SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Trump Spreads More Delusional Lies About Coal
Last night, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that he is “authorizing [his] Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL.”
Coal is widely regarded as the dirtiest form of fossil fuel, releasing the highest amount of carbon and other pollutants into the air and water. Coal pollution is linked to respiratory illnesses, heart attacks, cancer, and premature death. Coal mining has also left behind irrevocable damage to habitats and homes across the United States.
In the same post, Trump refers to the “Economic advantage” that burning coal has afforded other nations. In reality, renewable energy is quickly becoming more affordable and reliable than coal.
Since the Trump administration does not own or operate any coal-fired power plants, Donald Trump does not have the authority to compel his administration to begin burning coal.
In response, Sierra Club Director of Climate Policy Patrick Drupp issued the following statement:
“This is yet another completely delusional statement by Donald Trump. There is no such thing as clean coal. There is only coal that pollutes our air and water so severely that nearly half a million Americans have died prematurely from coal in the last two decades.
“Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans’ health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. In exchange for their loyalty and political dollars, he will lie to the American people and sacrifice their lives. The Sierra Club will continue our work of retiring toxic coal plants, and combat these baseless, dangerous lies.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
'Not Acceptable': Trump EPA Teases Evisceration of Scientific Research Office
"Every decision EPA makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can't happen if you gut EPA science," said one Democratic lawmaker.
Mar 18, 2025
Climate campaigners on Tuesday accused the Republican head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of a "calculated betrayal of public health and the environment" after House Democrats obtained documents outlining the possible elimination of the EPA's science research office—whose work underpins the agency's anti-pollution policies.
The Democratic staff on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee reviewed the proposal, which was shared with the White House last Friday and called for the EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) to be eliminated as a national program office, with 50-75% of its 1,540 staffers dismissed and the rest reassigned to EPA positions that "align with administration priorities."
The ORD employs chemists, biologists, doctors, nurses, and experts on wetlands and other issues who contribute to research on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or "forever chemicals," in drinking water; contamination in drinking water caused by fracking; the impact of wildfire smoke on public health; and other environmental matters. The New York Times reported that the proposed cuts—which follow President Donald Trump's call to slash the EPA's overall budget by 65%—would cost jobs at the agency's major research labs in North Carolina and Oklahoma.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) ranking member of the House science panel, told the Times that closing the office would mean the EPA was no longer meeting its legal obligation to use the "best available science" to draft regulations and policies.
"Every decision EPA makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can't happen if you gut EPA science," Lofgren said, noting that the ORD was created by Congress and cannot be unilaterally dismantled by the executive branch.
The plan to eliminate the ORD "sells out our public health," said the Federation of American Scientists.
During his campaign, Trump promised the fossil fuel industry he would work to slash regulations meant to protect public health. On Tuesday, Chitra Kumar, managing director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said making it harder for the government to "set protective health standards" is likely "exactly what this administration is aiming for."
"The scientists and experts in this office conduct and review the best available science to set limits on pollution and regulate hazardous chemicals to keep the public safe," said Kumar. "We're talking about soot that worsens asthma and heart disease, carcinogenic 'forever chemicals' in drinking water, and heat-trapping emissions driving climate change. The administration knows, and history shows, that industry will not regulate itself."
With an EPA spokesperson saying Tuesday that "no decisions have been made yet," Kumar said that "it's paramount that the administration hear: This is not acceptable."
"Everyone, including President Trump and his Cabinet's children and grandchildren, would feel the consequences of this move, not to mention the most polluted communities, predominantly Black, Brown and low income, who would bear the brunt," said Kumar. "Is the administration’s ideology and pledge to industries that strong that they are willing to put their own loved ones at risk?"
The potential closure of the ORD would represent another victory for the authors of Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint that called to shutter the Department of Education and impose work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
The agenda's chapter on the EPA calls for the elimination of programs in the ORD and claims that the office is "precautionary, bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals."
Project 2025's authors have particularly called for the termination of the ORD's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which informs toxic chemical regulations by assessing their effects on human health. As ProPublicareported earlier this month, Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would prohibit the EPA from using IRIS' chemical assessments to underpin regulations and other policies.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents more than 190 corporations, called on EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to disband IRIS earlier this year, and the Republican lawmaker who introduced a bill to end the program represents a district where formaldehyde maker Hexion has a plant.
The push to close the ORD, according to former official Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, is the result of a "multi-decade... attack on the risk-assessment process, in particular."
Without the ORD and IRIS, Orme-Zavaleta told the Times, "the agency will not be fulfilling its mission, and people will not be protected. They will be at greater risk. The environment will be at greater risk."
John Noel, deputy climate director for Greenpeace USA, said the push to close the ORD and end its risk assessment work suggests that Zeldin "seems to believe his job is to serve corporate polluters rather than the American people."
"For decades, these EPA regulations have been a critical line of defense against harmful pollution, protecting public health, and tackling the climate crisis," said Noel. "Yet even these safeguards have never been enough. This year alone, our country has been ravaged by extreme hurricanes, devastating wildfires, and record-breaking heat—in large part, consequences of pollution. Instead of holding these industries accountable, the EPA is giving them a free pass."
“EPA exists to protect our health and environment—not to gut the very safeguards that protect us," said Noel. "As the climate crisis grows, the agency must reverse this reckless course and recommit to its core mission: protecting people and not the economic interests of polluting corporations."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Completely Delusional': Trump Calls for Reinvigorating Domestic Use of US Coal
"Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans' health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry," said one climate advocate.
Mar 18, 2025
After U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social on Monday night that he is ordering his administration "to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL," a leader at the grassroots environmental group Sierra Club quickly hit back, calling the move "completely delusional."
Trump said he was announcing the move as a means to counter China's economic edge. The announcement comes "after years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants," Trump wrote.
It was not immediately clear what Trump's directive was referring to or how his announcement on social media would impact U.S. policy, according to Bloomberg.
"There is no such thing as clean coal. There is only coal that pollutes our air and water so severely that nearly half a million Americans have died prematurely from coal in the last two decades," said Sierra Club director of climate policy Patrick Drupp in a statement Tuesday. "Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans' health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry."
Trump's cabinet includes a number figures who are friendly to the fossil fuel industry, such as Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was a fracking industry CEO, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a known ally of oil and gas companies.
On his first day in office, Trump declared a national energy emergency to ensure "an affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy," called for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," and withdrew the United States from the the world's main climate pact.
The U.S. is mulling using emergency authority to bring coal-fired plants back online and halt others from shutting, Burgum toldBloomberg Television in an interview last week.
"Under the national energy emergency, which President Trump has declared, we've got to keep every coal plant open," Burgum said while at the energy sector gathering CERAWeek. "And if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back."
Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin earlier this month announced a new effort to rollback a host of EPA regulations, including some that will impact coal producers.
The coal mining company Peabody Energy saw their stock rise 3.5% after Trump's Monday post on social media about "clean coal," according to Tuesday morning reporting from Schaeffer's Investment Research.
As of 2023, coal accounted for 16.2% of U.S. electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That year, 21.4% came from renewables.
In its statement released on Tuesday, Sierra Club took issue with Trump's assertion that investing in coal has provided an economic boost to other countries. "Trump refers to the 'Economic advantage' that burning coal has afforded other nations. In reality, renewable energy is quickly becoming more affordable and reliable than coal," they wrote.
In 2023, the think tank Energy Innovation Policy & Technology released an analysis which found that 99% of coal plants are more expensive to run compared to replacing their generation capacity with either solar or wind power, when taking into account credits that were made available through the Inflation Reduction Act.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Key State of Delaware, 'Corporate Insider Power Grab' Quietly Underway
"Delaware's Senate just chose billionaire insiders—like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—over pension funds, retirement savers, and other investors by passing S.B. 21."
Mar 18, 2025
The push to pass Senate Bill 21 in Delaware, the "corporate capital of the world," is garnering criticism from some anti-monopoly, economic, and legal experts this week.
"Delaware's Senate just chose billionaire insiders—like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—over pension funds, retirement savers, and other investors by passing S.B. 21," Laurel Kilgour, research manager at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), said in a Monday statement about state senators' overwhelming support for the "corporate insider power grab" last week.
Delaware lawmakers are swiftly working to overhaul state law after a judge ruled against Musk's $56 billion 2018 compensation package for Tesla. The CEO—who is the world's richest person and now a key leader in President Donald Trump's administration—then moved the incorporation for his other companies elsewhere, and urged other businesses to follow suit. Some are doing so and others are reportedly considering it, including Zuckerberg's Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
As Business Insiderreported last month, citing Delaware's Division of Corporations, nearly 2.2 million entities are registered in the tiny state, including two-thirds of all Fortune 500 companies.
"This bill only serves to make it easier for corporate boards to rubber-stamp excessive executive pay and self-serving deals that drain returns from pensioners and retirement accounts," warned Kilgour. "Coming on the heels of another panicked giveaway to the corporate defense bar just last year, this is a reckless move that will undermine investor confidence and further erode Delaware's credibility as a fair corporate forum. The Delaware House must step in and stop this dangerous bill before it's too late."
Specifically, as AELP laid out, "S.B. 21 jeopardizes the ability of investors to protect themselves from harmful board decisions that slash returns to investors' hard-earned retirement savings, such as awarding exorbitant executive pay packages that far exceed any rational benchmark, or overpaying to acquire companies in which controlling shareholders have financial stakes."
"The bill makes it easier for corporate boards to insulate directors and controlling shareholders from litigation over conflicts of interest and self-dealing by corporate insiders, narrows who qualifies as a controlling shareholder, imposes a new presumption that board members are independent no matter who they are appointed by, and makes it more difficult for shareholders to discover conflicts by restricting their access to internal corporate records," the nonprofit detailed.
Joseph R. Mason, a Ph.D. economist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, also sounded the alarm on S.B. 21 with a Monday opinion piece in the Delaware Business Times.
"I recently conducted an economic impact study on the likely effects of Senate Bill 21 (S.B. 21) on the Delaware economy. Based on my findings, a reasonable estimate of the annual economic activity lost due to S.B. 21's passage is $117 million-$235 million in decreased economic activity and 450-900 lost jobs, statewide," he wrote. "My analysis very likely understates the impact to Delaware, as it only estimates lost economic activity generated by law firms located in the state."
Mason's op-ed followed a Delaware Onlinepiece from attorney Greg Varallo, who is head of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann's Delaware office and represented Richard Tornetta, the Tesla shareholder behind the Musk case in the state.
"On March 5, this paper published an op-ed by William Chandler and Lawrence Hamermesh," Varallo pointed out last week, referring to a former chancellor on the Delaware Court of Chancery who is now a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and a professor emeritus at the Widener University Delaware School of Law.
"In the piece, my old friends extolled the virtues of S.B. 21, going so far as to argue that the bill restored balance to the corporate law playing field. Nonsense. S.B. 21 is a license to steal for corporate controllers like Elon Musk," argued the lawyer, who spent decades leading a defense-side firm.
According to Varallo: "The idea that S.B. 21 will restore 'balance' between the interests of regular investors and billionaires who control companies is demonstrably false S.B. 21 creates 'safe harbors' for controllers to steal from their controlled public companies and from the stockholders who invested in those companies without having to answer for doing so. The bill overturns decades of thoughtfully crafted common law and puts Delaware in direct competition with Nevada for the state which gives controllers the clearest and easiest to follow road map to commit grand larceny."
"This isn't someone else's problem. If your retirement includes index funds, as most do, you are a stockholder in controlled companies because no index fund operates without owning controlled companies," he added. "As a citizen who believes that the independence of our judiciary is at the very core of our form of government, I can't sit still while the proponents of this legislation continue to attack the public servants who serve on the Court of Chancery, the nation's leading business court."
Meanwhile, as the Delaware Business Timesnoted Monday, S.B. 21 is backed by "two of the most powerful Delaware business organizations, the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce and the Delaware Business Roundtable," and groups that testified in support of it include ChristianaCare, the Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce, and the Home Builders Association of Delaware.
Despite expert warnings, Delaware lawmakers are continuing their efforts to send S.B. 21 to the desk of Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer, who last week called on them to pass the legislation "as quickly as possible." According to the Delaware General Assembly website, the state House introduced an amendment to the bill on Tuesday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular