‘would compromise energy reliability’
Page B2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 26 September 2026
Coal plant so reliable the Energy Department keeps ordering it to stay open after losing in court
As it ran on the front
I didn't sleep. That's not a complaint, it's a confession — this one's my own fault. I read the story out on the porch around eleven, and then I read it twice, which my wife says is the whole trouble with me. She said put it down, Lou, come to bed, it'll be there in the morning. She's right about most things. It was there in the morning.
Here's what got me. I wrote it all down, hold on, it's in the notebook — I've got the notebook somewhere — ah. Here.…
…(cont) Friday, September 11. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down an order from this administration keeping a Michigan coal plant open past its planned retirement. That's The Hill, and The Hill is also where I got the plant itself: the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant, out in West Olive. Four words. I put them in quotes because they belong to the court and not to me.
The Washington Examiner, that same Friday, is where the age comes from: sixty-four years old, set to close in May 2025 as part of a transition to cleaner energy, and the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, argued the plant was needed. Common Dreams, also carrying the ruling, quotes a lawyer, Ted Kelly, calling these plants unreliable and bleeding money. That's Kelly's word, said in a statement celebrating the decision. I'm being fussy about whose word is whose, and you'll see why in a minute, because that's the part I couldn't put down.
Because this morning — September 26 — the Daily Caller reports that the department keeps ordering coal plants to stay open after losing in court. And inside that story sits a phrase in quotation marks with no speaker attached to it: shutting them "would compromise energy reliability."
So one side of my notebook has a lawyer saying unreliable. The other side has somebody, unnamed, saying reliability. And the ruling, which is the only piece of paper here with a judge behind it, uses neither word. It says the department went beyond its authority.
Now, can I show you something, it'll take a second. My car needs a fan belt. The garage on the corner told me that in May, wrote it on a slip, and the slip is in the glovebox with the registration. I still tell my wife the car is reliable. What I mean when I say it is that I don't want to pay the garage. The word isn't doing any work about the car. It's doing work about me and the slip.
And then there's the Monday. September 14, three days after the court said the department went beyond its authority, The Hill reports the administration gutted the regulations that limited emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. Friday, a court says the order exceeded the department's authority. Monday, the rules on what comes out of those plants get looser. Which of those two things did the court actually rule on?
Forgive me, I'm back on the eleventh again. I know. It's the one date I've got.
Oh — before you go, one thing, and then I'll get out of your hair. That headline this morning says keeps. Keeps ordering, plural, after losing in court. I've got exactly one court date in this notebook, September 11, copied out of three different papers. Could somebody hand me the orders and the losses with their dates on them, in order, the way I've been reading this one ruling — twice?
“A federal appeals court told the Energy Department on September 11 it went beyond its authority keeping a 64-year-old plant running past its retirement, and by the following Monday the rules limiting what coal and gas plants put out got gutted — that's how badly somebody upstairs wants that thing breathing. The lawyer who won the case called those plants expensive and bleeding money, and expensive means somebody is paying, and it isn't the people signing the orders. Pay attention to who keeps getting handed the bill for a plant a court said they had no authority to keep open.”
“Look, the Secretary made a reliability determination — that's a determination, that's the job, did I say emergency? That doesn't sound like me. The D.C. Circuit disagreed about authority, which is a procedural question, and procedural questions get worked out, meanwhile the lights are on, which I'd think tells you something about reliability; nobody is saying ignore the court, I'm saying a grid doesn't run on rulings.”
The receipts
· Federal Appellate Court Kills Trump Bid to Keep 'Old, Expensive, and Dirty' Coal Plant Open from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Federal court rules against Trump order keeping Michigan coal plant running from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Federal court knocks down Trump’s order extending Michigan coal plant’s operations past retirement from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Trump guts power plant climate rules from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.