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Trump Administration Uses Emergency Power to Rescue Another Dying Fossil Fuel Plant
The Energy Department's order "will result in American households paying even higher electricity bills," warned one consumer advocate.
Jun 02, 2025
Consumers are set to foot the bill after the Trump administration intervened late last week to prevent the closure of the fossil fuel-powered Eddystone Generating Station, a Pennsylvania plant owned by Constellation Energy that was set to shut down its remaining units on Saturday.
The order from U.S. President Donald Trump's Energy Department marked the second time the administration has invoked emergency authority to rescue a dying fossil fuel plant. Last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright stepped in to halt the closure of the J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan.
The authority cited in the orders is "typically reserved for emergencies such as extreme weather events and war," Bloombergobserved.
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, warned in a statement following the Energy Department's latest order that "extending the life of the unit will force ratepayers to shell out money to cover expensive maintenance and overpay for expensive power that will result in American households paying even higher electricity bills, as Trump's emergency order requires consumers to pay 100% of all costs to get the plant up and running, including a guaranteed profit for Constellation."
"Trump's last-minute emergency order—issued literally on the last day these power plants were set to operate—causes significant, expensive complications," said Slocum. "Old units like Eddystone require both minor and major maintenance—maintenance that was deferred because of its planned retirement on May 31."
In December 2023, Constellation informed PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, that it would be retiring Eddystone Units 3 and 4, which ran on either fracked gas or oil. Constellation said at the time that "continued operation" of the units was "expected to be uneconomic."
PJM Interconnection signed off on Constellation's decision to retire the units in a letter dated February 27, 2024. But in the wake of the Energy Department's emergency order on Friday, PJM praised the Trump administration's intervention as "prudent."
Public Citizen slammed PJM's statement as a "craven, politically motivated about-face."
The order rescuing Eddystone Generating Station came days after the Trump Energy Department moved to save the coal-fired J.H. Campbell Generating Plant, stunning Michigan officials.
“It came as a surprise to everybody, and it was baffling why they chose this plant," Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, told The Washington Post. "Nobody asked for this order. The power grid operator did not. The utility that owns the plant did not. The state regulator did not."
Citing state officials, the Post noted that "the move will collectively increase electric bills forratepayers in the Midwest by tens of millions of dollars." The J.H. Campbell plant is "the largest source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in West Michigan," according to the Sierra Club.
Trump laid the groundwork to save the fossil fuel plants earlier this month with an executive order instructing the Energy Department "to develop a process for using emergency powers to prevent unprofitable coal plants from shutting down in order to avert power outages."
Bryan Smigielski, organizer of the Sierra Club's Michigan campaign, called the administration's J.H. Campbell plant rescue a "blatant act of federal overreach" that "is being imposed against the wishes of Michigan consumers, businesses, regulators, and elected leaders."
"Don't be fooled: There is no 'energy emergency' here—just a payday for the coal industry that leaves us with higher bills and dirtier air," Smigielski added.
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'Unfit for Office'? Fetterman's Fitness Questioned Amid Reports of Erratic Behavior
"We can agree or disagree on Fetterman's politics," wrote one journalist, "but I don't see how anyone can look at what's happening on a human level... and not think that the best thing for him would be to resign."
May 08, 2025
Following reporting about the behavior of U.S. Sen. John Fetterman—including concerns voiced by current and former staff have concerns about the mental wellbeing of the Democratic lawmaker from Pennsylvania—a growing number of political observers are openly questioning his ability to serve in public office.
A story in New York Magazine last week featuring the concern by staffwas followed by new Associated Pressreporting Thursday, which recounted a recent meeting between Fetterman and representatives from a teachers union that went awry when Fetterman began shouting and asking why "everybody is mad at me."
"Why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do," Fetterman reportedly said, according to someone who was briefed on what had taken place, the AP reported. A staff member ended the meeting and ushered the visitors out, and then broke down crying in the hallway.
Fetterman bested Mehmet Oz, the current head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a race for the U.S. Senate in 2022, despite suffering a stroke while on the campaign trail. In 2023, after being sworn into the Senate, Fetterman checked himself into the hospital to seek treatment for clinical depression, and drew praise for being open about his diagnosis and seeking care.
His standing among progressive supporters has also soured over the past year and a half in part due to his unwavering support for Israel during the country's deadly military campaign in Gaza.
Fetterman was also the only senate Democrat to fly down to Mar-a-Lago and meet with U.S. President Donald Trump following Trump's victory in 2024.
Jeet Heer, the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, reacted to the AP's reporting with expressions of concern and suggested it may be time for the Democrat to step aside.
"We can agree or disagree on Fetterman's politics (I'm not a fan of his shift)," wrote Heer, "but I don't see how anyone can look at what's happening on a human level, to this man and his family, and not think that the best thing for him would be to resign so he can look after himself better."
According to New York Magazine, 14 months after Fetterman's discharge from the hospital, his former chief of staff Adam Jentleson, sent a long email to the medical director who had overseen Fetterman's care, writing that he thought Fetterman was on a "bad trajectory" and sharing concerns that if nothing changed, Fetterman "won't be with us for much longer."
In the email, Jentleson said he was concerned that Fetterman appeared not to be taking his meds, that he was displaying megalomania and conspiratorial thinking, "lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room," and engaging in "repetitive and self centered monologues."
To the medical director, Jentleson also detailed that Fetterman had purchased a gun, engaged in a pattern of self isolation, and that he drove his car recklessly to the point that staff would not ride in the car with him.
"Former and current staffers paint a picture of an erratic senator who has become almost impossible to work for and whose mental-health situation is more serious and complicated than previously reported," the magazine reported.
"Jesus," wrote Aaron Regunberg, a progressive policy advocate wrote on social media in response to the reporting," John Fetterman should not be a U.S. Senator."
Jonathan Cohn, another progressive activist, commented on his personal X account that Fetterman was "creating an unsafe environment for his staff and constituents, and that makes him unfit for office."
On Tuesday, speaking to CNN, Fetterman called the article in New York Magazine a "one-source hit piece, and it involved maybe two or three and anonymous disgruntled staffers saying just absolute false things."
Few Democrats have come to Fetterman's aid in the wake of the reporting. There's been increased private talks about primary challenges to Fetterman, perPolitico, and according to the outlet "some Pennsylvania Democrats have begun to quietly review the rules about what would happen if he stepped down and whispered about potential replacements."
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Playing With Fire: What Trump—and the Left—Still Don’t Understand About Coal Country
Trump’s coal rhetoric taps into a collective memory where coal once formed the bedrock of community and identity—a memory that has been relentlessly mocked, even as it continues to shape political reality.
Apr 22, 2025
Earlier this month, Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at revitalizing the U.S. coal industry. Once the world’s top producer, U.S. coal output has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, becoming a symbol of the disillusionment and anger around deindustrialization that remains the lifeblood of Trump’s MAGA movement.
Trump justified the orders by citing national energy security—China is now the world’s top coal producer—and rising electricity demands due to the growth of AI and electric vehicle production. He also claimed, erroneously, that coal is “cheap” and “efficient.”
But beyond policy, Trump’s invocation of coal taps into something deeper. It’s not just about energy. It’s about memory. Coal represents a symbol of “better days” in the minds of many Americans who live outside the Beltway or coastal blue cities. And nowhere does this resonance strike more clearly than in Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA)—once a bastion of hard anthracite coal mining, where hundreds of thousands of impoverished European immigrants arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries to work the mines, including my own family from southern Italy.
To many on the left, Trump’s talk of coal is laughable—an empty promise rooted in a vanished world. But underneath the nostalgia is something profoundly real. Trump’s coal rhetoric taps into a collective memory where coal once formed the bedrock of community and identity—a memory that has been relentlessly mocked, even as it continues to shape political reality.
As Ben Bradlee Jr. wrote in The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changes America, “They feel like everyone’s punching bag, and that their way of life is dying.” This is where the MAGA movement began. It’s also where my family’s story began, in Luzerne County, which Bradlee profiled. It’s a region shaped by defiance, resilience, and a submerged identity that still burns. The people who feel drawn to Trump aren’t simply imagining something lost—they’re remembering something true, even if buried beneath contradiction.
That history shines light on a host of modern-day issues, with messages for Trump supporters, his detractors, and the oligarchic class—including Trump himself.
These miners weren’t reading Marx—they were reading each other.
Trump supporters, for instance, might be surprised to learn just how radical coal country once was. In the late 1800s and early 20th century, anthracite coal country was no place for docility. Mining was brutal—likely the most deadly job in America. In NEPA alone, an estimated 35,000 men and boys died in the mines. Deaths occurred nearly every day, often in multiples. Thousands more lost limbs to falling rock or their eyesight to fire and pit blasts.
Mine owners often subcontracted operations to middlemen, suppressing wages and pitting workers against each other. This system opened the door to mafia influence and entrenched political corruption. Yet labor militancy in the region was fierce. Militant Irishmen known as the Molly Maguires bombed and assassinated mine bosses when demands were ignored. Later, socialist and anarchist movements like the IWW—the “Wobblies”—won mass support. Wildcat strikes were common.
At times, less ideologically driven groups like the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) led massive, coordinated shutdowns of anthracite production, threatening the nation’s winter fuel supply and prompting presidential intervention. These miners weren’t reading Marx—they were reading each other. And when someone got too close to power, they got thrown out.
There are also important lessons here for the left. Many, if not most, of the region’s immigrants weren’t considered white by the dominant culture. When a New York journalist came to profile NEPA miners, he described them emerging from the pits “blacker than any Africans,” covered in soot, and questioned their fitness to vote. African Americans, for various reasons, never settled in large numbers here. The population was almost entirely of European descent—yet racial identity in these places wasn’t black, white, or brown. It was sooty gray.
Italians, Irish, Slovaks, Lithuanians—none of them were white yet. Their pain wasn’t legible to elites then, and in many ways, it still isn’t. As historian Thomas Dublin has noted, “The story of American immigration is writ large in the region.” Nearly two dozen ethnic groups worked the mines, each considered their own “race.” The federal Dillingham Commission ranked them by desirability, with “South Italians” often dead last. In towns like Pittston, where my family settled, this dynamic boiled over in 1908, when two thousand Anglo-American residents marched to burn down the “Italian Colony” and lynch Italian suspects in a crime. It was a race riot.
And yet, in this complex setting, Italian immigrant leaders were often the ones fighting mafia infiltration and resisting subcontracting schemes that aligned criminal groups with mine owners.
This complex history contradicts simplistic liberal narratives that view coal nostalgia as simply being about privileged white workers clinging to lost supremacy. These workers weren’t privileged—they were the bottom rung. It wasn’t just about jobs, but about the tight bonds that came with them. Historians like John Bodnar have written about the “family economy,” where work, responsibility, and emotional support were shared across generations. Defiance wasn’t just ideological. It was communal. It was familial.
These bonds created a kind of psychic shield against brutal exploitation—a lived memory of solidarity that today’s institutional left fails to connect with. Democrats speak the language of policy and representation, but they don’t speak to this emotional grammar. To many in NEPA, Trump isn’t just about God or guns—he represents a feeling of protection, a yearning for a world where people looked out for each other.
It’s worth remembering, too, that this region was once held as a strategic asset by the industrial titans of the day—people like J.P. Morgan. And yet, coal country never celebrated the mega-wealthy. Trump today evokes a past in which people like him—the owners, the brokers—were squarely seen as the enemy. If he truly wants to channel the spirit of coal country, he should recall that when people here sensed a rat or a traitor, they threw the bums out.
In 1928, after a string of bombings and assassinations tied to mafia-mine owner collusion, Pittston’s mayor William Gillespie issued a warning that might as well serve as a metaphor for the region writ large: “The conditions that prevail in Pittston now might be looked upon as a volcano. It is not ejecting lava or smoke at present… but the fire is not extinguished. There is bitterness. There is hatred existing there to a greater extent than most people realize.”
But also love. And also community. And to whatever extent Trump, his supporters, and his critics fail to recognize the depths of this memory—they are playing with fire.
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