Trump & Republicans Escalate War on Coal Miners

Donald Trump has made a resurgence of the coal industry a top priority.  That promise helped him win the nation’s major coal mining states.

But if we are to judge by the way he is treating this nation’s coal miners — you know, the people who actually mine the coal — one might think that Trump and his Republican sycophants believe that coal just falls out of the ground by itself — or maybe it’s mined by A.I.- controlled robots — not by actual human miners.  Because those miners are dying in the vain attempt to make Trump’s energy policies come true.

Despite what some would like everyone to believe, black lung — the centuries-long killer of coal miners — has not gone away. In fact, it is on the rise. Cases of a particularly severe form of silica-related black lung disease, Progressive Massive Fibrosis (PMF), have been rising, particularly among young miners. The CDC estimates that about 20% of coal miners in Central Appalachia are suffering from black lung — the highest rate detected in more than 25 years. One in 20 of the region’s coal miners are living with PMF.

This is not a new story. NIOSH had warned for five decades that legal limits on silica exposure were dangerously outdated.

This is not a new story. NIOSH had warned for five decades that legal limits on silica exposure were dangerously outdated.  Seven years ago, former NPR reporter Howard Berkes described the rise of PMF in a hard-hitting and disturbing report, as well as the coal industry’s attempt to cover up the problem and the federal government’s failed attempts to force mine operators to control the deadly dust. MSHA had attempted to reduce the incidence of black lung disease by simply limiting the amount of dust in mines. But that didn’t address the problem, as Berkes showed.  There was still far too much silica in the air.

Berkes described the suffering of one miner.

Some, like Danny Smith, are literally coughing up their lungs:

His lung tissue is dying so fast, his respiratory therapist says, it just peels away.  “I’m terrified,” Smith said, as he remembered his father’s suffering when he was struggling with the same coal miner’s disease.  “I sure don’t want to go through what he went through. I seen a lot of guys that died of black lung and they all suffered like that.”

Smith had only worked in the mines for 12 years and is in his 40’s. He was diagnosed with PMF at age 39.

Finally in June 2024, the Biden administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration finally issued a new silica standard that lowers the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for respirable crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air – half the previous limit, and includes requirements for controlling and monitoring exposures to respirable crystalline silica.

The new MSHA rule also requires mine operators to offer free medical monitoring for miners to detect black lung and other respiratory diseases earlier.  The new PEL matches the silica limits established by OSHA in 2016 to protect construction workers and other general industry employees who were exposed to silica. That standard was scheduled to come into effect on April 18, 2025.

MSHA estimated that the new rule would result in an estimated total of 1,067 lifetime avoided deaths and 3,746 lifetime avoided cases of silica-related illnesses.

The new OSHA and MSHA standards were long overdue, coming “only” 50 years after a report from NIOSH recommended significantly reducing worker exposure to silica.

Miners Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Protections

But the new MSHA silica standard that protects miners’ lungs hasn’t faired so well with Republicans and mine operators.

On April 8, MSHA announced a four-month “temporary enforcement pause” of its final silica rule. That “pause”  was scheduled to end August 18.  The reason:  the “restructuring” of the NIOSH’s Pittsburgh Mining Research Division and the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory may impact the supply of approved and certified respirators and personal dust monitors. According to MSHA, “given the unforeseen NIOSH restructuring, and other technical reasons, MSHA offers this four-month temporary pause to provide time for operators to secure necessary equipment and otherwise come into compliance.”

This “unforeseen” restructuring, of course, was the result of the virtual shuttering of NIOSH just weeks before by DOGE and the Trump administration.

The excuse for delaying enforcement of the standard reminds me of the kids who murder their parents, then plead for mercy because they’re orphans.

But an additional four months of inhaling deadly dust was wishful thinking. Last week, the Trump administration extended the “pause” for another two months.

The rule has yet again been pushed back to at least October due to a previous temporary injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in response to a request from the National Sand, Stone and Gravel Association to block the rule’s implementation completely.

The rule would have gone into effect on Monday only for coal mines; the NSSGA — along with several other industry groups who joined the organization in its request — would not have been impacted by the new regulations until 2027.

United Mineworkers union President Cecil Roberts called the delay a “death sentence for miners.”

“The fact that an industry association with no stake in coal mining can hold up lifesaving protections for coal miners is outrageous. The Department of Labor and MSHA should be fighting to implement this rule immediately, not kicking enforcement down the road yet again. Every day they delay, more miners get sick, and more miners die. That’s the truth.”

UMWA International Secretary-Treasurer Brian Sanson also condemned the delay:

“This is bureaucratic cowardice, plain and simple. We’ve buried too many friends, too many fathers, and too many sons because of black lung. Bowing to corporate interests doesn’t solve the problem; it puts more miners at risk. The science is clear, the rule is needed, and the delay is shameful.”

House Republicans: Please Die Quicker

Just delaying enforcement of the standard wasn’t enough for Republicans on the House Committee on Employer Workforce Protections, who apparently think 50 years is far too fast to protect this nation’s coal miners from Black Lung, Progressive Massive Fibrosis, silicosis and cancer.  Let’s not rush into things.

At the end of July, Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-MI) and six other Committee Republicans sent a letter to MSHA’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, James McHugh, expressing their support for “efforts to give businesses and workers relief from the overly burdensome regulations promulgated by the Biden-Harris administration,” and reminding McHugh that MSHA’s silica standard “falls squarely within the purview of President Trump’s deregulatory EOs [Executive Orders]” that “require agencies to rescind or revise regulations that impose significant costs.”

As Iowa Senator Joni Ernst reminded Americans, “We are all going to die.”

Well then, Republicans seem to be asking,  if miners are all going to die, why not sooner than later? And as painfully as possible?

Sure, more miners may get sick die from this “relief.”  But, as Iowa Senator Joni Ernst recently reminded her constituents, “We are all going to die.”

Well then, House Republicans seem to be asking, if miners are all going to die, why not sooner than later? And as painfully as possible?

It’s not unlikely that Republicans and mine operators will get a sympathetic reception from MSHA’s current leadership. McHugh, who is acting director of MSHA, was formerly an attorney at the Pence Law Firm which boasts that they “offer unparalleled guidance and representation to mining companies across the United States.”

McHugh is serving as Acting Assistant Secretary until Trump’s MSHA nominee, Wayne Palmer, is confirmed by the Senate. Palmer was Executive Vice President of the Essential Minerals Association (EMA) which filed comments opposing issuance of the silica standard when it was under consideration in 2023. The EMA, in case you’ve never heard of them, “represents the interests of companies that mine or process minerals that are critical to manufacturing, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, transportation, and technology industries.”

Who better to represent the interests of miners?

Republicans, like the Trump administration itself, never claimed that science — or worker protection — was more important than “burdens” on industry or corporate profits.

The new MSHA silica standard, according to Republicans, “ignores controls already in place to protect miners’ health. In fact, the MSHA rule excludes commonsense practices such as job rotation and personal protective equipment.”  And “disregarding the use of these tools may lead to mining facility closures, as engineering controls alone may not be technologically or economically feasible.”

Emphasizing personal protection equipment (respirators) over more effective ventilation betrays their ignorance of the science behind worker protection. The letter ignores the industrial hygiene “hierarchy of controls” that prioritizes the most effective means of preventing exposures to toxic materials. Engineering controls, such as ventilation, that remove the contaminant from the breathing zone are always superior to personal protective equipment, like respirators, that are less effective and uncomfortable to wear for extended periods.

Lisa Emery, director of the New River Health Breathing Center and Black Lung Clinic in Southern West Virginia, explained why Republican suggestions are problematic for miners’ health.

Emery said such protections aren’t exactly practical; something shared numerous times by leading respiratory experts in public comments given to MSHA during the creation of the silica dust rule.

Rotating shifts, for example, would mean exposing even more miners to silica dust over time. Those who work in other parts of the mine without dust would have to then be in dustier parts, increasing their exposure, and workers would need to be trained on numerous jobs instead of focusing on the ones they are best equipped to do.

And for respirators to work adequately, miners would have to get a proper fit test to ensure their efficacy. Anyone with a beard would not have an adequate fit and someone would need to be responsible for enforcing their use — which could potentially interfere with communication critical to protecting safety and performing jobs while workers are underground in a loud environment.

Emery also said she’s assessed miners with black lung who have used respirators while underground.

“Their scans still came up positive,” Emery said.

But Republicans, like the Trump administration itself, never claimed that science — or worker protection — was more important than regulatory “burdens” that may cut into corporate profits.

It sems that the dream of more coal production is more important to the Trump administration than the lives of the workers who mine the coal that Donald Trump loves so much.

The Castration of NIOSH

The virtual elimination of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) last April eliminated many of the programs that protect this nation’s miners. NIOSH is the agency whose scientists had developed the underlying science showing the hazards of respiratory disease in coal mines and conducted the field work that made it an effective guardian of industrial workers’ health. The closings included NIOSH’s Spokane, WA and Pittsburgh, PA, offices as well as the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division, which focuses on coal miner safety, and the Spokane Mining Research Division, which specializes in hard rock mining.

DOGE killed the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP), mandated by the  Federal Coal Mine and Safety Act, which gives every miner in the country – roughly 50,000 – access to periodic lung screening (x-ray and lung function testing). NIOSH also operated a Mobile Occupational Safety and Health Unit that traveled to mining towns offering chest radiographs and blood pressure screenings. The elimination of the CWHSP meant that coal miners would no longer be able to access their X-rays or results from spirometry tests. And there will be no one to evaluate those results and alert coal miners of their right to transfer, according to Noemi Hall, who worked as an epidemiologist in the CWHS. “Coal miners have lost an essential right that they fought for,” Hall said. “To exercise that right, they need to have the X-ray reviewed by NIOSH and that function is no longer able to occur.”

And DOGE also eliminated NIOSH’s respirator program — the only program in the country that certifies respirators that mining, industrial construction, healthcare workers and others need to protect themselves against toxic gasses, fumes and dusts.

Much of the CWHSP has thankfully been restored (at least temporarily), partly due to objections from West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who represents many of the nation’s coal miners (as well as NIOSH offices), and partly due to a court order directing the White House to restore the remaining parts of the CWHSP that were still dormant.

But for those miners still getting sick, there may be fewer places to get treatment after passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” especially in Kentucky where the budget reconciliation bill is predicted to take health care from over 200,000 Kentuckians.

Crucially, it also puts 35 rural Kentucky hospitals at risk of closure, more than any other state and 10% of the vulnerable hospitals across the entire country. These facilities depend heavily on the payments from Medicaid-covered patients to make emergency and specialty care available to everyone in the community.

Among the Kentucky hospitals that could shutter are five of the seven original Miners’ Memorial Hospitals set up by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1956. Those facilities — in Whitesburg, Middlesboro, Harlan, South Williamson and McDowell — are on the chopping block, along with Eastern Kentucky hospitals in Prestonsburg, Manchester, Louisa, Corbin, Mt. Sterling, Pineville, Irvine, Martin and Barbourville….The UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund, created through successful contract victories, built the Miners’ Memorial Hospitals to provide health care in coal communities where it was sorely lacking. But mechanization of coal mining led to deep job losses by the 1960s, and the UMWA was forced to sell the facilities to a nonprofit that eventually became Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH).

Now the Medicaid cuts will put these facilities at risk

Let Mine Operators Regulate Themselves

Trump’s MSHA is also proposing to revoke the authority of MSHA District Managers to require mine operators to improve protections for miners in the roof control and ventilation plans of individual mines.  The law requires mine operators to develop roofing control and ventilation plans to protect miners. For decades, MSHA District Managers have had the authority to require mine operators to improve their ventilation and roof control plans after investigation of mining accidents. Evaluation and studies of mining conditions and practices often identify the need for increased protections to prevent injury, illness and deaths of miners. MSHA has used that authority to prevent mine explosions, disasters, roof falls and black lung. Now Trump’s MSHA is proposing to revoke that authority for both roofing control and ventilation plans and allow mine operators to develop their own plans without any interference from MSHA District Managers.

“This is a betrayal of our nation’s miners by the Trump Administration.” — Former MSHA Assistant Secretary Joe Main

Joe Main, who served as Assistant Secretary for MSHA during the Obama Administration and served for years as the UMWA’s health and safety director called this proposal “a betrayal of our nations’ miners by the Trump Administration.”

These critical regulations have without question saved countless miners’ lives.   The elimination of these critical regulations will place miners at greater risk as some mine plans will be deficient. When some mine operators did not want to include those protections in mining plan, MSHA was able to protect miners by use of the regulatory authority the Trump Administration now seeks to abolish. The elimination of these critical regulations would benefit mine operators and place miners more in harm’s way. This is more of the Trump Administrations continued actions to gut miners health and safety while fronting for the coal businesses that profit from the miners’ sacrifices.

Nerding Out on Regulatory Process

Now I’m going to nerd out for a minute about the contents of this proposal which the Trump administration obviously assumes (probably correctly) that almost no one will read. (Skip to the end if you don’t want to accompany me down this rabbit hole– or in this case, “rat hole.”)

A few observations based on the Ventilation Plan rule (a similar critique could be made for the accompanying Roof Control Plan deregulatory proposal):

Loper Bright: The proposal erroneously uses the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision. That decision, you may recall, revokes “Chevron Deference,” which directed judges to defer to the regulatory agency’s expertise when the intent of Congress was not clear. Loper Bright said that if an agency is sued over a new regulation, Judges can just decide for themselves whether the new regulation is legal, rather than relying on the experts in the agency.

But Loper Bright was not a guide to rule-making (or rule-unmaking).  It was rather a guide for judicial review after a regulation is issued. In addition, the Republican majority on Loper Bright stated that the decision was not to be used retroactively — e.g. for regulations already on the books.

Administrative Procedure Act: The proposal also contends that the original regulation was in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act which requires “notice and comment” before new regulations are issued. So every change of any individual mine’s ventilation plan will now have to go through a long extensive process of getting public comment for every change.

In other words, it’s not going to happen.

Cost-Benefit: This part would be worthy of a comedy show, if there were comedy shows about regulatory issues.

Any federal agency proposing new regulations is required to do some kind of economic analysis.  As I’ve explained before, even where the law doesn’t require it (e.g. the OSHAct), the White House requires agencies to weigh the costs and benefits of proposed federal rules. The benefits of a new (or revised) rule should, ideally, exceed the costs of the rule.

For normal OSHA or MSHA standards and regulations, the costs include the additional money that employers will have to spend to come into compliance. Costs might include the money spent purchasing new equipment or the time spent conducting worker training. Benefits of MSHA or OSHA standards are mainly the lives saved and injuries or illnesses prevented by the new rule.

In this case, however, we’re dealing with a deregulatory proposal, which turns things upside down.  The benefits (and “cost savings,” as the proposal calls them) are the costs that mine operators save by no longer being required to comply with the old regulation. And the costs would be the additional number of deaths and injuries that can be expected to result from the deregulatory action.

In order to calculate the “benefits” of this action, MSHA has gone to the trouble of adding up some of the savings that coal operators would enjoy by no longer allowing District Managers to impose changes to the ventilation plans.  Just to show how diligent these Trump analysts are, they’ve even included nationwide savings of $174 for “Copying and Mailing Ventilation Plans.”

So how much money will the nation’s coal operators save annually, enabling them to rescue that nation’s coal industry and supercharge America’s energy future?

$46,395

Yes, $46,395.  Not just $46,395 per mining company — but $46,395 for the entire country.  (Just to put that in perspective, Elon Must makes around $417,000 every minute of the day.)

(The savings for the change to the Roofing Control plan regulation would be a bit higher: $110,053. Roofing control plans are bigger than ventilation plans: mailing costs balloon to $1,698.)

Then there are additional “proposed benefits” of the ventilation plan rule to employers and to the nation that MSHA does not bother to quantify in dollars and cents. They are, instead, addressed in a “qualitative manner.”

• reduced production delays
• improved resource allocation
• regulatory certainty
• increased domestic energy production
• unauthorized rulemaking
• earlier initiation (or resumption) of production and revenue due to simplified plan and amendment approvals
• lower costs associated with subject matter expert consultants hired by mine operators in response to unanticipated Agency requirements
• other efficiencies generated by increased regulatory predictability
• clarification of  the information and provisions required in ventilation plans.

And last, but certainly not least (for mine operators):  “the increased opportunity to produce coal, which would improve American energy production.”

So there’s that.

Pretty detailed, right?

Note that MSHA’s failure to quantify — in dollar amounts — all of those “proposed benefits” does not mean that it is impossible to quantify many of them.  It would just take a lot of time and resources to calculate. That’s part of the reason that OSHA and MSHA standards always take so long to finalize —  years, and sometimes decades.

But quality of analysis is not the goal here. The goal is speed: they’re just trying to push as many damaging deregulatory actions out as quickly as possible. The actual data be damned.

OK, so now that we’ve seen the “cost-savings” and “benefits” (to mine operators), what are the real costs (to miners)?  Again, in this case, the costs would be the number of miner deaths and injuries that can be expected by not allowing District Managers to improve ventilation and roofing plans.

So how many additional injuries and deaths is MSHA predicting as a result of removing the ability of MSHA District Managers to improve operator’s ventilation plans?

Who knows? 

Because the number of additional coal miner injuries, illnesses or deaths resulting from this (de)regulation is never mentioned and never discussed. There is no mention of any impact that the failure (or even delay) of improving ventilation plans may have on miner safety. As if the coal miners that the law are supposed to protect don’t even exist!  

So how many additional injuries and deaths is MSHA predicting as a result of removing the ability of MSHA District Managers to improve operator’s ventilation plans?

Who knows?

Because the number of additional coal miner injuries, illnesses or deaths resulting from this (de)regulation is never mentioned and never discussed. There is no mention of any impact that the failure (or even delay) of improving ventilation plans may have on miner safety. Zero. None. Nada.

It’s as if the coal miners that this law (and these regulations) are supposed to protect don’t even exist!

It’s obvious why they want to ignore the costs of this rule or the possibility of any resulting injuries or deaths. Because according to regulatory economists, the benefit (or in this case the cost) of preventing a single human death is $13.77 million, and the benefit (or in this case the cost) of preventing an injury is $116,558.

So if a single miner is injured as a result of this rule, the cost of that injury would come to two-and-a-half times the total national “benefits” of this rule, and a single death resulting from this action would be almost 300 times the national “benefits” to mine operators.

If any previous OSHA or MSHA — in Republican or Democratic administrations — had tried to issue a regulation with this economic analysis, they would have laughed out of OMB. Better to ignore all this depressing stuff, I guess.

Comments on both proposals are due next week, September 2. If you have anything to say, submit something. See the comment by Michael Parris below for more details.

In Conclusion

“Betrayal of our nation’s miners,” “bureaucratic cowardice” and “a death sentence for miners.”

All of these statements pretty much sum up how Trump and his Republican sycophants are treating this nation’s miners. Twenty workers under MSHA’s jurisdiction have already been killed on the job this year, compared with 18 in all of 2024.  We don’t know how many miners will be diagnosed or die from Black Lung this year, or how many more will die because of the ongoing delays in enforcement of MSHA’s silica standard.  And, of course, we have no idea how many lives will be lost, or how many workers will be injured by Trump’s ongoing regulatory rollbacks.

The days when a nation-wide mineworker strike could shut down the nation are long gone — and the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans obviously know that.

But the blood of this nation’s miners remains on their hands. And we should make sure they don’t forget it.