At a packed White House celebration in February, federal officials mingled with coal industry executives in suits and miners in hard hats. The event’s best photo op came when National Coal Council Chair Jim Grech presented Donald Trump with a statuette of a coal miner holding a pickax and called the president “the undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal.”
“We stand here today representing the thousands of coal miners across the country to express our deep gratitude, sir, for the actions you’ve taken to support our industry,” Grech told Trump. “We have a president who, more than any other, deeply understands the importance of coal in supporting the future of this nation.”
As president and CEO of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest publicly traded, privately owned coal producer, Grech wields a lot of influence, and Trump appeared delighted with his trophy. He praised the miners standing nearby profusely. “You do so much,” he said. “You heat our homes, you fuel our factories and turn natural resources into American riches and dreams.”
What Trump and Grech failed to mention that day is the toll coal mining is not only taking on the climate, but also on miners’ health. Nor did they explain how Trump’s policies can save the industry when production has declined by half since 2008 and is bound to continue on a downward trajectory.
Trump digs coal
From the very beginning of his first presidential run, Trump has been an enthusiastic coal booster. Back in May 2016, he told a cheering crowd of coal miners and their families in Charleston, West Virginia, that if elected he would relieve them of the burden of “ridiculous regulations that put you out of business and make it impossible for you to compete.” During his first term in office, he followed through. His administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules, at least some of which aided the coal industry.
This time around, Trump is continuing his crusade to prop up coal. Three months after taking office, he signed executive orders to: boost coal production by weakening even more environmental safeguards; prioritize coal leasing on public land; identify where energy-intensive data centers can run on coal; and halt state and local laws addressing climate change.
Last September, Trump’s Department of Energy piled on, announcing a $625 million taxpayer-funded plan to “reinvigorate and expand America’s coal industry.” And Trump signed an executive order at the White House coal pep rally in February directing the Pentagon to prioritize purchasing coal to power the military. “We’re lifting up our hard working American miners,” Trump said, “like nobody has ever done before.”
Trump’s payback was welcome news to coal executives whose industry has spent millions on Trump and other Republican candidates to keep it alive. Coal industry employment has plummeted in recent decades, dropping from more than 175,000 in 1985 to fewer than 40,000 today, at least partly due to mechanization. From the early 1980s to 2008, U.S. coal production actually increased by about 30 percent. But since 2008, the trend has reversed. Domestic production has dropped by more than 50 percent largely due to increased competition from fossil gas and renewable energy, which are less expensive—and cleaner.
While the future of the coal industry remains in doubt, if Trump is successful in keeping coal on life support even for just a few more years, both ratepayers and coal miners will pay a steep price. Utility customers will pay billions of dollars more for electricity than they would if their provider switched to fossil gas or renewables, and coal miners will continue to suffer work-related health problems and premature death.
More disease and deaths
The worst disease miners have to contend with is black lung, and despite the fact that the industry finally acknowledged the problem in the late 1960s, miners are still experiencing shockingly high rates of it. It is a debilitating, deadly, incurable scourge, technically called coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), which is triggered by breathing coal dust and silica rock particles. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), black lung disease contributed to the deaths of more than 75,000 miners from 1970 to 2016, when there were fewer than 56,000 miners still working.
In 1969, Congress passed the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which declared that “the first priority and concern of all in the coal mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource—the miner.” Regardless, after declining for several decades, black lung rates have jumped in recent years. The main culprit is mechanization, which has increased miners’ exposure to coal dust mixed with silica, a common cancer-causing mineral that is 20 times more toxic than standard coal dust. Miners in Appalachia and the Midwest are particularly at risk due to hard-to-reach coal veins surrounded by silica rock.
A landmark 2018 NIOSH study estimated that as many as 10 percent of U.S. coal miners with at least 25 years’ experience had some level of black lung-related conditions, while more than 20 percent of miners who worked that long in the central Appalachia areas of eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and West Virginia—where silica rock is more common—suffered from these health problems.
“The situation facing miners diagnosed with black lung disease has always been bleak,” then United Mine Workers (UMW) President Cecil Roberts said in response to the 2018 NIOSH study. “The fact is, there is no cure for black lung, so a miner diagnosed with the disease will see their health continue to slowly deteriorate until they can no longer walk across a room or lay flat in their bed. Eventually, they will die a cruel and hideous death by suffocation.”
The study also concluded that black lung is entirely preventable. “This study provides further evidence,” one of the co-authors said, “that effective dust control methods and protections to reduce coal mine dust exposure along with early detection of the disease are essential to protect miners’ health.”
Subsequent studies also have sounded the alarm about the rise in black lung disease. A 2020 peer-reviewed study in the journal Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration found that “CWP has taken a tremendous human and financial toll on the U.S. coal mining industry and continues to be identified with increased frequency and severity.”
Likewise, a December 2025 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportfound that the death rate for miners exposed to coal and silica dust is increasing. “The continuing occurrence of CWP-associated deaths underscores the potential value of a comprehensive prevention program. . . ,” the report concluded, “and supports potential benefits of ongoing surveillance.”
Industry stymies Silica Rule
After years of lobbying by the UMW and occupational health advocates, the Biden administration issued a new safety standard in 2024 known as the Silica Rule that required mine owners to slash levels of silica and coal dust exposures in half. But the mining industry quickly sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), claiming the rule is too expensive and unwieldy. Last year, with a new, coal-friendly president in the White House, a federal appeals court issued a stay blocking MSHA from enforcing the new rule. The agency did not challenge the court order or defend the rule and is now planning to revise it.
Miners worried about their health see little help coming from a president who received a trophy for being a champion of “beautiful clean coal.” Coal industry executives, meanwhile, insist their mines are safe. “It’s safer to work in a U.S. coal mine than to work in a shopping mall or supermarket,” Peabody CEO Grech told an investment group last year.
Gary Hairston, president of the Black Lung Association, which was founded in 1969 to help miners with their disability claims, is pessimistic about the Silica Rule’s prospects. “We understand they want to do away with it and we’re going to have to start all over again,” Hairston, a former miner who suffers from black lung, told Money Trail. “Companies are not thinking about the coal miners. They’re thinking about coal.”
The association’s vice president, Vonda Robertson, blames the coal industry for blocking efforts to improve conditions in the mines. She should know. Her husband worked in mines in Appalachia for 28 years. He now has an incurable case of advanced black lung disease.
“We need to treat our coal miners like our veterans,” Robertson told Money Trail. “They give their lives and lungs to power America. We need to recognize that and keep them safe.”
Rocky Kistner, Money Trail’s contributing editor, previously worked as a reporter and producer at ABC News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, HuffPost, Marketplace and PBS Frontline.
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