100 days in, the Trump administration is trying to take us 100 years back
President Donald Trump and his administration have spent the past few months trying to unwind the last century-plus of scientific, technological, and economic advancement. The administration’s actions in its first 100 days reflect a bizarre nostalgia for the late 1800s. Women and Indigenous people didn’t yet have the right to vote. Tariffs were high and measles was common. The Ford Model T would not be introduced until 1908. Corruption was rampant and the stage was being set for the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal on American public lands. The Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the authority to designate national monuments, would not be passed until 1906. Before 1900, only four national parks had been established; the National Park Service would not be created until 1916. And coal was a newly-emerging source for fuel generation.
Life in America is much better now, thanks to a century of technological and environmental progress. But the Trump administration is attempting to undo that progress by reviving outdated and discredited Gilded Age policies that prioritize logging, drilling, and mining on national public lands at the expense of outdoor recreation access and wildlife habitat protection. For example, on April 8, 2025, Trump signed an executive order, Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry, which seeks to revive the domestic coal industry. Among other things, the order declares it a national priority to support the domestic coal industry, including by removing supposed regulatory barriers to coal production and encouraging the use of coal to meet growing energy demand. The percentage of energy that was generated by coal in the U.S. peaked in 1997 at 53 percent and has declined ever since due to global economic forces, reaching just 16 percent in 2023 — less than nuclear power.
The Intermountain Power Plant, arbyread via Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The coal industry itself has seen the economic writing on the wall for years now, has invested in plans to move on, and doesn’t necessarily appreciate desperate efforts to undo those plans. For example, during Utah’s 2024 state legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill designed to prevent the closure of the Intermountain Power Plant, a coal-fired plant, by allowing the state to buy it in hopes that a third party would eventually buy it from the state, despite the current owner being unable to find a buyer for years. The owner of the plant asked Governor Spencer Cox to veto the bill since the owner has already invested in building natural gas-fueled plants after failing to find a buyer for the coal plant; keeping the plant open threatens to disrupt these plans and investments which the owner has already made. Despite these pleas, Cox signed the bill, leading to a special session of the legislature to address the plant owner’s concerns.
Similarly, even after Trump signed the coal executive order, the operator of a coal-fired power plant in Colorado announced that its preferred plan remains to shut down the plant in 2028 as scheduled, with that generation capacity being replaced with a combination of natural gas and battery storage. A spokesperson for the operator said that the plan is “driven primarily by economics,” not policy or regulations. Another larger utility, Xcel Energy, also has plans to shut down coal-fired power plants and showed a similar noncommittal lack of enthusiasm about the coal executive order: “We’re aware of the executive order and announcement regarding critical resources, and we’re reviewing the orders to understand whether they could impact our operations,” said Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo.
Mining infrastructure in Montana, James St. John/CC BY 2.0
Meanwhile, the hardrock mining industry never left the late 1800s. Mining for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper (as opposed to fuel minerals such as coal, oil, or gas) is still governed by the Mining Law of 1872, a framework put in place to help encourage westward expansion. The past 150 years have seen incredible advances in mining techniques, technologies, and equipment which have enabled mining to occur at scales that would have been unimaginable to the members of Congress who voted to pass the Mining Law. Despite decades of effort, the Mining Law has remained almost entirely unchanged and is woefully inadequate to govern modern mining. The law gives companies broad leeway to stake claims and dig on public lands with minimal regulation or oversight. This has made mining the de facto top priority on public lands, since that legal framework pre-dates most other laws and regulations that govern the multiple uses of public lands, such as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
The Trump administration has doubled down on this framework with an executive order that seeks to further prioritize private, for-profit mining and mineral processing over other uses of public land. If the provisions of this executive order are successfully implemented, they will drastically reduce access to public lands for outdoor recreation, degrade and destroy wildlife habitats, and create giant toxic messes for taxpayers to clean up — all so that mining companies can extract minerals, including non-critical ones like gold, and profits from national public lands in the short term.
A 1937 photo of Civilian Conservation Corps firefighters, U.S. Forest Service
In other throwback policies, the Trump administration is also reportedly considering an executive order that would resurrect a version of a firefighting strategy that was adopted in 1935: the Forest Service’s “10 a.m. policy,” which mandated that any wildfires be put out by 10 a.m. the morning after they had been discovered. Over time, this policy of aggressive fire suppression resulted in an unnatural build-up of vegetation and fuels that normally would have been periodically cleared out by naturally-occurring fires, which are more frequent and less intense than the catastrophic wildfires we are familiar with today. According to the Forest Service itself, “The 10 a.m. policy is a strategy of the past that unfortunately helped create the wildfire crisis of today.” By 1978, the Forest Service had recognized that the policy was not helping, and was in fact actively making things worse, and abandoned it.
Trump, however, is considering ordering a return to aggressive fire suppression, including a requirement to respond to wildfires within 30 minutes of discovery, and loosening aircraft safety requirements. How this response will be possible with a significantly reduced Forest Service workforce following DOGE-driven firings remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Trump has already signed an executive order demanding an immediate increase in logging, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins followed up with a secretarial order declaring an “emergency situation” and ordering measures to speed up logging.
A solar installation in California, BLM California
No matter the industry, executive orders are only one factor in a decision-making environment driven strongly by economics and market forces as well as by scientific and technological advances. “There are much more affordable — and far cleaner — ways to generate electricity, and executive orders aren’t going to change those underlying economics,” said Eric Frankowski, executive director of Western Clean Energy Campaign. “Minus the political pandering, it makes zero sense to try to force coal back into the picture. You might as well issue executive orders forcing a return to horses and buggies or typewriters.”
There are only so many things an executive order can do within the bounds of existing law. While the Trump administration may be able to temporarily delay progress by releasing a barrage of memos and fact sheets, in the end, these attempted roadblocks will be overwhelmed by the combined forces of economics, public opinion, and the unstoppable passage of time. Trump and his administration may wish it were otherwise, but national monuments and other public lands are overwhelmingly popular, and those who have opposed public land protections have found themselves on the wrong side of history.
Featured image: A 1900 photo of a mine in Butte, Montana. Butte-Silver Bow Public Library via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0