OAN Staff Abril Elfi
4:21 PM – Tuesday, April 8, 2025
President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders that aim to boost coal production, bringing back the long-declining coal sector by rolling back Democrat measures.
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“We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” said Trump. “We’re ending [former President] Joe Biden’s war on clean coal, once and for all.”
The White House stated that Trump’s directive directs federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, remove barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on federal lands.
Furthermore, the order directs Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to acknowledge the termination of the Jewel Mortarium — which halted coal leasing on federal lands.
It requires agencies to rescind policies aimed at transitioning the United States away from coal, and it promotes coal exports while advocating for its use to power new artificial intelligence (AI) data.
“We’re going to keep those coal miners on the job and tell them to just remain calm,” Trump stated, “because we’re going to have that plant opening and burning the clean coal ‒ beautiful, clean coal ‒ in a very short period of time.”
However, progressive environmental groups have already begun criticizing the president’s orders.
“Donald Trump is hell-bent on dragging the United States back to the 19th century, complete with robber barons, smokestacks, crippling tariffs, and measles,” Rachel Hamby, policy director of the environmental conservation group Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement.
“The free market has already made it clear that renewable energy sources are a cheaper and healthier path to meet America’s energy needs,” she added.
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