What’s Behind MAGA’s Strange New Crush on Solar Energy?

And why is the administration and its influencer crew drawing a line between solar and wind?

Is MAGA changing its tune on solar energy? Since the start of the year, a dizzying array of social media posts and news reports have pointed to the possibility, even as the administration continues to double down on its anti-wind policies and rhetoric. Why solar? And why now—especially given that President Trump continues to fulminate against its renewable energy cousin, wind power?

Let’s recap, because sorting through this is not easy.

On January 24, Trump shared a video on Truth Social that seemed to endorse rooftop solar for households as a way to free up energy for the industrial parts of the grid and help the United States compete with China. Four days later, The Daily Caller published an op-ed from Newt Gingrich declaring that “American energy must not pick winners and losers,” that the energy market could use “more of everything,” and that “solar and wind power are popular, with 80 percent and 74 percent respectively backing local construction.”

On February 4, Axios reported that a new poll from a Trump-aligned polling firm, commissioned by First Solar, found that a majority of Trump voters support solar. Katie Miller, Stephen Miller’s wife and former press secretary to Mike Pence, promptly retweeted it on X, saying, “Solar energy is the energy of the future.… We must rapidly expand solar to compete with China.” A little over a week later, Miller posted a chart on X, noting, “Solar is now the dominant source of new U.S. power capacity and is on track to surpass coal in total installed capacity before the end of 2026.”

A week after that, on February 19, Semafor reported a poll from Kellyanne Conway’s firm showing that Trump voters support solar. And the following week, Politico’s Greenwire reported “three agency career officials” confirming that the Interior Department was now “reviewing at least 20 commercial-scale projects that have languished in the permitting pipeline since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.” Specifically: solar projects. Greenwire noted that this coincides with “the artificial intelligence boom—and the electricity demands helping hike consumer power bills,” and that “some congressional Republicans” have objected to Trump’s complete rejection of renewables.

The next day, February 27, Politico finally shed some light on what might be driving this: The outlet obtained access to a “confidential memo” from early February from renewable energy group the American Clean Power Association, outlining a new strategy to “engage Conway and conservative influencers like Miller” on behalf of solar energy. “As part of the campaign, ACP is working with a series of conservative influencers to secure opinion media placements authored by conservative columnists, former Republican lawmakers, and other credible Republican voices in conservative outlets,” the memo stated. Politico also noted that Conway’s poll had been commissioned by American Energy First, an advocacy group founded by ACP. (Not mentioned in the Politico piece, but notable: AEF first created accounts on X, Instagram, and Truth Social in January. This campaign has ramped up very quickly.)

Miller denied to Politico that she was being paid for her solar advocacy. But four days later, The Washington Post published a piece in which she declined to comment on the payment question. (She did double down on her advocacy, saying that solar “solved” Australia’s “rolling blackout issues” and that solar “should be a driver of the solution” to rising energy costs.)

The Post story pointed to other signs that MAGA may be pivoting. “Among the loudest” of the MAGA solar advocates, it noted, “may be on-again, off-again Trump adviser Elon Musk, whom Miller worked for as he designed and executed the president’s initiative to slash the federal workforce. Musk is now throwing his influence behind a moonshot effort to wrest solar manufacturing away from China.” There are signs of broader adoption too. “In Virginia, a coalition of conservatives pushing for more solar power is printing ‘Make Solar Great Again’ hats.” And a “Richmond-based group funded by industry and philanthropists called Energy Right,” led by an alum from the first-term Trump Interior Department, “has been working with conservatives there to push solar forward in the statehouse and local communities.” Interestingly, the Post reports, Energy Right recently founded the “America First Energy Project” in Louisiana—seemingly unaffiliated with ACP’s American Energy First, but a striking linguistic echo.

Throughout this multi-month saga, the president has been on a more or less constant tirade, interrupted only by breath, sleep, and distraction, against offshore wind—his January speech in Davos being a prime example. This week, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration remains so committed to sinking wind power that, after having its attempts to halt multiple offshore wind projects rejected by the courts, the administration is now contemplating buying off the companies in question: paying one energy company $1 billion not to build the wind farms and to instead invest in natural gas in Texas.

What in the Sam Hill is going on here? Successful lobbying is nothing new, but the speed with which this solar campaign seems to have succeeded is a little unusual, particularly given Trump’s doubling down on wind power as some kind of satanic scam. Nor is conservative voters’ support for solar new—it’s been showing up in other polls for years, long before Conway’s. What’s new is the leaders now embracing the cause. Is it really possible, you may wonder, that the only thing keeping prominent Trumpers from endorsing solar before was that no one had considered paying them for said endorsement?

I don’t have the answers here, but there are a few points worth considering as context. First, while Trump has demonized renewable energy in general, and financial incentives for rooftop solar got scrapped in the 2025 GOP budget bill, both Trump and others have demonized solar conspicuously less than wind, which appears to be a particular bugbear.

The MAGA figures pivoting to solar are stressing this distinction. Kellyanne Conway’s memo to American Energy First, detailing the results of the poll it commissioned, concludes by saying that “solar, unlike wind, is not viewed through a partisan lens; it is seen as a means to an end.” Since the survey summary doesn’t document any questions about wind at all, it’s hard to know where that conclusion is coming from. Independent polling finds only a slightly larger spread between Democrats and Republicans for wind than for solar: In 2024, Pew found a 27-point gap on solar versus a 32-point gap for wind, and Yale/George Mason, looking at parties’ extremes, found a 51-point gap between liberal Dems and conservative Republicans on solar, versus a 57-point gap on wind.

The U.S. solar industry, however, is about twice the size of the U.S. wind industry in installed capacity, and also larger in terms of market value. New solar installations are typically less financially and logistically fraught than new wind installations, and a lot are planned for the next few years. The solar industry may have both more money for lobbying and better stats to deploy in its favor.

There’s also another thing that might be driving the speed of this political pivot. Conway’s poll, though headlined as showing “Trump voters’” thoughts on solar energy, wasn’t interviewing all Trump voters. Instead, it was interviewing Trump voters in five specific states: Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and Texas. The latter three are among the top five states for currently installed solar capacity, with Texas the “fastest-growing solar economy,” according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Arizona is the third-fastest-growing solar economy, Indiana is fourth, Florida is seventh, and Ohio is eighth. SEIA also reports that Texas stands to lose 51 percent (162 projects) of new solar capacity due to new federal policies, Arizona 53 percent (15 projects), Ohio 40 percent (14 projects), and Indiana 35 percent (10 projects).

Several of these states are also home to embattled Republican congresspeople. In Texas, as Republican Senator John Cornyn and MAGA challenger Ken Paxton duke it out in a primary runoff, current polling suggests that Democratic nominee James Talarico has a decent shot at beating either of them in the November midterms. (Notably, one of the first polls showing Talarico leading the Trump-aligned Paxton came out in late November last year, just before the MAGA tide seemed to turn on solar.) In Ohio, Republican Senator Jon Husted is in a dead heat with former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Either of those races could flip control of the Senate. In Florida, noted Trump acolyte Cory Mills, who seems to be even more stunningly scandal-prone than Paxton, is looking vulnerable.

Of course, several of these states are also home to significant wind power—particularly Texas, which leads the country in wind power. And you’d think that would complicate the narrative here. Then again, the Trump administration’s attacks on wind have mostly been on offshore installations—in addition to making it a bit harder to install wind power on federal lands. Texas’s wind farms aren’t offshore, and they’re mostly on private lands. So the contradiction between the position on solar and on wind, as it pertains to Texas, perhaps isn’t as significant as it might first appear.

Is Republican fear of the midterms making solar lobbying more successful than it might otherwise be? Hard to say. Pending new, more extensive reporting on the solar lobbying network, the idea can’t be dismissed.

“Earliest 100-degree temperature on record”

That’s what the National Weather Service is predicting for parts of the country this week and next, as a massive heat wave envelops the American West and Southwest.

The Latest Front in the Battle Over Climate Lawsuits: Bills Wiping Out Liability

An important update on state efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change, and make them shoulder some of the costs of adapting and recovery after climate-fueled disasters:

Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms—even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount. It’s the latest in a counter-offensive that has unfolded on multiple fronts, from the halls of Congress and the White House to courts and state attorneys general offices across the country. Dozens of local communities, states and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures. But many of these cases and climate superfund laws could be stopped in their tracks, either by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court or by the Republican-controlled Congress.

Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms—even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount.

It’s the latest in a counter-offensive that has unfolded on multiple fronts, from the halls of Congress and the White House to courts and state attorneys general offices across the country.

Dozens of local communities, states and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures.

But many of these cases and climate superfund laws could be stopped in their tracks, either by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court or by the Republican-controlled Congress.

Read Dana Drugmand’s full report at Inside Climate News.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

What Does Kristi Noem’s Firing Mean for a Hobbled FEMA?

Her tenure coincided with unprecedented upheaval in disaster preparedness grants and staffing. Experts would like to see her successor, Markwayne Mullin, indicate where he stands on all that.

In the days since President Trump announced that he was firing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary and replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, much of the focus has understandably been on what this means for the brutal, chaotic, and lawless immigration policy that Noem has spearheaded. But there’s another area within DHS where Noem’s departure raises rather urgent questions about a possible change in policies. And that’s at FEMA.

Noem was in the middle of a project to shrink the Federal Emergency Management Agency significantly, having announced large staffing cuts in January. She’d also floated the idea of dismantling it entirely.

Her firing last Thursday came only a day after Senate Democrats released a report showing that Noem’s policy of requiring sign-off on any expenditure over $100,000 had resulted in “at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards” being held up—among them, disaster aid for survivors of Hurricane Helene and Texas’s deadly floods last summer (which killed at least 135 people, including 27 at a girls’ summer camp). And the day after Noem’s firing was announced, a judge gave FEMA 14 days to inform states about the status of their Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, a multibillion-dollar program that a court in December ordered reinstated—with no sign of compliance from FEMA.

Meanwhile, FEMA remains largely shuttered due to the DHS shutdown. And the administration recently spent “more than half of the balance in the nation’s disaster relief fund,” according to Politico, “pointing to that dwindling aid as [a] means to pressure Democrats into yielding in Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations.”

What exactly does Markwayne Mullin intend to do about all this? I asked two experts what they would be watching for in the coming weeks to determine whether Mullin would represent a serious shift from Noem’s policies, and whether FEMA would be able to handle disasters this year.

“Shutdowns come and go,” said Bryan Koon, president and chief executive officer at global emergency management consulting firm IEM and former director of the Florida Division of Emergency. “We tend to find ways to work around whatever issues are associated with that.” But he pointed to the FEMA Review Council report that the president ordered last year to determine policy changes at the agency. “It’s been now a year of uncertainty,” Koon said. “We’ve heard ideas about what might be in it, but frankly I would like to have some certainty, some insight into what the council’s going to recommend.” He noted that Trump already extended the timeline through the end of March. “I’m concerned that the transition between Noem and Mullin as secretary, combined with the shutdown, is going to delay that even further or even potentially render it moot,” he said.

Koon would consider the release of the report as one indicator of FEMA’s overall health at present. “A second would be an actual emergency or disaster that required FEMA to be all in. We were remarkably, as a nation, pretty lucky in 2025, and thus far in 2026—I mean, we had no landfalling hurricanes.”

Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA, agreed. “I think they dodged a bullet,” he said, regarding last year’s hurricane season. “I and most of the emergency management community have great concerns for FEMA’s readiness. It is a collection of the most selfless, dedicated people in the government,” he said, “but there’s no getting around that they’ve been decimated over the past year and a half.” He pointed to layoffs, the firing of most senior leadership, the “onerous level of review” for grants, and more. “At every turn, the Noem administration has made decisions that dramatically degrade FEMA’s readiness and capabilities.”

If Markwayne Mullin is formally nominated and sits for confirmation—a big if, given that Trump’s first administration was marked by an unprecedented number of acting Cabinet secretaries working without Senate confirmation—Manning suggested that senators ask him about that directly. “I think the question I would ask Mullin during his confirmation hearing would be a question that I’ve tried to get people to ask Noem for the last year: The law explicitly says that the secretary does not have the authority to degrade FEMA’s mission or move resources,” he said. “I would be curious to get any nominee on the record: Will you follow the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act and restrict yourself from impacting the FEMA budget?” And as a secondary question: “Will you rescind any of the policies that have prevented the deployment and travel of FEMA’s employees to disaster sites?”

In the meantime, the current readiness of state and federal emergency agencies has people worried. “I went through at least one shutdown as a state director,” Manning said. And state directors need to know of FEMA, “Will they be on the other end of the phone when I need them?”

This is also hurricane preparation season. “Most states are going to do a state-wide hurricane exercise,” said Koon. “They’re going to do a large-scale event that allows them to test their plans and processes and coordinations and look at who their partners are and contracts are and who’s going to do what in what scenarios.” In Florida, where he has experience, it’s “a weeklong event sometime in May,” which requires some advance planning.

Perhaps it’s better, Koon said, for the impact of the shutdown to be felt now, in March, rather than in May or when a hurricane hits. But there’s never an ideal time. Wildfire season isn’t a season anymore. Earthquakes and other disasters can happen at any time, Manning noted. “There’s no seasonality to disasters,” he said. “Preparedness is a year-round thing.”

Stat of the Week0.35 degrees per decade

That’s the rate of warming we’ve been experiencing since 2015, according to a new paper. It’s almost twice the previous rate—0.2 degrees per decade. In other words, as several scientists have warned, climate change is accelerating—although exactly how much is the subject of some debate.

How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give states new tools in climate suits

The Guardian’s Dharna Noor reports on a fascinating implication of the administration’s decision to kill the so-called “endangerment finding”—it may actually help state-based climate laws in court:

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.“They’re trying to talk out of both sides of their mouths,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice-president for law and policy at the environmental legal non-profit Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

“They’re trying to talk out of both sides of their mouths,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice-president for law and policy at the environmental legal non-profit Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).

Read Dharna Noor’s full report at The Guardian.

This article first appeared in Life in a Warming World, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn. Sign up here.

Ken Paxton Is the Face of a Sea Change in the Republican Party

Most Republicans oppose environmental regulation. But Texas’s attorney general has attacked the energy transition in a way that upends a generation of conservative consensus.

As some see it, the Texas Republican primary for U.S. Senate is a battle for the future of the party: Longtime incumbent John Cornyn represents the conservative establishment, while Attorney General Ken Paxton is a rising MAGA........

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