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

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The Trump administration is dropping plans to terminate leases for 34 offices in the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for enforcing mine safety laws, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

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

Musk said this week that he’s leaving his job as a senior adviser.

A statement released by a Labor Department spokesperson Thursday said it has been working closely with the General Services Administration “to ensure our MSHA inspectors have the resources they need to carry out their core mission to prevent death, illness, and injury from mining and promote safe and healthy workplaces for American miners.”

Some MSHA offices are still listed on the chopping block on the DOGE website, but the statement did not indicate whether those closings will move forward.

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MSHA was created by Congress within the Labor Department in 1978, in part because state inspectors were seen as too close to the industry to force coal companies to take the sometimes costly steps necessary to protect miners. MSHA is required to inspect each underground mine quarterly and each surface mine twice a year.

“That’s a relief and good news for miners and the inspectors at MSHA,” said Jack Spadaro, a longtime mine safety investigator and environmental specialist who worked for the agency.

Mining fatalities over the past four decades have dropped significantly, in large part because of the dramatic decline in coal production. But the proposed DOGE cuts would have required MSHA inspectors to travel farther to get to a mine.

“I don’t know what they were thinking when they talked about closing offices,” Spadaro said. “They obviously did not understand the nature of the frequency and depth of inspections that go on in mines. It’s important for the inspectors to be near the mine operations that they’re inspecting.”

A review in March of publicly available data by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center indicates that nearly 17,000 health and safety inspections were conducted from the beginning of 2024 through February 2025 by staff at MSHA offices in the facilities on the chopping block. MSHA, which also oversees metal and nonmetal mines, already was understaffed. Over the past decade, it has seen a 27% reduction in total staff, including 30% of enforcement staff in general and 50% of enforcement staff for coal mines, the law center said.

Coal industry advocates are also trying to save hundreds of jobs within the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Some estimates had about 850 of the agency’s roughly 1,000 employees being cut by the Trump administration.

Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered the restoration of a health monitoring program for coal miners and rescinded layoffs within NIOSH’s respiratory health division in Morgantown, West Virginia. The division is responsible for screening and reviewing medical exams to determine whether there is evidence that coal miners have developed a respiratory ailment, commonly known as black lung disease.

At a May 14 Congressional hearing, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was reversing the firing of about 330 NIOSH workers. That same day, the United Mine Workers of America was among several groups that filed a lawsuit seeking to reinstate all NIOSH staff and functions.

“For months, coal communities have been raising the alarm about how cuts to MSHA and NIOSH would be disastrous for our miners,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the National Black Lung Association. “We’re glad that the administration has listened and restored these offices, keeping mine inspectors in place.”

“We’re going to keep making progress and do whatever it takes to protect coal miners from black lung disease and accidents,” she said.