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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at “reinvigorating America’s beautiful clean coal industry”—and said he will use the Big Law firms he shook down to help him in that effort.
The executive order directs the federal government to “identify coal resources on Federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on those lands.”
And at an event at the White House, Trump said that he will use the Big Law firms—who committed to spending tens of millions in pro bono work to get out from under putative executive orders he placed on them for employing lawyers he considers enemies and fighting his illegal actions in court—to ensure that the coal leasing plans are not thrown out in court.
“Lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump, $100 million, another $100 million, for damages that they’ve done, but they give you $100 million but they announce but we have done nothing wrong. … But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong,” Trump said at the event, where he was flanked by coal miners in hard hats. “And we’ll use some of those people, we’ll use some of those great firms, they are great firms too, they just had a bad moment, but we’re going to use some of those firms to work with you on your leasing and other things, and they’ll do a great job.”
Coal is an environmental killer and there are many other better energy options.
“No matter how you label it, coal is always polluting,” the Climate Council wrote in a fact sheet. “In fact, it is the most polluting way to produce electricity. When coal is dug up and later burned in power stations, it releases massive amounts of pollution, damaging our health and contributing to intensifying climate change.”
Even the federal government admits that coal mining in the United States has a negative impact on the environment.
“Coal extraction involves removing the tops of mountains with explosives. This technique changes the landscape, and streams are sometimes covered with rock and dirt. The water draining from these filled valleys may contain pollutants that can harm aquatic wildlife downstream,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration wrote in a fact sheet.
Environmental groups already said they are going to challenge Trump’s plans to revitalize the coal industry in court.
“Trump tried this gambit in his last term. We fought it every step of the way—and it failed,” Kit Kennedy, managing director for power, climate, and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Washington Post. “With the gains made by solar, wind and battery power since then, bailing out coal makes even less sense today.”
But now Trump has an army of the nation’s top lawyers who will fight back against those environmental groups after they obeyed in advance and cut deals with the devil.
In fact, a number of employees at the law firms that caved to Trump resigned from their firms in protest rather than fight his illegal executive orders in court. Andrew Silberstein, an associate at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher—which cut a deal with Trump and now may be forced to help the administration prop up a dying industry that will speed up climate change—wrote in a resignation letter:
Willkie Farr & Gallagher stated in its announcement on Tuesday that its decision to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s unprecedented demand was ‘incredibly difficult.’ The more difficult, and moral, decision would have been to stand with Perkins Coie and other such courageous firms. The rule of law is clearly under threat. They have come for us, and we did not speak out. Who is next?
And Trump and his administration are bragging about it.
“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong, and he looks forward to putting their pro bono legal concessions toward implementing his America First agenda,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The New York Times.
Grim.
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