Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
“The Kentucky Coal Association applauds the Trump Administration for taking action to expand coal leasing and invest in coal power. These steps protect Kentucky jobs, lower energy costs, and keep coal strong. Thank you for standing with coal country!” — Kentucky Coal Association, September 29, 2025
Even here in the coal-rich Tri-State (Kentucky, West Virginia and southeast Ohio) voters are increasingly willing to curb coal mining and processing if it means lower energy bills. We’re moving on.
So says a July 2025 poll conducted by right-leaning Echelon Insights, wherein 84% of West Virginian voters indicated support for renewables as a means to greater energy efficiency. It’s a trend mirrored by slightly older research done in Kentucky and Ohio’s designated Appalachian counties — neighboring states likewise fed up with chronic, unjustified rate hikes from the usual bad actors. (See FirstEnergy, Appalachian Power and their multiple subsidiaries.) We’re moving on.
But if the “Mine, baby mine!” Trump administration has their way, coal may be set for a comeback here and in particular the western U.S. Announced late last month, Trump’s latest land-grab will open up 13 million federal acres for new mining, and provide $625 million to restart or update coal burning power plants.
The action also reduces royalty rates [payments made by mining companies to the government] from 12.5% to 7%. The move was another follow-through on Trump’s April pledge to resurrect an industry otherwise on it’s way out.
Consequently, plowing the earth is about to get a whole lot cheaper. Still some extra political cover wouldn’t hurt. In line with the by now familiar neoconservative approach, Trump tasked three gutted federal departments to get the job done: Interior, Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The neocon playbook on such matters always involves a vaguely true narrative that is ultimately drivel, but spinnable. In the case of clean energy, it’s invoking the legitimate need to boost power for emerging technologies, then selling us the patently false belief only coal can fill the gap.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (former Republican governor of North Dakota and real estate developer) took the point at a Sept. 29 press conference: “By reducing the royalty rate for coal [payments from mining companies to the government], increasing coal acres available for leasing and unlocking critical minerals from mine waste, we are strengthening our economy, protecting national security and ensuring that communities from Montana to Alabama benefit from good-paying jobs,”
All this goes to show how easy it has become for the administration to turn back the clock, and make friends and money doing it. This latest assault on the American landscape is breathtaking in scope, and further disregard for places like the Tri-State ready to do what Trump will not: Move on.
Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio.
Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
