National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

In a rare occasion of good news for the nation’s coal miners, a decision this week in a lawsuit brought by one of their own will reverse at least some of the damage done when the Trump administration eviscerated the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) offices in Morgantown, W. Va., in April. That’s when hundreds of those workers had suddenly found themselves out of a job thanks to a slapdash ​“reorganization,” as the Elon Musk-directed wreckers in DOGE termed it. As a result, the NIOSH Respiratory Health Division and the Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP), whose ongoing research and health screenings are critically important in addressing the black lung epidemic stalking Appalachia’s coal miners, were left unable to function.