Coal is not clean, and programs that protect coal miners have been cut by DOGE

Host Jackie DeAngelis previewed Trump’s executive orders on coal by claiming that the U.S. has “some of the cleanest coal that there is in the world.” 

Despite advances in technology, coal continues to have devastating health impacts on communities, including developmental delays in children, asthma, cancer, and premature death. In fact, in the U.S. alone, 460,000 deaths were attributed to coal plant pollution between 1999 and 2020. Meanwhile, the number of cases of black lung disease — which affects an estimated 16% of coal workers — has recently risen.

The number of operating coal plants has declined in the U.S. because of cheaper and clean options. According to a new analysis from a nonpartisan energy/climate think tank, 99 percent of existing U.S. coal plants are more expensive to run than it would cost to replace them with local wind, solar, or energy storage resources. 

And excluded from the discussion about Trump’s plans for coal is the fact that the entire unit of people working at the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program — a program of the Centers for Disease Control that coal miners are entitled to by law — were put on administrative leave on April 1 as part of the sweeping scheme to reduce the federal government. 

Also part of the effort was the termination of “leases for three dozen offices in the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for enforcing mine safety laws.” As ABC reported: “Retired coal miner Stanley ‘Goose’ Stewart questions whether it's safe for anyone to work in the industry right now.”

Oil prices are down because of fear of a global recession — not because of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda 

DeAngelis said “one of the bright spots in the market” is that crude oil currently costs “around $60 a barrel” and argued that plunging oil prices were “essential to Donald Trump's overall strategy” to bring down energy costs and increase “supply to meet future demand” for things like artificial intelligence and crypto mining. 

While a steep drop in oil prices will eventually mean lower gas prices, those prices would come as a result of fears of a global recession that pushes demand for oil down, not because of an increased supply from U.S. producers. 

On the contrary, oil and gas producers are already cutting back investments in drilling not only due to fear of a global slowdown but also because tariffs on production materials like steel are making drilling more expensive at the same time that oil is selling for less. As one producer explained to The New York Times:

And they are not alone. Industries that are driving “future demand” like AI are also cutting back. On April 6, Microsoft delayed indefinitely a $1 billion project to build three new data centers in Licking County, Ohio. 

DeAngelis and the other hosts did not mention these critical details about what plunging oil prices would mean for U.S. oil and gas producers if they continue and how it would negatively impact Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda.

On April 9, Trump paused some of his reciprocal tariffs. The New York Times reported that in response, oil prices bounced back to $62 a barrel but noted, “For now, many companies are waiting to see where prices settle before adjusting drilling or spending plans. As this week has demonstrated, commodity prices can be very volatile.”

The fracking industry has not delivered the jobs and prosperity it promised

Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock claimed that if environmentalists don’t like coal, they should embrace natural gas, because it produces half as much carbon dioxide as coal. 

“Here in New York State we’ve got a lot of natural gas. … We won’t touch it,” he said. “The left in this state doesn’t want to do anything about it. It would be a very good way to get a lot of energy, create jobs, bring prosperity to an area that’s just sort of sitting there very quietly, and at the same time produce one half of the CO2 that coal does.”

Again, this fails to consider that even if those areas were open for fracking, they would likely go undeveloped because it is not profitable amid the current climate of uncertainty. Reviewing a recent fossil fuel industry survey, The New York Times reported: 

Murdock also erroneously suggested that fracking brings prosperity to the communities that sit atop shale gas deposits. In his example, Pennsylvania, the second largest natural gas-producing state in the U.S., jobs in the oil and gas industry account for less than 1% of all jobs in the state, and the industry continues to shed employees, in part because of automation. It also has failed to deliver the wealth promised to many communities burdened with fracking wells, while instead bringing health issues. 

Meanwhile, “clean energy industries employ more than 8 times more PA workers than the state’s gas industry.”

Renewable energy accounted for 93% of new capacity last year and is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs

Fox contributor Brian Brenberg noted that “95% of the proposed energy projects” currently in development are “renewable projects,” but he attempted to dismiss this telling stat by claiming that “the time required to get those permitted and up in running has doubled since the year 2000.” Even if that is true, according to one fossil fuel trade paper, “renewable energy projects generally face shorter permitting periods compared to fossil fuel projects.”

He went on to suggest that politicians are promising coal miners green jobs that never materialize. In fact, clean energy technologies constituted 93% of new energy generation capacity added to the grid last year alone, and the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act “have spurred the highest levels of factory construction in American history, with more than 400,000 new jobs announced across the country.” 

One of those projects, which broke ground in May 2023, is a facility that will manufacture energy storage batteries in Weirton, West Virginia – the state with the most coal-mining jobs in the U.S. According to Reuters, Breakthrough Energy Ventures “said the factory will begin making battery systems in 2024 and … create at least 750 jobs in the state, which has suffered for years from a lack of high paying jobs as coal production falters amid the energy transition.”

Trump is not pursuing an all-of-the-above energy strategy. He is relentlessly trying to kill clean energy development.

Murdock suggested that the push for coal — “burn, baby, burn” — along with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda are part of the “all-of-the-above approach to energy” to deal with “all this increased demand for electricity.” 

Anchor Cheryl Casone suggested that Trump's energy strategy is about “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” claiming that “this is why President Trump has been so keyed into the energy infrastructure industry.” She also argued that the U.S. is going to “need all of the energy sources for AI data centers.” 

The Trump administration approach is not encompassing “all energy sources.” It is actively rolling back clean energy, which is putting energy and manufacturing jobs at stake while jeopardizing U.S. leadership in clean energy development. And several new analyses say energy prices for Americans will rise and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost if Trump’s campaign promise to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act is achieved. For example, according to one report, repealing IRA incentives and program funding would cause the loss of more than 700,000 jobs throughout the country in 2030 (while also increasing cumulative household energy costs by $32 billion from 2025-2035).

Notably, as The Wall Street Journal reported, oil industry jobs are shrinking even in the best of times: