It has not been a very good year for the American coal industry, as both exports and price per ton continue to trend downwards, but it’s been even worse for the coal miners themselves.
Last week, the Trump administration approved yet another delay in the implementation of a Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) rule to lower miners’ exposure to deadly silica dust. The National Sand, Stone and Gravel Association sued to block the rule back in April—and instead of voicing any opposition to the suit or support for the rule, the Trump Labor Department has ignored the miners’ plight in favor of well-heeled corporate interests.
After years of organizing by miners and advocacy groups, the silica rule was finally supposed to take effect in April, but was then pushed back due to “unforeseen NIOSH restructuring.” Translation: The administration, via DOGE, was then busy dismantling the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and its black lung monitoring program (then frantically restoring the program under court order following a class action lawsuit from West Virginia coal miners).
Now, coal industry interests have been allowed to kick the can down the road yet again and secured yet another delay, this time until at least October, while the lawsuit proceeds. Meanwhile, one in five veteran coal miners in Appalachia are suffering from black lung, an incurable respiratory disease that kills its victims slowly and painfully. Black lung cases have been on the rise due to widespread overexposure in crystalline respirable silica, which is 20 times more toxic than coal dust and has been impacting a younger generation of workers.
“This delay is simply a death sentence for more miners,” United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) International President Cecil E. Roberts said in a statement. “The fact that an industry association with no stake in coal mining can hold up lifesaving protections for coal miners is outrageous. The Department of Labor and MSHA should be fighting to implement this rule immediately, not kicking enforcement down the road yet again. Every day they delay, more miners get sick, and more miners die. That’s the truth.”
There are many things that President Donald Trump and his lackeys do not understand — like economics, science, geopolitics, American history or human empathy — but no one could ever accuse them of underestimating the power of optics. The man adores a spectacle, and engineering situations in which (he believes) he looks tough, strong and virile occupies a significant amount of the elderly politician’s dwindling energy. To wit, Trump has made increasing coal production and usage a core focus of his energy policy, and any chance he has to pull the nation’s coal miners into his personal orbit makes the man’s shriveled lizard brain light up like Christmas morning. In 2016, a “Trump Digs Coal” rally in Charleston, W.V. saw him gleefully don a miner’s helmet and vamp in front of a crowd of miners, and his obsession with “beautiful clean coal” has only deepened as the coal industry itself has continued on its irreversible death spiral.
MSHA is supposed to protect the health and safety of the nation’s miners and ensure that regulations are enforced, but under Trump, the agency has been thoroughly neutered. The former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, Chris Williamson, was a West Virginia native and the grandson of a coal miner who worked closely with Appalachian miners and public health advocates to craft the silica rule. Once Trump assumed office, Williamson was shown the door — and has still not been replaced. In February, Trump nominated Wayne Palmer, a longtime coal industry executive who has yet to be confirmed but received a glowing endorsement from the National Sand, Stone and Gravel Association — yes, the same organization that’s fighting tooth and nail for the right to expose more miners to toxic dust.
The continuing delay on the silica rule isn’t the only bad news Trump’s delivered to coal country. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor at OSHA and workplace safety expert Jordan Barab wrote in his Confined Space newsletter, the “Big Beautiful Bill” and its deep cuts to Medicaid have put dozens of Kentucky hospitals at risk of closure, including five of seven original Miners’ Memorial Hospitals founded by the UMWA back in the 1950s.
In August, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who came into office with some union support but has promised sweeping pro-business regulatory cuts, visited a coal mine in Kemmerer, Wyoming, to officially “reiterate her commitment to keeping them safe on the job.” Apparently she was not briefed on the rising black lung rates among the state’s surface miners, who work aboveground but are still exposed to unsafe levels of the toxic dust. Despite finding time to pose for a photo shoot with the miners, the former Teamsters ally has so far been silent on the silica rule. (She was, however, loudly effusive in her praise of a banner of her boss’s “big, beautiful face” currently plastered on the Francis Perkins Building, and her fawning obeisance to Trump has drawn disgusted criticism from labor leaders.)
Trump’s war on workers has only intensified during his second term, and the coal miners he “loves” are having an especially rough time thanks to his own administration’s slapdash anti-regulatory agenda. As much as he and his wealthy Republican lapdogs try to insist that the administration “puts American workers first,” they actively avoid enacting pro-labor policies that would actually improve workers’ lives, increasing access to affordable healthcare for them and their families, or strengthening the safety regulations that keep them safe on the job.
Trump’s treatment of Appalachia’s coal miners exemplifies his approach to labor in general: Kneecap unions whenever possible, prop up industry profits at all costs, and if a few workers die in the process, pretend it never happened. On his watch, the coal industry continues to falter—and unless someone in the administration actually grows a spine sometime soon, coal miners will continue to die.
Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist and author based in Philadelphia, PA. She is a labor writer for In These Times, a labor columnist at Teen Vogue and Fast Company, and regularly contributes to many other publications. Her first book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor, is now available from One Signal/Simon & Schuster. Follow her on Twitter at @grimkim and subscribe to her newsletter, Salvo, here.
