The dying coal town that reveals Trump's lies about reviving mining (2025)

If we’re still surprised by the disinformation spoken by Donald Trump, some of the responsibility should sit with us.

The US President has consistently made claims that may sound believable, but on inspection have little basis in fact – and one of his assertions last week, about reviving America’s dying coal industry, felt especially cynical, dishonest and dangerous.

For decades, the US produced most of its electricity from coal-fired plants, reaching a peak in 2007.

Since then that figure, and the industry and communities that support it, have been in decline as the US, under presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, moved towards renewable energy.

In 2011, America generated about half of its electricity from coal plants, but by 2023 this had fallen to 9 per cent. It is estimated the industry now employs fewer than 50,000 people.

On 8 April, Trump signed an executive order vowing to revive the coal industry, which is located mainly in Wyoming, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky.

Flanked by miners in hardhats and fluorescent kit, Trump instructed government agencies to open new federal lands for mining and scrap regulations that “discriminate” against coal production.

“I call it beautiful, clean coal,” said Trump. “I tell my people never use the word coal unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it.”

Trump may have felt the move was good politics. It will certainly appeal to the fossil fuel industry and his Maga loyalists.

Trump may have recalled how Hillary Clinton sparked outrage during the 2016 campaign when she spoke clumsily in West Virginia about plans to bring clean-energy jobs to poor communities. “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said.

Clinton apologised the next day, but people did not forget. West Virginia has long been solidly Republican, but Trump crushed her 68 per cent to 26 per cent.

If her remarks were tone deaf and showed her to be culturally out of touch, Trump’s words in the Oval Office were dishonest and dangerous. He promised a revival against the flow of history, but he should know how difficult it would be.

He promised to do the same thing in his first term. But even with his support and the rolling back of environmental protections, there were fewer miners employed when he left office in 2021 than when he became president.

Secondly, there is no such thing as coal that is “clean”. Experts say it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and may make up as much as 40 per cent of global carbon dixoide emissions, which contribute to global warming.

The details of his order suggest the newly mined coal is going to be even less clean than that which came before.

The White House said some plants would be able to “comply with a less stringent version of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule for two years, instead of the more onerous version put in place by the Biden administration”.

Then there are the communities themselves. I twice visited a coal town in southern Virginia — Grundy — that was labelled the “sickest town in America” by The Atlantic magazine in 2015.

One visit happened during the 2016 presidential election campaign, and a second in 2018.

Around 20 per cent of residents under 65 were on disability payments and a quarter lived beneath the poverty line. Conditions such as black lung and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were common.

In 2016 Trump won the area around Grundy with 79 per cent to 19 per cent, and most people loved him.

“I will vote for Trump,” Jeanette Matney told me days before that election. Her husband, she said, lost his coal-mining job in 2015, and he had earned $10,000 (£7,553) a month.

“The mining used to be booming. The place where my husband was a miner probably now has no more than 100 people,” she said.

One of the cruellest things about Trump’s actions is thtat his and Elon Musk’s mission to cut government spending is likely to make the miners’ jobs still more dangerous.

A drive by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has seen the closure of numerous offices occupied by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, an agency responsible for enforcing safety laws.

Also cut were staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who monitored the health of miners, including checking for black lung.

They operated a mobile screening service and worked with doctors in coal communities, telling them what to look out for.

Sam Petsonk, a lawyer in Oak Hill, West Virginia, represents miners. Speaking to National Public Radio about the programme, he said: “It’s a bedrock institution for the medical profession that has been obliterated. It’s just unacceptable.”

The Trump supporters I spoke to in Grundy backed him because they believed he would help them when nobody else would.

Evidence suggests his first term did them little benefit. They are no doubt hoping against hope that this time things will be different.