This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
On April 8, flanked by a few coal miners in hard hats, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to restore their industry to its past glory. Given that coal is now the most expensive way to generate power other than nuclear, that’s going to be a heavy lift.
Like many of Trump’s orders, these four are full of threats and bluster but will have little immediate effect. There’s a consolation prize for coal companies: Trump promised them that the big law firms who have caved to his threats would be dispatched to represent them in court pro bono.
Turning to the four orders, they give the same impression as many executive orders — that Something Important is Being Done — but they are really more in the way of promises of future action. Here’s a rundown on the four orders.
The title of one of the orders begins as a kind of rhapsody to humanity’s dirtiest fuel source but trails away into bureaucratic obscurity: “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241.” That last part turns out to be a correction of a numbering error in a previous executive order. Anyway, according to Trump, “Our Nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers.”
Getting down to brass tacks, Trump then classifies coal as a mineral for purposes of another executive order, calls on agencies to prioritize mining as a land use on public lands, calls for streamlining environmental reviews for coal mines, and so forth. Those are undoubtedly bad ideas. Agencies will be deservedly sued when they try to implement them.
Another presidential action is technically a proclamation rather than an executive order, a distinction of no importance to anyone. Taking advantage of a loophole in the Clean Air Act, Trump is extending the deadline for coal plants to comply with new mercury restrictions from 2027 to 2029. His basis for allowing them extra time to emit a highly toxic metal is rather specious, but an extra two-year delay isn’t exactly earthshaking. It will be interesting to see whether this proclamation is challenged in court, and if so, whether it’s upheld.
A third “order” is essentially an extended rant about state clean energy efforts, with particular venom directed at the efforts by some states to get fossil fuel companies to pay for the harm they’ve done. Trump then asks the Attorney General to try to think of something that can be done. Given that the Civil Division is stretched very thin defending Trump’s many encroachments on the rule of law, there would seem to be limited resources for filing scattershot lawsuits against states.
If nothing else, Trump’s rage about state climate programs is a backhanded tribute to their significance. And of course, he can’t stand the thought that anyone, anywhere, dares to stand against him.
That brings us to the fourth order. It gives the Department of Energy 30 days to invent a methodology to assess areas with unsafe energy margins. Using this methodology, the department will then come up with a protocol to prevent coal generators from leaving the grid or converting to gas. This is basically an effort to bail out uneconomic coal plants at the expense of consumers. It’s not clear at all that DOE would be able to implement any such protocol. At the very least, there will be extensive litigation at that point.
There’s no doubt that these orders will prompt agencies to do (or attempt to do) various bad things to the detriment of the environment, public health, and energy consumers. But none of those things have happened yet. Except for the two-year extension, these orders accomplish nothing that Trump couldn’t have done with posts on Truth Social.
Trump wasn’t able to save coal in his first term, when it continued its steady decline. He’s not likely to be any more successful this time.
Showing 2,912 results
Daniel Farber | April 9, 2025
On April 8, flanked by a few coal miners in hard hats, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to restore their industry to its past glory. Given that coal is now the most expensive way to generate power other than nuclear, that’s going to be a heavy lift. Like many of Trump’s orders, these four are full of threats and bluster but will have little immediate effect.
Federico Holm | April 7, 2025
Since our last update (March 31), we have seen some movement regarding CRA resolutions. There have been no new resolutions signed into law (only two so far), but two more resolutions have cleared both chambers, so we can expect a signature from the president soon.
Federico Holm | April 1, 2025
On March 3, Randy Moore, the 20th chief of the U.S. Forest Service, stepped down after a lifelong career that started in 1981. A soil scientist and forester, Moore was also the first African American chief of the Forest Service. His resignation came on the heels of a widespread wave of mass firings of Forest Service personnel that amounted to approximately 10% of its workforce. In his farewell letter, Moore laid bare his frustration regarding the ongoing dismantling of the agency and the need for personnel to stick together and remain nimble, adding that for those in the Forest Service “feeling uncertainty, frustration, or loss, you are not alone.” Moore was replaced by Tom Schultz, a timber executive with deep ties to the logging industry. Schultz is also the first chief in Forest Service history who has not previously worked in the agency. In his introduction letter, Schultz highlighted his 25 years of land management, focusing on his timber and mineral extraction directive roles in Idaho.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | March 31, 2025
As the authors of a book that argues that a combination of government and markets has built a country truest to its fundamental political values, we see plans to radically downsize government as a contradiction of the historical evidence. As our book relates, the country has established a web of laws that interact with markets to build up our infrastructure, protect people, and help the most vulnerable among us.
Federico Holm | March 31, 2025
Since our last update (March 18), we have seen some small changes regarding CRA resolutions. There have been no new resolutions signed into law (only two so far), and there are now seven resolutions that have passed one chamber. This means that in addition to the six resolutions that had already cleared one chamber (you can see our previous update for a detailed description of those resolutions), there have been votes on four other resolutions.
Jamie Pleune, John Ruple, Justin Pidot | March 28, 2025
On February 25, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued an interim final rule (IFR) rescinding the CEQ regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). On March 27, we submitted a comment, along with 25 other professors, identifying the severe challenges this rescission will create for critical infrastructure projects and other important federal activities.
Shelley Welton | March 24, 2025
\In How Government Built America, Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain offer a sweeping account of the role of government in building the United States. Readers will encounter a tour de force of U.S. history that includes topics as diverse as the regulation of early taverns; founding-era debates over bureaucracy; Andrew Jackson’s spoils system; the post office; the Civil War; monopolies and the Gilded Age; immigration, tenements, and slums; populism and muckrakers; Keynesianism and the New Deal; nuclear power development and the space race; the civil rights movement; the Vietnam War; Rachel Carson and Earth Day; Ralph Nader and consumer protection; the War on Poverty; Alfred Kahn, President Jimmy Carter and deregulation; Reaganomics; the Affordable Care Act; governmental outsourcing; the judiciary’s evolving role in government; January 6; COVID-19 and Anthony Fauci; and climate change and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Joseph Tomain, Sidney A. Shapiro | March 24, 2025
We thank Shelley Welton for her generous comments about our book and for the two issues she raises about our argument that American history is a story of how the mix of government and markets has been based on respect for equality, liberty, fairness, and the common good. We appreciate the opportunity to engage in a dialogue on those issues.
Alejandro Camacho, James Goodwin | March 18, 2025
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the questionable leadership of Elon Musk, has quickly become the signature initiative of the second Trump administration. Since Inauguration Day, personnel associated with DOGE have fanned out to virtually every executive branch agency, systematically dismantling them from within by hacking their IT infrastructure, firing thousands of staff, and even attempting to shut down entire agencies. To help congressional leaders, concerned policymakers, and citizens understand the various ways that DOGE’s actions may be unlawful, the Center has established the Unmasking DOGE tool that catalogues the numerous legal infirmities that underlie both DOGE as an institution and the specific actions it is seeking to carry out.