‘would compromise energy reliability’
Page A4From§Eachthe midnight edition — 27 September 2026
Energy Department orders Michigan coal plant to stay open again, having already lost the argument twice
As it ran on the front
The chief called the crew in before anyone touched the tool again and asked for the log. Every job this month gets logged, win or lose, and the log said the tool had already gone out twice.
The second entry came nine days later, September 11th, when a federal appeals court told the Energy Department the identical shortcut could not keep a 64-year-old Michigan coal plant open past the retirement date the plant itself had already set for May 2025, the same plant Energy Secretary Chris Wright had reached for the tool to save. Two entries, two courts, two no's, nine days apart.…
…(cont) The muscle remembered a third job logged the same stretch of month: Washington finalizing fuel-economy standards that killed the Biden-era EV mandate, run through the identical shortcut, and wrecked what a losing streak like that is supposed to build: hesitation. Two rulings on the books saying stop, and the tool went out a third time anyway, on a different job, before anyone even got back to Michigan.
On September 26th the tinkerer got the wire and started laughing at the wrong moment, the way you do at a site where the level lies twice and someone hands you the level again. The Daily Caller was reporting it straight, no laugh track: the Energy Department is still ordering coal plants to stay open, plural, present tense, on the exact plant the exact court already ruled on.
The pilot flew it home plain: the tool sits in the file, used twice this month already against the record, and the file is where courts keep score, not where agencies get to keep swinging until the number comes out different. Two losses on the board, one plant still burning, one fuel-economy rule finalized on the side, and the crew closed the file the way you close a file when the log already told you how the job ends, the log just isn't the one the department is reading.
“They lost twice in federal court on the same plant and did it again anyway, that's not stubbornness, that's a department that knows the fine for losing is nothing. Somebody's keeping a 64-year-old coal plant burning past its own retirement date, and the bill for reliability always lands on the electric bill, never on the guy who signed the order. When losing in court stops being a stop sign, it's not a legal system anymore, it's a formality they've already priced in.”
“Look, the court's reading of emergency is one interpretation, and the department has an obligation to keep the lights on regardless of what a judge in September thinks about a retirement schedule filed years ago, did I say regardless of what a judge thinks? That's not, that's not how I meant that. The point is reliability is reliability, and if the courts keep striking it down, that's a paperwork problem, not a policy problem.”
Earlier in this story
- Trump kills EV mandate using rulemaking shortcut a court already struck down twice this month. By The Wrecking Crew · the early evening edition, 26 September 2026
- Blocked from cutting $600 million in teacher grants, the administration announces a landmark move beyond college-for-all By Mort · the early bird edition, 26 September 2026
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 knocks down Trump’s order extending Michigan coal plant’s operations past retirement from the morgue, 11 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.