For a brief moment, community organizers in Appalachia thought they were witnessing a once-in-a-generation lifeline. Billions of dollars from the Biden administration had been earmarked in 2022 to help former coal towns rebuild their economies, create new jobs and prepare for flooding, blackouts and other mounting environmental risks. But on his first day back in office, Donald Trump eliminated nearly all of those clean-energy and environmental programs, dismissing them as “woke” liberal scams — a decision now hitting hardest in the same deep-red counties that delivered him some of his biggest margins.
“We knew we were living in a historic moment,” said Jacob Hannah, CEO of Coalfield Development, a nonprofit that has trained thousands of Appalachians in solar installation, carpentry, and other job skills. “To have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.” Hannah, a fifth-generation Appalachian, spent years building regional coalitions to help communities access more than $900 million from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in Appalachia since the 1960s. Nearly all of it is now paused, gutted or tied up in litigation.
The cuts came through the new Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — headed by Trump ally Elon Musk, whose team terminated entire programs including a $3 billion environmental and climate justice initiative. Many federal agency staff were forced out, leaving remaining grants stalled for months. Every project Coalfield Development helped coordinate has been affected.
Biden earmarked billions to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities in Appalachia – and Trump came and took it away. "This party has taken away that funding from Appalachia illegally" www.theguardian.com/environment/…
— Leopards ate my face (@fernieboy.bsky.social) December 7, 2025 at 1:10 AM
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On the ground, the political irony is unavoidable. In West Virginia, Trump won every county in 2024, averaging 70% of the vote. Rural counties like Clay and Wayne backed him by even larger margins, despite being among the country’s poorest and most dependent on federal aid. Now, those same communities are losing job-training programs, solar development, environmental cleanup projects and even SNAP benefits as Trump’s budget cuts push deeper.
In Huntington, West Virginia — once a booming coal-transport hub now battered by mine closures and the opioid crisis — the consequences are everywhere. A multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the old Black Diamond warehouse has ground to a halt because federal reimbursements never arrived. Coalfield Development is still waiting for nearly $3 million. The site was meant to house new sustainable businesses, including a recycling enterprise called Reuse Corridor, but all six EPA grants supporting it were cut, effectively killing the project.
Solar Holler, a successful solar installation company employing more than a hundred people across four states, had planned to expand into the warehouse. Now, thanks to the elimination of solar tax credits and Trump’s new tariffs, raw-material prices have surged and the company’s projected growth has collapsed. “The massive increase in costs ends up being passed down to customers,” said CEO Dan Conant.
In Virginia’s Lee County — where 85% voted for Trump and nearly half rely on food stamps — an EPA grant that would have allowed the town of Pennington Gap to demolish a long-flooded, asbestos-ridden supermarket and build a flood-resilient green space was canceled. “People in Appalachia are used to being let down,” said Emma Kelly of Appalachian Voices. “This time we had the money. It was still taken away, and people feel betrayed.”
Dante, another Trump-heavy coal town in Russell County, lost funding for a feasibility study to convert its old rail depot into a solar-powered resilience hub — a critical project after repeated multi-day blackouts. The community also lost nearly $400,000 previously approved to replace its collapsed fire station. “These are not frivolous things: these are basic services,” said Lou Ann Wallace, a local Republican official. Even she struggled to reconcile the cuts with her support for Trump: “I don’t think the president knew. I’m one of his biggest supporters.”
Across Appalachia, projects meant to improve safety, create jobs and strengthen rural infrastructure are suddenly in limbo. Meanwhile, residents in the region — some of Trump’s most loyal supporters — face deeper cuts to Medicaid, veterans’ programs, food assistance and education. Yet many blame “Washington politics” broadly rather than the man they voted for.
Hannah is racing to raise philanthropic money to keep some projects alive until the courts resolve the legal challenges. “The funding was committed by Congress,” he said. “We know we’ll eventually win back some of these grants. One objective was probably to remove confidence in the system, so we need to outlast what is a game of cashflow and a battle of morale.”
For many in the region, the promise of rebuilding Appalachia disappeared overnight — undone by the very administration they overwhelmingly helped elect.
