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      A coal plant bulldozed an Ohio town displacing residents. Now its owners include a big Trump donor

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      Nestled beneath two precipitous spires billowing smoke from what has been called the deadliest coal plant in the United States lies the husk of the small but once-thriving town of Cheshire, Ohio.When residents here were routinely shrouded in a toxic, blue-tinged fog of pollution from the plant two decades ago, a unique yet telling solution was settled upon: the company causing the pollution would purchase the entire town to move people en masse from their homes.For the several hundred people who lived here beside a nook of the Ohio River on the eastern border of the state, the wrenching dismemberment of their community in 2002 is still raw. Yet looming stubbornly over the remnants of this ghost town is the imposing Gavin coal plant, as its owners battle federal regulators who allege ongoing violations of clean air and water rules.“Rather than deal with the source of pollution they thought it better to buy out and bulldoze a whole town,” said Neil Waggoner, an Ohio-based campaigner at the Sierra Club, which estimates Gavin’s pollution causes about 244 premature deaths a year, making it America’s most lethal coal plant, it said in a report last year based on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and census data. “It’s extraordinary. In many ways, it’s dystopian.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenThe tale of the Gavin power station, one of the largest coal complexes in the US and the country’s sixth highest such emitter of planet-heating carbon dioxide, is one that illustrates deep seams of support for coal in this part of the midwest but also – with a looming presidential election – salient politics.Since 2017, the Gavin plant has been part-owned by Blackstone, a private equity firm whose billionaire chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, is one of the leading backers of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, having donated $3m to a Trump-aligned Super PAC in 2020. Individuals connected to Blackstone are also among the most generous financial supporters of JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate.Both Trump and Vance have lambasted moves by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and a catalyst of the climate crisis, with particular ire aimed at a recent EPA rule that requires coal-fired power plants to slash CO2 emissions by 90% within a decade or face closure.Trump has vowed to kill off the rule he’s called “a regulatory jihad to shut down power plants all across America” if he returns to the White House, while Vance has complained of “wanton harassment of fossil fuel companies” and joined with other Senate Republicans in attempts to block the regulation.The EPA edict poses an existential threat to the Gavin plant, which spews out 13m tons of carbon dioxide a year, along with a host of other toxins. Faced with the costly task of capturing the plant’s emissions, Lightstone Generation, the joint venture operator, is also wrestling with EPA allegations from this year that it violated clean air laws and failed to properly contain a vast nearby dump of coal ash – the leftover waste from burning coal that can leach arsenic, mercury and other cancer-causing toxins into rivers and streams – fed by a mile-long conveyor belt from the power plant.“Blackstone is used to playing that political game and it’s in their interest to keep the status quo so coal plants don’t face accountability,” said Alissa Jean Schafer, climate director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, which outlined in a recent report that Gavin’s operators face upwards of $40m in costs to remedy its pollution issues, recommending it join a spate of coal plants that have closed in Ohio and nationwide.“There is a trend of private equity walking away from polluting assets without being liable for the environmental cleanup,” Schafer added. “They want to squeeze as much profit as possible while they can from this outdated, dangerous coal plant.”View image in fullscreenBlackstone’s Schwarzman, who has previously warned of energy shortages and “real unrest” around the world if fossil fuels are phased out too quickly, has allied with Trump, who weakened rules around coal ash disposal and coal plant emissions when he was president. “You can imagine folks at Blackstone want to see similar rollbacks under a second Trump presidency, and you can imagine Vance towing the line,” said Schafer.A Blackstone spokeswoman said the Gavin plant is a “legacy investment” that has spent more than $1bn to update its air quality control technology, complies with federal and state limits on emissions, and is in the process of closing a coal ash pond. “All political donations by our employees are strictly personal,” she added.The reach of the Gavin plant, built in 1974 and named after Gen James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin, is prodigious. It chews through about 20,000 tons of coal a day, enough to electrify 2m homes. A pair of enormous 800ft-tall rust-colored smokestacks, jutting imperiously above the treeline on the approach to Cheshire, waft a cocktail of emissions for hundreds of miles, with environmentalists blaming it for causing hazy skies as far away as the Shenandoah national park, in Virginia.The immediate surroundings of the largest power plant in Ohio, however, are denuded. The blue plumes are gone but the plant itself still gives off a pungent sulphur smell, a violent whiff akin to rotting eggs that stings the nose. The small cluster of Cheshire streets at the foot of the plant contain patches of grass where homes once sat, like a mouth that’s had most of its teeth knocked out.View image in fullscreenA church, a school and even the traffic lights here have been removed, along with the houses that were torn down. Just a few scattered buildings remain. During the exodus, some people lifted their entire wood-paneled homes on to trailers and moved them away. In all, 221 residents, the vast majority of the population, departed in just six months in 2002.“I couldn’t even watch my house being torn down, it was terrible,” said Jennifer Harrison, who grew up near Cheshire and moved to the town with her now late husband in 1980. “We spent the first 23 years of our married life and raised our kids here. I just can’t think about it too much, it’s horrible.”Harrison, who served as Cheshire’s town clerk and lived a short distance from the Gavin plant, remembers getting blurry eyes and tasting sulphur in the air in the late 1990s – a problem that worsened to the extent that a blue-hued haze of pollution would settle upon the town, particularly on humid days. It became so bad that residents had to stay indoors, the miasma so strong it would eat the paint off cars.“We had what we called ‘touchdowns’, where this plume would come from the smokestack and touch down in town,” she said. “It was like clouds on the ground. People got sores on their mouths, they got breathing problems, it affected lives.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIronically, the problems worsened once the EPA, in 2000, cited the Gavin plant for violating the Clean Air Act for contributing to acid rain as far away as New York. In response, pollution controls installed by the plant triggered what American Electric Power (AEP), the plant’s owner until 2017, called a “totally unexpected” increase in sulphur trioxide that mixed with water vapor from scrubbers used to filter pollution from the smokestacks.This combination allowed a sulphuric acid mist to flood into Cheshire, causing what the EPA documented as “irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat; shortness of breath; and asthma-like symptoms” among residents in 2001. “We had to fight them continually,” Harrison said of the plant’s owner. “We had to become a pain in their ass just to finally get anything done.”AEP, facing mounting legal pressure over the toxic air, eventually offered a deal thought to be a US first: $20m to buy the town of Cheshire, with homeowners offered three times the asking price for their houses – around $150,000 each – in return for locals relocating and agreeing to not sue the company over any future adverse health impacts.Elderly residents who wished to stay in their homes were allowed to do so, with some holdouts remaining until they died, when their homes were bulldozed too. AEP, which had revenues of $14.5bn in 2002, was able to subsume a town founded in 1811, with lawyers taking around a quarter of the total buyout fund.Harrison, who was involved in the effort to pursue AEP through the courts, said she was initially “shocked” at the offer but came to realize it was the only viable choice. “We probably should’ve held out for more but the lawyers told us that was the final deal,” she said.“We felt if we didn’t take the deal we’d be stuck here forever and they wouldn’t fix the problem. Most of the people let them buy the property and got out of town because at that point our properties were worthless.”What was lost was a slice of Americana, a close-knit place of white picket fences, a church, village picnics and a trusted community. “Everyone knew everyone, you could hear your kids out playing on their bikes and know someone was looking out for them,” said Harrison. “It was very Norman Rockwell.”The grief of this loss stirred anger among some Cheshire residents, not so much at the coal plant in a stretch of Appalachia where the harms of coal have long been sold as a price worth enduring, but rather at town council leaders like Harrison who struck the buyout deal. Friendships were severed, angry words shouted and graffitied dollar signs were sprayed onto the Harrison family home.“It was really unsettling,” said Megan Lawhon, Harrison’s daughter who turned 18 the day before the buyout was agreed to. She’s now a high school teacher. “People blamed us for a lot of untrue things, said we were greedy for taking the buyout money. I find it really hard to even come back here.”Gesturing to the Gavin plant, Lawhon added: “The culprit is just still sitting here. It’s like a family member has been murdered and the killer was just allowed to pay out some money and that’s it. And everyone here accepts that’s just the price of living in Appalachia, that there is no other option. We just die with a smile on our faces.”Advocates for the Gavin plant point out that it generates about half of the economic activity in Gallia county, in which Cheshire sits. There remains a certain cynicism that anything, such as a clean energy boom that Biden has sought to spur, can replace the jobs and investment that coal has long conferred to the Ohio River valley.In 2020, Trump, who has offered unfulfilled promises to resurrect the ailing coal industry, amassed 77% of the vote in Gallia county. A barn sitting beside the Gavin plant features a large picture of the former president shaking his fist with the words: “The audits prove Trump won!”“I know if Kamala [Harris] and that other gentleman [Tim Walz] had their way this coal plant would be shut down right now and we’d be going back to the 1800s,” said Mark Coleman, who is mayor of Cheshire. Coleman lives on the outskirts of the town, which had its boundaries expanded to now cover a population of 124.“If that plant closed our area would be gone. I’ve lived here all my life, this has always been part of it, my dad was a coal miner. The problem was fixable and Gavin did fix it, we haven’t seen a blue plume in years. I was more frustrated with the people who sold out.”View image in fullscreenLightstone, Gavin’s operator, still owns the relic of Cheshire and has shown no willingness to sell the land to usher in new residents. Neither Blackstone nor ArcLight Capital, the two joint venture partners that form Lightstone, answered questions on Cheshire’s future.Coleman said attracting new businesses here is tough; a plan for a Dollar General was recently dashed, and even getting a street paved is difficult. Drug addiction, like in much of Appalachia, stalks this place. Cheshire’s future appears moribund, a marooned corner of a region where old certainties have evaporated.“Our town has lost its identity, it’s sad,” Coleman said. “It’s hard to get things started back up again. Time has healed wounds, but at the same time we don’t go out to dinner with everyone. People have drifted apart.”The mayor has not heard from Vance about Cheshire’s situation. The vice-presidential candidate didn’t respond to questions from the Guardian about his links to Blackstone and the Gavin plant, or what his plan is for communities exposed to coal-related pollution.“If JD Vance really feels a connection to Appalachia, which he has ridden hard, you’d think he’d at least ask some questions about all this,” said Lawhon.“But I’d be surprised if he even knew about us. I mean if it’s going to cut into profits, the environment won’t ever be a priority. Which means that this whole thing could happen again somewhere else in the United States, and somebody’s going to have to fight the exact same battle we did.” More

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      in Elections

      El cambio climático no es prioritario en la Convención Nacional Republicana

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      La plataforma del partido no hace ninguna mención del cambio climático, en cambio, fomenta una mayor producción de petróleo, gas y carbón, que aumentan las temperaturas globales.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Este verano, Estados Unidos está experimentando niveles históricos de un calor intenso a causa del cambio climático. Las altas temperaturas han provocado decenas de muertes en el oeste del país, mientras millones de personas sudan debido a los avisos de calor extremo y casi tres cuartas partes de los estadounidenses dicen que el gobierno debe priorizar el calentamiento global.Sin embargo, aunque en el horario estelar del lunes por la noche la energía fue el tema con el que el Partido Republicano inauguró su convención nacional en Milwaukee, el partido no tiene ningún plan para abordar el cambio climático.A pesar de que algunos republicanos ya no niegan el abrumador consenso científico según el cual el planeta se está calentando a causa de la actividad humana, los líderes del partido no lo consideran como un problema que se deba enfrentar.“No sé si hay una estrategia republicana para enfrentar el cambio climático a nivel de organización”, comentó Thomas J. Pyle, presidente de la American Energy Alliance, un grupo de investigación conservador enfocado en la energía. “No creo que el presidente Trump considere imperativo reducir los gases de efecto invernadero por medio del gobierno”.Cuando el expresidente Donald Trump menciona el cambio climático, lo hace en tono de burla.“¿Se imaginan? Este tipo dice que el calentamiento global es la mayor amenaza para nuestro país”, dijo Trump, para referirse al presidente Joe Biden en un mitin en Chesapeake, Virginia, el mes pasado que fue el junio más caluroso que se haya registrado en todo el mundo. “El calentamiento global está bien. De hecho, he oído que hoy va a hacer mucho calor. Está bien”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Electricity From Coal Is Pricey. Should Consumers Have to Pay?

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      Environmental groups are making a new economic argument against coal, the heaviest polluting fossil fuel. Some regulators are listening.For decades, environmentalists fought power plants that burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, by highlighting their pollution: soot, mercury and the carbon dioxide that is dangerously heating the planet.But increasingly, opponents have been making an economic argument, telling regulators that electricity produced by coal is more expensive for consumers than power generated by solar, wind and other renewable sources.And that’s been a winning strategy recently in two states where regulators forbade utilities from recouping their losses from coal-fired plants by passing those costs to ratepayers. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two leading environmental groups, are hoping that if utilities are forced to absorb all the costs of burning coal, it could speed the closures of uneconomical plants.The groups are focused on utilities that generate electricity from coal and also distribute it. Those utilities have historically been allowed to pass their operating losses to customers, leaving them with costly electric bills while the plants emitted carbon dioxide that could have been avoided with a different fuel source, according to the environmental groups.About 75 percent of the nation’s roughly 200 coal-fired power plants are owned by utilities that control both generation and distribution.In 2023, utilities across the United States incurred about $3 billion in losses by running coal-fired power plants when it was cheaper to buy power from lower-cost, less polluting sources, according to RMI, a nonprofit research organization focused on clean energy. About 96 percent of those losses were incurred by plants that controlled both power generation and distribution, the organization said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gov. Jim Justice Faces Heavy Business Debts as He Seeks Senate Seat

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      The Justice companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them.Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump, with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice, 73, and his family to fend them all off. “It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies. Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close

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      The company that owns the Merrimack and Schiller stations in New Hampshire plans to turn them into solar farms and battery storage for offshore wind.The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are set to close by 2025 and 2028, ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for more than 50 years.The decision to close the Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, makes New England the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.Environmentalists waged a five-year legal battle against the New Hampshire plants, saying that the owner had discharged warm water from steam turbines into a nearby river without cooling it first to match the natural temperature.In a settlement reached on Wednesday with the Sierra Club and the Conservative Law Foundation, Granite Shore Power, the owner of the plants, agreed that Schiller would not run after Dec. 31, 2025 and that Merrimack would cease operations no later than June 2028.“This announcement is the culmination of years of persistence and dedication from so many people across New England,” said Gina McCarthy, a former national climate adviser to President Biden and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration who is now a senior adviser at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which supports efforts to phase out coal.“I’m wicked proud to live in New England today and be here,” Ms. McCarthy said. “Every day, we’re showing the rest of the country that we will secure our clean energy future without compromising.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Energy Transition Is Underway. Fossil Fuel Workers Could Be Left Behind.

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      The Biden administration is trying to increase renewable energy investments in distressed regions, but some are skeptical those measures would be enough to make up for job losses.Tiffany Berger spent more than a decade working at a coal-fired power plant in Coshocton County, Ohio, eventually becoming a unit operator making about $100,000 annually.But in 2020, American Electric Power shut down the plant, and Ms. Berger struggled to find a job nearby that offered a comparable salary. She sold her house, moved in with her parents and decided to help run their farm in Newcomerstown, Ohio, about 30 minutes away.They sell some of the corn, beans and beef they harvest, but it is only enough to keep the farm running. Ms. Berger, 39, started working part time at a local fertilizer and seed company last year, making just a third of what she used to earn. She said she had “never dreamed” the plant would close.“I thought I was set to retire from there,” Ms. Berger said. “It’s a power plant. I mean, everybody needs power.”The United States is undergoing a rapid shift away from fossil fuels as new battery factories, wind and solar projects, and other clean energy investments crop up across the country. An expansive climate law that Democrats passed last year could be even more effective than Biden administration officials had estimated at reducing fossil fuel emissions. While the transition is projected to create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, it could be devastating for many workers and counties that have relied on coal, oil and gas for their economic stability. Estimates of the potential job losses in the coming years vary, but roughly 900,000 workers were directly employed by fossil fuel industries in 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The Biden administration is trying to mitigate the impact, mostly by providing additional tax advantages for renewable energy projects that are built in areas vulnerable to the energy transition. But some economists, climate researchers and union leaders said they are skeptical the initiatives will be enough. Beyond construction, wind and solar farms typically require few workers to operate, and new clean energy jobs might not necessarily offer comparable wages or align with the skills of laid-off workers.Coal plants have already been shutting down for years, and the nation’s coal production has fallen from its peak in the late 2000s. U.S. coal-fired generation capacity is projected to decline sharply to about 50 percent of current levels by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration. About 41,000 workers remain in the coal mining industry, down from about 177,000 in the mid-1980s.The industry’s demise is a problem not just for its workers but also for the communities that have long relied on coal to power their tax revenue. The loss of revenue from mines, plants and workers can mean less money for schools, roads and law enforcement. A recent paper from the Aspen Institute found that from 1980 to 2019, regions exposed to the decline of coal saw long-run reductions in earnings and employment rates, greater uptake of Medicare and Medicaid benefits and substantial decreases in population, particularly among younger workers. That “leaves behind a population that is disproportionately old, sick and poor,” according to the paper.The Biden administration has promised to help those communities weather the impact, for both economic and political reasons. Failure to adequately help displaced workers could translate into the kind of populist backlash that hurt Democrats in the wake of globalization as companies shifted factories to China. Promises to restore coal jobs also helped Donald J. Trump clinch the 2016 election, securing him crucial votes in states like Pennsylvania.Federal officials have vowed to create jobs in hard-hit communities and ensure that displaced workers “benefit from the new clean energy economy” by offering developers billions in bonus tax credits to put renewable energy projects in regions dependent on fossil fuels.Tiffany Berger, who was laid off when the plant in Coshocton County was shut down, struggled to find work that offered a comparable salary. She moved in with her parents and decided to help run her family’s farm.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIf new investments like solar farms or battery storage facilities are built in those regions, called “energy communities,” developers could get as much as 40 percent of a project’s cost covered. Businesses receiving credits for producing electricity from renewable sources could earn a 10 percent boost.The Inflation Reduction Act also set aside at least $4 billion in tax credits that could be used to build clean energy manufacturing facilities, among other projects, in regions with closed coal mines or plants, and it created a program that could guarantee up to $250 billion in loans to repurpose facilities like a shuttered power plant for clean energy uses.Brian Anderson, the executive director of the Biden administration’s interagency working group on energy communities, pointed to other federal initiatives, including increased funding for projects to reclaim abandoned mine lands and relief funds to revitalize coal communities.Still, he said that the efforts would not be enough, and that officials had limited funding to directly assist more communities.“We’re standing right at the cusp of potentially still leaving them behind again,” Mr. Anderson said.Phil Smith, the chief of staff at the United Mine Workers of America, said that the tax credits for manufacturers could help create more jobs but that $4 billion likely would not be enough to attract facilities to every region. He said he also hoped for more direct assistance for laid-off workers, but Congress did not fund those initiatives. “We think that’s still something that needs to be done,” Mr. Smith said.Gordon Hanson, the author of the Aspen Institute paper and a professor of urban policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said he worried the federal government was relying too heavily on the tax credits, in part because companies would likely be more inclined to invest in growing areas. He urged federal officials to increase unemployment benefits to distressed regions and funding for work force development programs.Even with the bonus credit, clean energy investments might not reach the hardest-hit areas because a broad swath of regions meets the federal definition of an energy community, said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at Resources for the Future.“If the intention of that provision was to specifically provide an advantage to the hardest-hit fossil fuel communities, I don’t think it’s done that,” Mr. Raimi said.Local officials have had mixed reactions to the federal efforts. Steve Henry, the judge-executive of Webster County, Ky., said he believed they could bring renewable energy investments and help attract other industries to the region. The county experienced a significant drop in tax revenue after its last mine shut down in 2019, and it now employs fewer 911 dispatchers and deputy sheriffs because officials cannot offer more competitive wages.“I think we can recover,” he said. “But it’s going to be a long recovery.”Adam O’Nan, the judge-executive of Union County, Ky., which has one coal mine left, said he thought renewable energy would bring few jobs to the area, and he doubted that a manufacturing plant would be built because of the county’s inadequate infrastructure.“It’s kind of difficult to see how it reaches down into Union County at this point,” Mr. O’Nan said. “We’re best suited for coal at the moment.”Federal and state efforts so far have done little to help workers like James Ault, 42, who was employed at an oil refinery in Contra Costa County, Calif., for 14 years before he was laid off in 2020. To keep his family afloat, he depleted his pension and withdrew most of the money from his 401(k) early.In early 2022, he moved to Roseville, Calif., to work at a power plant, but he was laid off again after four months. He worked briefly as a meal delivery driver before landing a job in February at a nearby chemical manufacturer.He now makes $17 an hour less than he did at the refinery and is barely able to cover his mortgage. Still, he said he would not return to the oil industry.“With our push away from gasoline, I feel that I would be going into an industry that is kind of dying,” Mr. Ault said. More

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      White House Clarifies Biden’s Coal Remarks After Outrage From Manchin

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      PHILADELPHIA — President Biden came under fire from a crucial member of his own party, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, on Saturday after making comments that suggested coal plants in the United States would be shuttered as the nation shifts to solar and wind power.The backlash came as Mr. Biden was on a final campaign swing before Tuesday’s midterm elections, and it reflected cracks in the Democratic Party’s coalition ahead of votes that will determine which party controls Congress next year. The response also led the administration to apologize and clarify the president’s remarks, which it said were being misconstrued.“The president’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Saturday.At a speech in California on Friday, Mr. Biden was discussing America’s energy transition and was lamenting the cost of using coal.“No one is building new coal plants, because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant,” Mr. Biden said. “So it’s going to become a wind generation.”He added, “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”In his rebuke of Mr. Biden, Mr. Manchin, a prominent centrist, criticized the president for saying that coal mines and plants should be shut down in favor of wind and solar plants. He called the comments “outrageous and divorced from reality.”“Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Mr. Manchin said. “The president owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology, and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.”Republicans also seized on Mr. Biden’s comments, criticizing him for pursuing an energy policy that could cost American jobs.“We know how this ends,” Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, said on Twitter. “People lose their livelihoods. You pay more for energy.”The controversy over Mr. Biden’s remarks came as he was preparing to join former President Barack Obama for a rally in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon.Ms. Jean-Pierre said that Mr. Biden and Mr. Manchin had worked closely on legislation in the past year and that the president was an advocate for West Virginia. Noting that oil and natural gas production had increased under Mr. Biden’s watch, she said that the president was laying out the course of America’s energy transition.“No one will be left behind,” she said. More

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      in Elections

      How Can We Still Be Talking About Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Happy Independence Day, Bret! Want to celebrate by talking about the Supreme Court?Bret Stephens: I was sorta thinking of a cookout on the patio with a nice bottle of rosé, but fire away.Gail: We were in such accord, gnashing our teeth over the decisions on abortion and guns. How about their deep-sixing environmental regulation? You still gnashing with me?Bret: You are referring to the ruling that says the Environmental Protection Agency can’t unilaterally reinvent the entire energy economy with an expansive interpretation of the Clean Air Act that Congress did not intend when it wrote the bill? I’d say the decision was the best thing the court did this term.Guessing you … don’t see it quite the same way.Gail: Well, um … no.Congress gave the E.P.A. extensive power when it comes to regulating carbon emissions. That’s because carbon emissions are a threat to the environment and a trigger for global warming.If Congress feels the E.P.A. is going too far, it has the power to override said regulations at any time. That hasn’t happened because — gee, I guess the Congressional majority feels global warming is a big deal.Bret: The case hinges on an interpretation of the word “system.” The Clean Air Act requires power plants to adopt “the best system of emission reductions.” The court’s conservatives took “system” to mean emission-controlling technologies at the plants themselves, not a vast regulatory mechanism that puts the entire American coal industry on a swift path to extinction.Gail: I think I told you that my father worked for a utility company, and I remember the agony he went through trying to deal with both the government regulators and the folks we called “the coal barons” in West Virginia. I have sympathy for the folks in the middle here, but not so much for the barons.Bret: I grew up listening to my father’s complaints about the way the Mexican government did business with the private sector. In case you ever wonder about my worship of the works of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker and Ronald Coase.Gail: We obviously need to keep directing help to the working people in the mining industry, but the government’s top job is to protect the nation and future generations from global warming.Bret: If Congressional Democrats — whose majority happens to hinge on a certain senator from West Virginia — want to make a case that global warming is the country’s No. 1 priority, they should do so openly rather than sneak regulatory actions that they can’t get through Congress through the E.P.A. bureaucracy. I hold no particular brief for the coal industry per se. But Democrats need to figure out a set of climate-change policies that don’t threaten people’s wallets, jobs or businesses. Trying to put coal out of business is just a big fat political gift to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.Aside from the court, Gail, last week’s big news enchilada was Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House committee investigating Jan. 6. Did we just have a “this changes everything” moment?Gail: Well, we certainly had some “Holy cow — did you hear what Donald Trump did?” moments. But I’ve sadly gotten used to the idea that he can do almost anything and still keep his very, very large fan club of voters.Bret: Truest words ever spoken by Trump: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”Gail: Yeah, sigh. And I just don’t think there’s an appetite for trying to prosecute a former president for stuff he did while he was still in office. Am I being too cynical?Bret: Until last week, no. But, to quote from “Only Murders in the Building,” Hutchinson’s testimony “sends the investigation in a whole new direction.”I don’t mean the stuff about Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his limo, which Hutchinson acknowledges she heard secondhand. I mean her overhearing Trump at the Jan. 6 rally yelling that he didn’t care if people were armed because they weren’t there to hurt him. And also her report that Trump instructed Mark Meadows to get in touch with Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, who in turn were apparently in touch with some of the most violent protesters on Jan. 5. If it’s true, that just seems like a textbook case of seditious conspiracy.There’s still a big question of the overall wisdom of a prosecution, however well-justified. If, God forbid, Trump runs and wins in 2024, the first thing he’ll do is find any pretext to prosecute Joe Biden, and then it’s off to the races. If you were in Merrick Garland’s shoes, what would you do? More