All taken away ...

Jacob Hannah, CEO of Coalfield Development: ‘It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection … So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.’ Photograph: Michael Swensen/The Guardian.

Drip, drip, drip, the damage done to this once great nation continues unabated,
perpetrated by The Donald in ways staggering the imagination. 

‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival

Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia
– and his successor came and took it away

For a moment, Jacob Hannah saw an unprecedented opportunity to make Appalachia great again.

In 2022, the Biden administration earmarked billions of dollars to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities. The objective was to lay down building blocks for the region to transition from extractive industries like coal and timber to a hub for solar and other advanced energy technologies, with a view to long-term economic, climate and social resilience.

But on his first day in office, Donald Trump scrapped Biden’s clean energy and environmental programs, which he lambasted as woke, anti-American liberal hoaxes.

“We knew we were living in a historic moment, not just because of the amount of funding, but because the whole region mobilized to meet the moment,” said Hannah, 33. “It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection designed to prioritize extraction-based communities as part of the energy transition, which for the first time in almost a century made Appalachia very competitive. So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.”

Yes it is.