SAVANNAH, Ga. — A federal government building in downtown Savannah is officially slated for demolition as part of the U.S. General Services Administration’s push to reduce the federal real estate portfolio.

The Juliette Gordon Low Building A at 120 Barnard St., on Telfair Square’s northeastern trust lot, is slated for demolition starting May 25. GSA has cited multiple recurring maintenance issues and the lack of a foreseeable federal tenant as reasons for the demolition.

“After an evaluation of the building’s current condition and its long-term viability for federal use, GSA has concluded the building is not suitable for continued use due to significant deferred maintenance requirements,” a GSA spokesperson stated.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson announced the news at a press conference, adding that GSA’s decision requires no permissions or permitting from the city of Savannah. Juliette Gordon Low Building A is not a contributing structure within Savannah’s Downtown Historic District. Contributing resources are buildings or sites that add to architectural or historic value that makes a district significant.

Demolition is expected to take three months, and GSA has plans to restore the site with grass and landscaping, according to a GSA memo shared with the city of Savannah and obtained by the Savannah Morning News. GSA also plans to extend security fencing from the nearby Tomochichi Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse as well as install exterior lighting and security cameras at the site, according to the memo.

Multiple traffic impacts are anticipated during demolition, including full closure of State Street between Whitaker Street and Barnard Street for two to four weeks, the memo states.

“We recognize we may not be able to control what happens, but we can make sure that the public knows what we know,” Johnson said.

The building is currently unoccupied by any federal services. Recently, it has been used as construction offices during a renovation of the Tomochichi complex, the GSA spokesperson stated. Specific deferred maintenance issues at Juliette Gordon Low Building A include recurring roof leaks, a nonfunctional elevator, plumbing problems, and an aged HVAC system with limited function, according to GSA.

The Trump administration has sought to “right-size” the federal government’s real estate portfolio. The effort was launched in April 2025 via an executive order aimed at allowing agencies to assess office space based on cost-effectiveness and “mission suitability,” according to a White House fact sheet.

GSA manages roughly 363 million square feet of space across 8,397 buildings, including courthouses and post offices in addition to office buildings, according to GSA’s website. The agency stated in a Jan. 20 press release that it has disposed of 90 properties and reduced its portfolio by 3 million square feet.

Juliette Gordon Low Building A is the first known planned demolition in Savannah during Trump’s second administration.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Savannah Morning News and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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Several groups and nonprofit organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over the cancellation of a $7 billion Solar for All program intended to make solar power accessible to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans.

They say the Trump administration‘s termination of the program was illegal and they want a federal judge to direct the EPA to reinstate it. The program is affiliated with $20 billion more in green funding also terminated under President Donald Trump that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had characterized as a fraudulent scheme fraught with waste.

The EPA does not comment on litigation, the agency stated in an email on Monday.

The lawsuit is the latest legal action taken against the administration amid its assault on clean energy policy and related funding and programs across the country. Trump has moved to boost production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.

The lawsuit filed in Rhode Island by the Rhode Island AFL-CIO labor organization and others — including public interest law center Rhode Island Center for Justice and nonprofit Solar United Neighbors — detailed the program’s importance for local workforces and lower-income communities looking for access to clean-energy project funding.

Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said Monday that the program’s termination kills jobs and will drive up electricity prices.

The Solar for All money was rescinded after Trump’s massive tax and spending law passed in Congress in July. Zeldin stated via social media at the time, “the bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”

The groups argued in the lawsuit that the law only revoked climate grants not yet awarded by the EPA and that these solar funds were already awarded.

“T��� Trump administration’s rollback of the Solar for All program is a shameless attempt to prop up fossil fuel companies at the expense of families,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the nonprofit legal advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs.

“This program would provide families with low incomes access to clean, affordable solar power: energy that lowers bills, improves air quality, and keeps people safer during extreme heat,” she added in a statement.

The lawsuit cites previous EPA estimates that the program would have saved recipients about $400 each year on electricity bills and cumulatively reduced or avoided greenhouse gas emissions by over 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The $7 billion Solar for All program was part of the $27 billion “green bank,” which is formally known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It was established in the Democrat-backed climate law passed in 2022 under former President Joe Biden.

The other $20 billion, canceled by the Trump administration in March, was slated for eight community development banks and nonprofit organizations for tens of thousands of projects to combat the effects of climate change, such as residential energy efficiency projects to larger-scale investments such as community cooling.

Groups have also sued over the cancellation of that money — with a federal judge saying they must have access to some of the funds — though recently, an appeals court ruled that federal officials can move forward with its termination.

The Trump administration has targeted a host of programs and policies dedicated to clean energy.

Just last week, the administration canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of climate-friendly projects across 16 states. It has also interfered with nearly complete offshore wind developments, moved to rescind the crucial ‘endangerment finding’ that allows climate regulation, is looking to end greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for large polluters, and taken a slew of other deregulatory measures.

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WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Monday that a nearly complete offshore wind project halted by the Trump administration can resume, dealing the president a setback in his ongoing effort to restrict the fledgling industry.

Work on the Revolution Wind project for Rhode Island and Connecticut was paused Aug. 22, when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop-work order for what it said were national security concerns. The Interior Department agency did not specify those concerns at the time. Both the developer and the two states sued in federal courts.

Danish energy company Orsted and its joint venture partner, Skyborn Renewables, sought a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court that would allow them to move the project forward.

At a hearing Monday, Judge Royce Lamberth said he considered how Revolution Wind has relied on its federal approval, the delays are costing $2.3 million per day and if the project can’t meet deadlines, the entire enterprise could collapse. After December, the specialized ship needed to complete the project won’t be available until at least 2028, he said. More than 1,000 people have been working on the wind farm, which is 80 percent complete.

“T���re is no question in my mind of irreparable harm to the plaintiffs,” Lamberth said, as he granted the motion for the preliminary injunction. In his written ruling, he said Revolution Wind had “demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits” of its claim, adding that granting the injunction is in the public interest.

Interior Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace said the ruling means Revolution Wind “will be able to resume construction” while the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “continues its investigation into possible impacts by the project to national security and prevention of other uses on the Outer Continental Shelf.”

The administration said in a court filing this month that while BOEM approved the wind farm, it stipulated that the developer continue to work with the Defense Department to mitigate national security concerns. It said the Interior Department, to date, has not received any information that these concerns have been addressed.

Orsted said Monday that construction will resume as soon as possible, and it will continue to seek to work collaboratively with the administration.

Nancy Pyne of the Sierra Club said the court ruling “reaffirms that Donald Trump and his administration’s attacks on clean energy are not only reckless and harmful to our communities, but they are also illegal.” Trump is trying to “kneecap” renewable energy “in favor of dirty and expensive fossil fuels,” she said.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump was elected with a mandate to “restore our country’s energy dominance — which includes prioritizing the most effective and reliable tools to power our country. This will not be the final say on the matter.”

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to end the offshore wind industry as soon as he returned to the White House. He has said he wants to boost production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal for the U.S. to have the lowest-cost energy and electricity of any nation in the world.

The Trump administration has stopped construction on major offshore wind farms, revoked wind energy permits and paused permitting, canceled plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development, and stopped $679 million in federal funding for a dozen offshore wind projects.

Last week, the administration moved to block a separate Massachusetts offshore wind farm. That was just days after the Interior Department asked a federal judge in Baltimore to cancel previous approval for construction of an offshore wind project in Maryland.

Revolution Wind is supposed to be Rhode Island’s and Connecticut’s first large offshore wind farm — capable of supplying power to more than 350,000 homes. The complex is expected to meet about 2.5 percent of the region’s electricity needs.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, both Democrats, called the judge’s ruling a major win for workers and families, who need the project to stay on track so it can start to drive down unaffordable energy bills.

Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat, said a multibillion-dollar project that is 80 percent complete and was fully permitted with input from the Pentagon is not a national security problem. The Interior Department “should take the hint and let the thousands of construction workers finish the job,” he said.

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast. It says in its complaint that about $5 billion has been spent or committed, and it expects more than $1 billion in costs if the project is canceled. Rhode Island is already home to the five-turbine, offshore Block Island Wind Farm.

Editor’s note: McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut contributed to this report.

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

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha accused President Donald Trump of waging an “all-out assault” on the wind energy industry. The states’ lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, describes the Revolution Wind project as a “cornerstone” of their clean energy future, abruptly halted by federal officials without “statutory authority, regulatory justification or factual basis.”

Danish energy company Orsted filed a separate suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., also 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 advance the project, which is 80 percent 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. They were not specified.

Trump has demonstrated hostility to renewable energy, particularly offshore wind. He has prioritized fossil fuels for electricity. Revolution Wind is the second major wind project that his administration ordered to stop. Work on the first, an offshore wind project for New York, was later allowed to resume.

In separate federal court filings, the administration said recently 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.

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

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 so 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 the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved Revolution Wind in 2023, the agency 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 a recent 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.

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

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

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island coast. It says in its complaint that about $5 billion has been spent or committed, and it expects more than $1 billion in costs if the project is canceled. Rhode Island already has one offshore facility: 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 Revolution Wind electricity, 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.

Editor’s note: AP writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut contributed to this report.

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The Trump administration is canceling plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development — the latest step to suppress the industry in the United States.

More than 3.5 million acres had been designated wind energy areas, as offshore locations deemed most suitable for development. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is now rescinding all designated wind energy areas in federal waters, announcing on Wednesday an end to setting aside large areas for “speculative wind development.”

Offshore wind lease sales were anticipated off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Maine, New York, California and Oregon, as well as in the central Atlantic. The Biden administration last year had announced a five-year schedule to lease federal offshore tracts for wind energy production.

Trump began reversing the country’s energy policies after taking office in January. A series of executive orders took aim at increasing oil, gas and coal production. Another early executive order temporarily halted offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and paused the issuance of approvals, permits and loans for all wind projects.

The bureau said it was acting in accordance with Trump’s action and an order by his interior secretary this week to end any preferential treatment toward wind and solar facilities, which were described as unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources.

Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, applauded the administration for its actions and said they were long overdue. Opponents of offshore wind projects are particularly vocal and organized in New Jersey.

“It’s hard to believe these projects ever got this far because of the immensity, scale, scope and expense, compared to relatively cheap and reliable forms of onshore power,” he said Thursday. “We’re nearly there, but we haven’t reached the finish line yet.”

The Sierra Club said the administration’s “relentless obstruction of wind energy” shows it does not care about creating affordable, reliable energy for everyday Americans.

“No matter how much they want to bolster their buddies in the dirty fossil fuel industry, we will continue to push for the cleaner, healthier, and greener future we deserve,” Xavier Boatright, Sierra Club’s deputy legislative director for clean energy and electrification, stated.

Attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia are suing in federal court to challenge Trump’s executive order halting leasing and permitting for wind energy projects. His administration had also halted work on a major offshore wind project for New York but allowed it to resume in May.

The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, a 12-turbine facility called South Fork, opened last year east of Montauk Point, New York.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees.

The agency’s Office of Research and Development has long provided the scientific underpinnings for EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would  to program offices that focus on major issues like air and water.

The agency said Friday it is creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions that will allow it to focus on research and science “more than ever before.”

Once fully implemented, the changes will save the EPA nearly $750 million, officials said.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement that the changes announced Friday would ensure the agency “is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, while Powering the Great American Comeback.”

The EPA also said it is beginning the process to eliminate thousands of jobs, following a  last week that cleared the way for President  plans to downsize the federal workforce, despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.

Total staffing at EPA will go down to 12,448, a reduction of more than 3,700 employees, or nearly 23%, from staffing levels in January when Trump took office, the agency said.

“This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,” Zeldin said, using a government term for mass firings.

‘Heart and brain of EPA’

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee, called the elimination of the research office “a travesty.”

“T��� Trump administration is firing hardworking scientists while employing political appointees whose job it is to lie incessantly to Congress and to the American people,” she said. “T��� obliteration of ORD will have generational impacts on Americans’ health and safety.”

The Office of Research and Development “is the heart and brain of the EPA,” said Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents thousands of EPA employees.

“Without it, we don’t have the means to assess impacts upon human health and the environment,” Chen said. “Its destruction will devastate public health in our country.”

The research office — EPA’s main science arm — currently has 1,540 positions, excluding special government employees and public health officers, according to  reviewed by Democratic staff on the House science panel earlier this year. As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists could be laid off, the documents indicated.

The research office has 10 facilities across the country, stretching from Florida and North Carolina to Oregon. An EPA spokeswoman said Friday that all laboratory functions currently conducted by the research office will continue.

In addition to the reduction in force, or RIF, the agency also is offering the third round of deferred resignations for eligible employees, including research office staff, spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said. The application period is open until July 25.

‘Declaration of dissent’

The EPA’s announcement comes two weeks after the agency  who signed a “declaration of dissent” with agency policies under the Trump administration. The agency accused the employees of “unlawfully undermining” Trump’s agenda.

In a letter made public June 30, the employees wrote that the EPA is  to protect human health and the environment. The letter represented rare public criticism from agency employees who knew they could face retaliation for speaking out.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court backed a multibillion-dollar oil railroad expansion proposal in Utah on Thursday in a ruling that scales back the use of a key environmental law and could accelerate development projects around the country.

The 8-0 decision followed an appeal to the high court from backers of the project, which aims to quadruple oil production in a remote area of sandstone and sagebrush.

The decision will have a sweeping impact on National Environmental Policy Act reviews, environmental groups said. President Donald Trump’s administration has already said it’s working to support his January declaration of a “national energy emergency” and his vow to boost U.S. oil and gas production.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh referred to the decision as a “course correction” in an opinion fully joined by four conservative colleagues.

“Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects,” Kavanaugh wrote. The three liberal justices agreed the Utah project should gain approval, but they would have taken a narrower path.

The justices reversed a lower court decision that required a more thorough environmental review and restored an important approval from federal regulators on the Surface Transportation Board.

The board’s chair, Patrick Fuchs, said the ruling reins in the scope of environmental reviews that are “unnecessarily hindering” infrastructure construction throughout the country.

The case centers on the Uinta Basin Railway project, a proposed 88-mile expansion that would connect the oil-rich region of northeast Utah to the national rail network, allowing oil and gas producers to access larger markets. The state’s crude oil production was valued at $4.1 billion in 2024, according to a Utah Geological Survey report, and could increase substantially via the expansion project.

Construction, though, does not appear to be imminent. Project leaders must win additional approvals and secure funding from private-sector partners before they can break ground, Uinta Basin Railway spokesperson Melissa Cano said.

Environmental groups and a Colorado county had argued that regulators must consider a broad range of potential impacts when they consider new development, such as increased wildfire risk, the effect of additional crude oil production from the area and increased refining in Gulf Coast states.

The justices, though, found that regulators were right to consider the direct effects of the project, rather than the wider upstream and downstream impacts. Kavanaugh wrote that courts should defer to regulators on “where to draw the line” on factors to consider.

“T��� goal of the law is to inform agency decision-making, not to paralyze it,” he said.

The court has taken steps to curtail the power of federal regulators in other cases, however. For instance, it struck down the decades-old Chevron doctrine that made it easier for the federal government to set a wide range of regulations.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a concurrence that the court could have simply cleared the way for the railway approval by saying that regulators did not need to consider increased fossil fuel production tied to the project.

Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case after facing calls to step aside over ties to Philip Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire whose ownership of oil wells in the area means he could benefit if the project goes through. Gorsuch, as a lawyer in private practice, previously represented Anschutz.

The Trump administration announced last month it’s accelerating environmental reviews of projects required under the same law at the center of the Utah case, compressing a process that typically takes a year or more into just weeks.

“T��� court’s decision gives agencies a green light to ignore the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their decisions and avoid confronting them,” said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice.

Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said opponents would continue to fight the Utah project.

“This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy,” she said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said the ruling affirms a “balanced approach” to environmental oversight. He praised the railroad expansion as a critical infrastructure project that will help “restore America’s energy independence” and bolster the state’s rural economy.

The project’s public partner also applauded the ruling.

“It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability,” said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition.

Editor’s note: Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

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