Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Trump's $625 million bailout for coal.

The Trump administration has announced that it will be devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to support an energy

source that has plummeted in use. According to the Energy Information Administration,

in 2000, coal supplied about half of the country's electricity. Last year, it was only about 15%.

The industry has lost about half its jobs over the last decade.

The energies Trump has been trying to discourage wind and solar produced more than coal last year.

Amanda Levin of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the Trump administration was committed to, quote,

Supporting the oldest, dirtiest energy source. It's handing our hard-earned tax dollars over to the

owners of coal plants that cost more to run than new clean energy. This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal

government should be spurring along the new energy sources that can power the AI boom

and help bring down electricity bills for struggling families. More than half of the 625 million being spent on dirty obsolete energy will be spent to modernize or recommission old plants.

On top of blowing hundreds of millions of dollars, the administration also announced the opening of 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal leasing.

We got a question asking why coal needs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Back in April, Christy Walsh, who's an attorney at the NRDC, might have best encapsulated the issue coal has.

She wrote, quote, why? Because it can't compete, not on cost, not on speed to market,

not on clean air, and not on health. At this point, a utility or state regulator that decided to spend money on coal instead of a clean resource like solar wind or storage would be throwing those dollars down the drain in favor of a political agenda at the expense of everyday customers.

Again, that was back in April. It wasn't in response to the Trump

administration standing over the drain with $600 million. The timing of this announcement

couldn't be worse for Republicans. They're cheering on spending hundreds of millions of dollars

to prop up a failing energy sector

while simultaneously running headlong into a government shutdown because they don't want to give

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