The West Virginia Republican Party holds a press conference to praise the Trump administration’s coal investments at the State Capitol in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 6, 2025. (Photo courtesy of the West Virginia Republican Party)
For the second month in a row, I’m writing about a mock press conference that took place under our golden dome in Charleston.
Last Monday, Republican lawmakers met with West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton and Attorney General JB McCuskey to praise President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to pretend coal is making a lasting comeback. Recently, the government announced that it would dedicate and dedicate millions of hectares of public land to coal mining over $600 million for the modernization of coal-fired power plants across the country.
It’s a shame that at last week’s press conference to discuss the Trump proposal, there were few concrete plans and too many falsehoods and misunderstandings to convince West Virginia voters that they are doing something to lend a hand the mining industry, coal miners and West Virginia as a whole.
Normally I would employ this space to explain why coal cannot be revived the way West Virginia officials want you to believe. Things have been great lately local and national reporting on West Virginia’s costs Trust on costly coal-fired power and the global rise of renewable energies. This week the New York Times reported that wind and solar energy produced more electricity worldwide than coal in the first six months of 2025.
Simply put, our elected officials are trying to score political points by misleading the public about coal’s potential to power West Virginia. The potential is actually still there. But it will come at a high cost to all of us who pay electricity bills. Even our utilities Appalachian Power and Mon Power do not see a future in which coal power will prevail. Furthermore, the touted investment of $625 million won’t go very far. Modernizing parts of a coal-fired power plant can cost tens of millions.
I’d rather spend the majority of the time discussing something McCuskey said that really resonated with me. “And this president, for the first time in a long time, can look every single miner in this country in the face and say: I respect you, I value you, and what you are doing is a patriotic duty aimed at restoring this country’s preeminence on the world stage,” he said.
I practice black lung policy full-time and have the privilege of meeting and working with black lung miners and their families. In case you didn’t know, the incidence of black lung disease is at its highest in decades. It is a terrible, incurable disease, and the people I work with are committed to stronger protections for current and future generations of coal miners.
I do not believe that this president and the federal and state governments are capable of looking miners and coal communities in the face and saying they value them. If so, why haven’t they passed a law to augment the monthly black lung stipend for miners who are too diseased to work? Just last month, West Virginia Watch published a comment from the Vice President of the Black Lung Association. She wrote about how the One Big Beautiful Bill provides a tax break for coal mining, which ironically will be worse for black lung disease because it will likely result in less money going to the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
Why isn’t the Trump administration fighting to preserve the silica dust rule that would protect coal miners? Silica is highly toxic and has killed Appalachian coal miners (and other occupations exposed to the dust). The rule is currently on hold due to a lawsuit from the mining industry, and the Trump administration has not indicated it is interested in vigorously defending it. This is why miners and the Black Lung Association will gather in Washington DC Today Demand action.
Our state legislators, the governor, the attorney general, and members of Congress have largely remained hushed on the actual fight against black lung disease, which is once again at its highest levels in years and is likely to get worse. Every year, lawmakers invite coal miners to the capital for Black Lung Awareness Day. And every year they fail to pass legislation to improve the state’s compensation system for black lung miners.
So when officials stand in front of the cameras and say they care about coal, I have to ask whether they really care who mines it. Even if it turns out that coal is “coming back” and we have coal-fired power plants for decades to come, what will they do to actually ensure the health and well-being of coal miners? Being straightforward with West Virginians and committing to reducing lung disease and mining accidents is a good start.
