The Trump administration’s Department of the Interior has asked the National Academy of Sciences to suspend research into the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. A team from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine was established last year for a two-year study. The committee has been conducting hearings and […]

The country’s newest Republican governor is, like President Donald Trump, a billionaire businessman, a political outsider, and a fan of the coal industry. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a former coal company owner, was elected as a Democrat but switched parties with a surprise announcement at a Trump rally in West Virginia. […]

At 100 Days in Appalachia, we asked our readers to tell us their health care stories. As repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act remains the most talked about issue under the Trump Administration, we wanted to shine a light on how health care policy has and would affect those […]

Forty years ago, President Jimmy Carter signed a law that literally changed the face of Appalachia. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) was intended to replace a state-to-state patchwork of rules for strip-mining with a uniform federal standard. Four decades later, however, environmentalists say the law […]

A group of lawmakers had made quick work of a stack of bills and appeared to have completed the day’s business when, with just a spare few minutes remaining in session, a delegate rose with an unexpected motion. “Mr Speaker, I move we suspend the rules to introduce a new […]