Trump has long espoused a love of coal. “I call it beautiful, clean coal—I tell my people to never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it,” the president recently said during a press event involving a backdrop of men dressed in coal miner outfits. The former reality TV star has also called the coal industry “just about the best,” and recently passed an executive order that seeks to “Reinvigorate America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.”
Whether the current president actually loves the chemical compound that is coal or not, his administration doesn’t seem to give much of a shit about the health and safety of the workers who dig it out of the ground. The new government continues to attack and dismantle worker protections that provide health and economic benefits to a whole array of workers, including those who toil in subterranean mines. Now, two unions representing miners have sued the White House over its recent threat to their welfare.
In These Times writes that the United Miner Workers of America (UMWA) and the AFL-CIO’s United Steelworkers have filed litigation against the Mine Safety and Health Administration which, under Trump, has paused a long-pursued regulation that would have limited miners’ exposure to a toxic chemical commonly found in mines. The rule, called “Lowering Miners’ Exposure to Respirable Crystalline Silica and Improving Respiratory Protection,” would have—just as it says—enforced new regulations that drastically reduced miners’ exposure to crystalline silica, which is a toxic mineral that can cause serious respiratory problems when inhaled. The outlet writes:
The rule would have cut the allowable exposure level of deadly silica dust—20 times more toxic than coal dust and a major cause of black lung disease among coal miners — in half. The rule was planned to take effect on April 14 after decades of lobbying from coal miners, public health experts and worker advocates. When it was published in 2024, the Department of Labor estimated the new rule would result in more than 1,000 fewer deaths and 3,746 fewer cases of silica-related illnesses.
…[the] lawsuit starkly outlines the stakes of delaying the rule, emphasizing that the “loss of the protections of the silica rule will mean debilitating respiratory illness, including silicosis and coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, as well as premature deaths and lifelong disability.”
Gizmodo reached out to the Trump administration and the UMWA for comment.
In These Times also notes that, under the rubric of Elon Musk’s DOGE, the government has sought to downsize and reorganize several worker protection agencies that maintain health and safety standards for coal miners. Those agencies include the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), both of which are responsible for establishing safety rules for America’s workforce.
Trump and his political movement have long engaged in a political strategy that involves flattering and paying lip service to certain kinds of workers while simultaneously passing laws and policies that threaten to harm (economically or otherwise) those very same workers. It stands to reason that things wouldn’t be any different even when it comes to “beautiful, clean” coal.
