President Donald Trump is reviving America’s declining coal industry after years of wasting away under the Democrats’ damaging green agenda.
Specifically, the president signed executive orders that will keep coal plants open, restore thousands of jobs, and ensure a reliable energy supply for the nation’s growing tech sector.
The move also props up the economy while fulfilling another campaign promise to put American energy independence first.
President Trump’s four executive orders roll back years of progressive climate policies that have devastated coal-producing communities across the country.
Surrounded by coal miners wearing hard hats in the White House East Room, the president made it clear that his administration is committed to reversing the damage done by previous administrations.
“We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” President Trump declared during the signing ceremony. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on clean coal once and for all.”
The executive orders specifically target the removal of federal regulatory barriers that have crippled coal production, speed up environmental reviews, and eliminate climate-focused policies implemented during the Biden administration.
President Trump has directed the termination of the Jewel Moratorium, which had paused coal leasing on federal lands and effectively strangled new development.
The timing of the president’s actions could not be more critical. With the explosive growth of data centers, artificial intelligence technologies, and electric vehicles, America faces unprecedented electricity demands.
“Today, we’re taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers,” President Trump stated.
He added, “For years, people would just bemoan this industry and decimate the industry for absolutely no reason, because with modern technology and all of the other things that we do, it’s one of the great, great forms of energy.”
The orders include provisions to identify coal resources on federal lands, prioritize coal leasing on public lands, and even designate coal used in steel production as a “critical material.”
Since the early 2000s, America’s coal industry has been under sustained attack, with 2023 production less than half of 2008 levels.
Wyoming, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Illinois—America’s largest coal-producing states—stand to benefit significantly from President Trump’s actions.
Republican representatives, senators, and governors from these states attended the signing ceremony, celebrating the expected economic revival for their communities.
President Trump’s orders also aim to save coal plants scheduled for shutdown, including the Cholla Power Plant in Arizona.
“We’re going to keep those coal miners on the job and tell them to just remain calm,” he assured, “because we’re going to have that plant opening and burning the clean coal—beautiful, clean coal—in a very short period of time.”
Environmental groups immediately attacked Trump’s pro-American energy policies.
Rachel Hamby from the Center for Western Priorities claimed, “Donald Trump is hell-bent on dragging the United States back to the 19th century, complete with robber barons, smokestacks, crippling tariffs, and measles.”
As President Trump observed, “You could give ’em a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of job, and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal. That’s what they love to do.”
