Trump administration reverses planned closures of 3 dozen US mine safety offices

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Trump medication is dropping plans to terminate leases for 34 offices successful the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the bureau liable for enforcing excavation information laws, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and tally by Elon Musk, had targeted national agencies for spending cuts, including terminating leases for 3 dozen MSHA offices. Seven of those offices were successful Kentucky alone. Ending the MSHA leases had been projected to prevention $18 million.

Musk said this week that he’s leaving his occupation arsenic a elder adviser.

A connection released by a Labor Department spokesperson Thursday said it has been moving intimately with the General Services Administration “to guarantee our MSHA inspectors person the resources they request to transportation retired their halfway ngo to forestall death, illness, and wounded from mining and beforehand harmless and steadfast workplaces for American miners.”

Some MSHA offices are inactive listed connected the chopping artifact connected the DOGE website, but the connection did not bespeak whether those closings volition determination forward.

MSHA was created by Congress wrong the Labor Department successful 1978, successful portion due to the fact that authorities inspectors were seen arsenic excessively adjacent to the manufacture to unit ember companies to instrumentality the sometimes costly steps indispensable to support miners. MSHA is required to inspect each underground excavation quarterly and each aboveground excavation doubly a year.

“That’s a alleviation and bully quality for miners and the inspectors astatine MSHA,” said Jack Spadaro, a longtime excavation information researcher and biology specializer who worked for the agency.

Mining fatalities over the past 4 decades person dropped significantly, successful ample portion due to the fact that of the melodramatic diminution successful ember production. But the projected DOGE cuts would person required MSHA inspectors to question farther to get to a mine.

“I don’t cognize what they were reasoning erstwhile they talked astir closing offices,” Spadaro said. “They evidently did not recognize the quality of the frequence and extent of inspections that spell connected successful mines. It’s important for the inspectors to beryllium adjacent the excavation operations that they’re inspecting.”

A reappraisal successful March of publically disposable information by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center indicates that astir 17,000 wellness and information inspections were conducted from the opening of 2024 done February 2025 by unit astatine MSHA offices successful the facilities connected the chopping block. MSHA, which besides oversees metallic and nonmetal mines, already was understaffed. Over the past decade, it has seen a 27% simplification successful full staff, including 30% of enforcement unit successful wide and 50% of enforcement unit for ember mines, the instrumentality halfway said.

Coal manufacture advocates are besides trying to prevention hundreds of jobs wrong the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Some estimates had astir 850 of the agency’s astir 1,000 employees being chopped by the Trump administration.

Earlier this month, a national justice ordered the restoration of a wellness monitoring programme for ember miners and rescinded layoffs wrong NIOSH’s respiratory wellness part successful Morgantown, West Virginia. The part is liable for screening and reviewing aesculapian exams to find whether determination is grounds that ember miners person developed a respiratory ailment, commonly known arsenic achromatic lung disease.

At a May 14 Congressional hearing, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said helium was reversing the firing of astir 330 NIOSH workers. That aforesaid day, the United Mine Workers of America was among respective groups that filed a suit seeking to reinstate each NIOSH unit and functions.

“For months, ember communities person been raising the alarm astir however cuts to MSHA and NIOSH would beryllium disastrous for our miners,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the National Black Lung Association. “We’re gladsome that the medication has listened and restored these offices, keeping excavation inspectors successful place.”

“We’re going to support making advancement and bash immoderate it takes to support ember miners from achromatic lung illness and accidents,” she said.