Black Lung

One of the failures of the new administration is that it is heedlessly cruel in its treatment of the non-advantaged. It is about to haul Head Start to the dump, junking decades of meaningful gains for the poor. It has already cancelled funding for antiretrovirals, signing death warrants for millions of AIDS patients worldwide. Medicaid is on the chopping block and Social Security is next. Once again, we are threatened with the impoverishment of the aged.

Added to all of this is a crazy incoherence. Think what you want about American coal. Does it make sense to prop up a legacy industry that produces little in the way of useful energy and has arguably exceeded its shelf life by decades? Apart from Trump and the coal industry titans who worship him, no one thinks so, but Trump keeps signing orders to sustain it.

But if that’s the case, there’s the countervailing fact that DOGE has fired thousands of workers, hundreds of whom work in black lung research. That’s the disease, unique to miners, which destroys their health, their livelihoods, their families. It’s as simple as being able to breathe. If you can’t take a breath, you can’t mine coal. And if that same federal government is now gutting regulations that control what mine owners can and cannot do, there’s a very strong likelihood black lung will increase. The incoherence of these policies is both maddening and criminal.

If there’s a spot of hope here, it’s that some people have noticed. The United Mine Workers of America has raised a protest, communicating through one of its spokespeople, Erin Bates. The problem is that Bates has also thanked the administration for seeing the “future” of the coal industry in America. One good way to frame this is as a self-defeating message. Trump will hear the kudos and ignore the rest, claiming a victory for the working men and women of America.

But like all things Trump, the issue here is duplicity. The very same people who voted for MAGA populism will ultimately die at the hands of those they believed. If you have a care for the poor, you will help articulate their cause. That includes children, and AIDS patients, and American miners. They are as important to the country as any of Trump’s oligarchs.