BOMBSHELL: Trump Uses Defense Powers To Save Coal Jobs, Green Lobby FURIOUS…

President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office on Thursday and made history for American energy workers, invoking Cold War-era national defense authority to deliver a $700 million investment in coal that will support thousands of jobs, extend the life of plants keeping the electric grid stable, and build the first new coal facilities in the United States in over a decade.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump declared: “Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.” He added: “If you look at China, if you look at so many of the successful countries, they’re using coal. If you look at some of the real great failures, countries, they’re using wind.”

Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that grants the president broad authority over industries essential to national security, to direct the funding. The investment is structured in three parts: $425 million to support 13 existing coal plants and extend their operational lives, $185 million in Department of Energy grants to build two brand-new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia, and $75 million for the long-delayed West Gateway coal export terminal in Oakland, California.

The plants in Alaska and West Virginia will be the first new coal plants constructed in the United States since 2013, marking a reversal of more than a decade of Democratic energy policy that saw coal systematically dismantled in favor of unreliable wind and solar alternatives. For communities in states like West Virginia, where coal is not just an industry but a way of life, the announcement carries enormous symbolic and economic weight.

The 13 existing plants receiving support are located across West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, with coal mines supplying those facilities operating in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wyoming, North Dakota, and New Mexico.

The geographic breadth of the investment is a direct statement that the administration is thinking about American energy workers across the full industrial heartland, not just a handful of favored states.

Trump said from the Oval Office: “Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electric grid, which is really the biggest beneficiary, and most importantly, keep electricity prices very low for the American people.”

That last point is the one most likely to resonate with ordinary Americans who have watched energy bills climb steadily as the left has systematically choked off domestic fossil fuel production.

A White House official said the initiative will support or create more than 14,000 jobs in the coal, construction, rail, and maritime industries and save American consumers an estimated $50 billion in energy generation costs.

Those are not abstract numbers. They represent miners in West Virginia, railroad workers moving coal from Wyoming, construction workers building new plants in Alaska, and maritime workers at the Oakland export terminal who would otherwise have no work to do.

The Oakland export terminal deserves special attention. The West Gateway terminal in Oakland, California has been delayed for years by regulatory obstruction and left-wing opposition. Once operational, it is projected to export up to 12 million tons of coal annually from Wyoming, Montana, and other western states to international markets.

The fact that this terminal is being built in California, the epicenter of the anti-coal movement, is a pointed reminder that the Trump administration is not asking permission from the green energy lobby.

Thursday’s announcement also includes the restart of a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Maryland, adding a regional dimension to what has become the administration’s most aggressive domestic energy initiative to date.

That plant’s restart means electricity grid reliability for Mid-Atlantic consumers and job restoration for workers who were told by the Biden administration that their industry was simply over.

The announcement builds on a strong foundation of prior action. In September 2025, the Department of Energy announced a $625 million investment to expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright stating that “beautiful, clean coal will be essential to powering America’s reindustrialization and winning the AI race.”

Taken together, the two investments represent well over $1.3 billion in federal commitment to coal in less than a year, a number the Biden administration spent four years trying to spend in the opposite direction.

Trump was joined at the Oval Office event by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, all of whom spent the event taking direct aim at Democratic energy policy, green energy mandates, and wind power throughout the announcement.

The unified front signals that the entire administration is aligned behind the coal revival, not just the president.

Environmental groups reacted with fury. The Natural Resources Defense Council called the spending “a stunning waste of taxpayer funds for a fuel that has been on decline for two decades,” while Evergreen Action’s executive director said “spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk.”

These are the same organizations that spent the last decade lobbying to kill coal plants, eliminate coal mining on federal lands, and drive energy prices higher in the name of a climate agenda that has done nothing to lower the cost of living for American families.

The Department of Energy noted that since January 2025, the Trump administration has already saved 43 coal plants from closure. Thursday’s announcement adds 13 more to that list and begins construction on two new ones.

The American coal industry has not seen this level of federal commitment in a generation, and the workers, communities, and states that depend on it are taking notice.

Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia, whose state sits at the center of American coal country, has been one of the investment’s most vocal champions.

Justice praised Trump and Energy Secretary Wright, saying: “I’ve said for a long time that we are going to face an energy crisis of massive proportions, having to choose between powering our homes or powering industry unless we act. This is smart policy in action.”

The broader picture is one of deliberate reversal. Under Biden, the war on fossil fuels was prosecuted through regulatory strangulation, permitting delays, and ideological hostility toward the men and women who mine, move, and burn coal for a living.

Under Trump, that war is over.