TotalEnergies payout clearly indicates Trump’s priorities | Letter

Why is President Trump willing to pay almost $1 billion of our tax money to increase our utility bills? That is essentially what Trump did when he agreed [to pay the French company TotalEnergies $928 million](https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/02/climate/trump-totalenergies-lawsuit-offshore-wind) to cancel the leases it already had signed for wind farms in the waters off New York and North Carolina. It will now invest it in gas and oil companies. The problem is that wind energy has become cheaper and quicker to add electricity to the grid than oil or gas, and with the demand for electricity growing for AI, the only way to slow that increase down is to add energy as cheaply and quickly as possible. On the other hand, the higher the demand for energy, and the smaller the supply, the higher the profit margins for big oil. As Trump himself says, though, he doesn’t think “even a little bit” about the American people’s financial situations. Big oil? He thinks a great deal about. I wonder why. **James Richter** _Lewiston_ Copy the Story Link Tagged: [letter to the editor](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/letter-to-the-editor/)