed by Apollo Global Management, an American investment firm.

US Wind has leased a sprawling 80,000 acres off the Maryland-Delaware coastline for its multiphase development. The first two phases would generate a combined 1,100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes in the region.