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California Governor Gavin Newsom will spend more than $230 billion on a train that may never run, yet he won’t let a single trainload of Wyoming coal reach a port taxpayers already funded.
Last month, the California governor signed a bill to kill a coal export terminal in Oakland before it even opens. The project would be the West Coast’s first terminal, a direct link between Wyoming miners and buyers across the globe who want affordable, reliable power. President Trump backed it this summer with $75 million through the Defense Production Act. Far-left politicians in Sacramento responded to this historical investment with a new layer of environmental review written to stall the project until its investors give up.
California Democrats introduced the bill immediately after the president’s announcement. The bill’s author sold it as a way to block coal and defy the president. At least she was honest about her intentions.
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The Oakland terminal spent years navigating the gauntlet of California’s burdensome regulatory and legal regime. The project passed environmental review, among the most punishing in the country. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the site, including more than $240 million from California taxpayers. After years of litigation, all won by the developers, the City of Oakland conceded and began advancing development of the terminal.
California politicians didn’t like the result — so they changed the rules.
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That should alarm anyone who builds anything in California, whatever they think of coal. America and the world need affordable, available, reliable energy. If lawmakers can void a permit retroactively because they dislike the product or the president who supports it, no approval in the state is safe. Today it is Wyoming coal. Tomorrow it could be an oil refinery, a manufacturing facility, or a housing development that runs afoul of Sacramento’s political priorities.
The governor further revealed his extreme priorities that same day when he vetoed another bill to speed up the hiring of auditors for California’s high-speed rail project. California spent $15 billion over 18 years. It has failed to lay a single mile of track.
California promised voters a passenger line connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2020 for a cost of $33 billion. It is now estimated to cost between $126 to $231 billion with completion not expected until 2040.
When Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revoked $4 billion in federal grants to California’s bullet train boondoggle last year, Newsom sued and lost. He still defends the wasteful spending. Meanwhile, California Democrats continue to sacrifice economic growth, jobs, and taxpayer dollars at the altar of climate extremism.
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Wyoming offers the opposite model. We sit atop more than 600 years of coal reserves. Demand for electricity across Asia is climbing fast. Those nations will burn coal whether California approves of it or not. The only question is whose coal. American coal offers the United States an abundance of affordable, reliable power here at home, and enhanced diplomatic leverage abroad.
Wyoming will not sit quietly while California politicians attempt to shut our energy producers out of global markets. Wyoming has made clear that we will use every tool at our disposal, including legal action, to defend our state and its industries. Wyoming coal supports families and communities across our state, strengthens America’s energy security, and can help meet enormous global demand for reliable energy.
This fight is bigger than coal. California has already driven out its builders and manufacturers. Now it wants to export its dysfunction to every state that relies on its port.
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Wyoming will keep mining. California can keep its train.
U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis is a Republican from Wyoming who sits on the Senate Banking, Commerce, and Environment and Public Works committees.
Harriet Hageman, a Republican, is the lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming.