You know what everyone loves heading into winter and the holiday season? The looming—and increasing—threat of having their power shut off.
And how is President Donald Trump going to deal with this? By lying, of course.
According to the Washington Post, surging electric costs nationwide are leading to a corresponding bump in power shutoffs. Somehow, it doesn’t really seem like “Make America Freeze to Death Again” is a winning strategy, but the administration is leaning into it.
It doesn’t really matter how you slice and dice these numbers: They’re terrible. New York City residential shutoffs have increased fivefold over the last year. And in Pennsylvania, power shutoffs are up 21%, which translates to 270,000 households losing electricity services.
A wind farm in McCook, Texas, on July 20, 2022.
The Trump administration has tried to spin this by pinning it on Democrats, claiming that energy costs are increasing in blue states because they refuse to adopt Trump’s “commonsense energy dominance agenda.”
Tell that to Montana, where costs are up an average of 25.3%. Or Wyoming, where they’re up 22.9%. Or in North Dakota, which has seen 30.3% higher electricity costs. Or Oklahoma, where residents get to pay 29.9% more. And in Missouri? Well, come on down and get your 37% increase.
The list goes on and on.
Overall, Americans are paying 11% more for electricity than we did before Trump took office in January. And people very much blame Trump for this.
Trump’s “dominance agenda” is definitely intended to hurt blue states that are pro-renewable energy, but the administration seems to have overlooked the fact that plenty of red states also use renewables. Thirteen red states that backed Trump in 2024 are actually high users of renewable energy, and Texas has long relied on renewables—which it’s now trashing to appease Trump.
Perhaps the most openly unhappy red state is Indiana, where Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Suzanne Jaworowski, who actually served in the first Trump administration, is angry that Trump’s hatred of renewables has led to 72 of 92 counties enacting moratoriums on energy or installation projects.
But Jaworowski wants to be able to stop counties from doing that, apparently in the name of patriotism and AI:
What the president is saying—that we need AI data centers, and we need energy development—we’re creating our own little group and incentivizing that. We feel like this is part of America250. If you’re a patriotic community, and you want to stand up and show some unity, show some support for what the country needs to do right now, this is Indiana’s way of showing that.
Sure, everyone actually hates data centers, which hoover up all available power and raise electricity costs for surrounding communities. But if your state is going to give in to Trump’s vision, it requires energy—lots of renewable energy. Indiana knows that, if it’s going to woo big tech companies to set up shop, it can’t be done without wind and solar.
Of course, Indiana could also just build some nuclear reactors and give itself the opportunity to experience its very own Three Mile Island.
A coal-fired power plant operates on April 14 near Cheshire, Ohio.
Overall, the plan to push us all back to some sort of 19th century black lung coal existence is not going well. Even though the administration slashed the costs to extract coal on public lands, they aren’t leaping at the opportunity.
Earlier this year, the administration tried to win over companies with an opportunity to extract 167 million tons of coal on public land in Montana. At the most recent sale in the area, coal fetched $1.10 a ton. But this time around, the only bid was for $186,000—or a minuscule fraction of a penny per ton.
The Trump team is also forcing aging coal plants to remain open even when the owners want them closed. That’s resulting in increased costs to those companies, which inevitably gets passed on to consumers.
Trump doesn’t seem to have noticed that electric prices are soaring, bragging earlier this month that energy costs were plummeting. In the end, the administration doesn’t care about affordability.
But the numbers don’t lie: We’re all paying more. And it’s all Trump’s fault.
