The day after Donald Trump’s election, coal mogul Robert E. Murray praised him in Biblical terms, saying the Republican had the courage and zeal to put miners back to work.
“God picked the most imperfect people on the planet to carry out his will,” the chief executive officer of Murray Energy Corp. said at the time. “Who better than Donald Trump?”
More than a year after his election, the president hasn’t disappointed. Trump has already “cleaned up” more than one-third of a three-and-a-half page list of policy proposals that Murray gave the White House, the coal executive said in an interview. He’s hardly been the only energy executive pushing Trump to shift U.S. policies more in favor of fossil fuels, but few have been as vocal.
Here’s a look at what Murray asked for, and what the Trump administration and policy makers have done so far:
Early Victories
One of Murray’s early wins came in February, when Trump signed legislation repealing the Obama-era Stream Protection Rule, which was designed to protect America’s waterways from the effects of mining. Murray had argued the measure was so broad it could block mining under any site with a “dry ditch” on the surface.
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