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earthjustice
Public and Planet to 'Pay the Price' as Trump Props Up Coal With $625 Million Bailout
One campaigner called it "nothing more than a wealth transfer from the American people to Trump's billionaire friends sitting atop a failing industry."
Sep 29, 2025
On the heels of reporting that the US Department of Energy banned staff from using "climate change" and related terms, the DOE on Monday announced a $625 million investment "to expand and reinvigorate America's coal industry," which was swiftly panned by climate and public health advocates.
While US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright claimed that "beautiful, clean coal will be essential to powering America's reindustrialization and winning the AI race," referring to the rapidly rising energy needs of artificial intelligence, critics pointed to the dangers posed by fossil fuels.
"Rather than investing in affordable and clean energy, Chris Wright is taking taxpayers' hard-earned dollars and giving it to wealthy executives in the coal industry," said Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign director Laurie Williams in a statement. "This is a transparent wealth transfer from everyday Americans, who are already making tough decisions at the kitchen table, to the millionaires that run the fossil fuel industry."
Specifically, in response to President Donald Trump's coal-focused executive orders from earlier this year, DOE is committing $350 million to recommissioning and retrofitting, $175 million for projects in rural communities, $50 million to wastewater management systems to expand plant lifelines, $25 million for dual firing retrofits, and $25 million for gas cofiring systems.
"If Chris Wright, or anyone in Donald Trump's administration, truly cared about bringing down the cost of electricity, they would be investing in affordable clean energy instead of taking a sledgehammer to the progress our country has made," said Williams. "By handing out millions to the coal industry, the Trump administration is divesting from Americans' health, from our environment, and from our path forward to a cleaner, healthier future."
David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, similarly said that "President Trump's coal giveaway is exactly the wrong direction for the country. It is clear that solar, wind, and battery storage will provide nearly all affordable, clean energy in the near future, and expensive, dirty coal will be a relic of the past."
"Trump's effort to block renewables and keep fossil fuels on life support only hurts Americans," Arkush continued. "It forces us to pay for unduly expensive energy and wasteful corporate subsidies, harms our health by polluting our air and water, and neglects to build up domestic manufacturing and supply chains for the energy technologies of the future while China races ahead."
"Other forms of energy are simply far less expensive than coal—as well as cleaner, cheaper, and safer for a climate habitable for humans," he added. "This bailout is nothing more than a wealth transfer from the American people to Trump's billionaire friends sitting atop a failing industry."
Idiot orange moron continues to destroy America. www.energy.gov/articles/ene... #trump #Epstein #GOP #MAGA #FossilFuel #ClimateEmergency #Renewables #Energy
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— plugpower.bsky.social (@plugpower.bsky.social) September 29, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Camden Weber, climate and energy policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, also highlighted how Trump serves the superrich, particularly the fossil fuel executives who poured money into his 2024 campaign as he pledged to "drill, baby, drill."
"The guy with a golden, life-size statue of himself holding a bitcoin outside the US Capitol is prioritizing data center profits over Americans’ access to clean air, water, and affordable energy? Shocker," said Weber.
"Trump's order fabricates yet another 'energy emergency' to keep filthy coal plants online and fueling massive, energy-sucking data centers," she added. "He and his ultrarich friends will cash in while the public and our planet pay the price. The damage to our climate will be immense and unforgivable."
Separately on Monday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced the opening of 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal leasing, triple the benchmarks set by the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed this summer.
"Expanding mining and spending taxpayer money on burning coal, while rolling back vital health protections, will only exacerbate the deadly pollution and rising electricity bills that communities are facing across the country," said Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice.
"Clean energy and other climate solutions are driving significant growth in our economy, but this administration is choosing to throw its weight behind fossil fuel industries and stymie progress," she added. "Earthjustice will continue to take the administration to court to oppose unlawful actions to prop up coal at the expense of the American people."
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Trump EPA Seeks to Reverse Rules Protecting Drinking Water From Carcinogenic 'Forever Chemicals'
One environmental attorney said that the EPA proposal "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Sep 12, 2025
Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration's announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in the nation's drinking water.
In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”
However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act's robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.
"In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do," Earthjustice said in a statement.
"Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that "the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act."
"It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals," Thompson added. "No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court."
PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”
Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA's Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:
The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.
Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.
Responding to Thursday's developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that "the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families."
"Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap," he added. "New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS."
While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to "make America healthy again" by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.
“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”
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'No Public Lands Are Safe': Trump USDA Moves Forward With Gutting Roadless Rule
"The Trump administration's move to gut this bedrock protection is nothing more than a handout to logging interests at the expense of clean water, wildlife, and local communities," said one advocate.
Aug 27, 2025
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday moved to rescind a conservation policy dating back nearly 25 years that has protected more than 45 million acres of pristine public lands, as the Trump administration announced a public comment period of just three weeks regarding the rollback of the "Roadless Rule."
The rule, officially called the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, has protected against the building of roads for logging and oil and gas drilling in forest lands including Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest national woodland.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in June as she announced her intention of repealing the rule that the administration aims to "get more logs on trucks," in accordance with President Donald Trump's executive order calling for expanded logging in the nation's forests. The president has asserted more trees must be cut down to protect from wildfires, a claim that's been rejected by environmental groups that note fires are more likely to be ignited in areas where vehicles travel.
The public comment period on rescinding the Roadless Rule is set to open this week and end September 19.
The environmental legal firm Earthjustice, which has fought to defend the Roadless Rule for years, including when Trump moved to exempt the Tongass from the regulation during his first term, noted that roadless forests provide vulnerable and endangered wildlife "with needed habitat, offer people a wide range of recreational activities, and protect the headwaters of major rivers, which are vital for maintaining clean, mountain-fed drinking water nationwide."
"If the Roadless Rule is rescinded nationally, logging and other destructive, extractive development is set to increase in public forests that currently function as intact ecosystems that benefit wildlife and people alike," said the group.
Gloria Burns, president of the Ketchikan Indian Community, said the people of her tribe "are the Tongass."
"This is an attack on Tribes and our people who depend on the land to eat," said Burns. "The federal government must act and provide us the safeguards we need or leave our home roadless. We are not willing to risk the destruction of our homelands when no effort has been made to ensure our future is the one our ancestors envisioned for us. Without our lungs (the Tongass) we cannot breathe life into our future generations."
Garett Rose, senior attorney at the Natural Defenses Resource Council, said Rollins and Trump have declared "open season on America's forests."
"For decades, the Roadless Rule has stood as one of America's most important conservation safeguards, protecting the public's wildest forests from the bulldozer and chainsaw," said Rose. "The Trump administration's move to gut this bedrock protection is nothing more than a handout to logging interests at the expense of clean water, wildlife, and local communities. But we're not backing down and will continue to defend these unparalleled wild forests from attacks, just as we have done for decades."
The Alaska Wilderness League (AWL) noted that 15 million acres of intact temperate rain forest, including the Tongass and the Chugach, would be impacted by the rulemaking, as would taxpayers who would be burdened by the need to maintain even more roads run by the US Forest Service.
The service currently maintains more than 380,000 miles of road—a system larger than the US Interstate Highway System—with a "maintenance backlog that has ballooned to billions in needed repairs," said AWL.
"More roads mean more taxpayer liability, more wildfire risk, and more damage to salmon streams and clean water sources," added the group.
"No public lands are safe from the Trump administration, not even Alaska's globally significant forests," said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy at AWL. "Rolling back the Roadless Rule means bulldozing taxpayer-funded roads into irreplaceable old growth forest, and favoring short-term industry profits over long-term, sustainable forest uses. The Roadless Rule is one of the most effective, commonsense conservation protections in U.S. history. Scrapping it would sacrifice Alaska's public lands to the highest bidder."
Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans at Earthjustice, emphasized that the group "has successfully defended the Roadless Rule in court for decades."
"Nothing will stop us," he said, "from taking up that fight again."
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