Trump is more contemptuous of his own rural voters than any urban liberal will ever be

I never thought the Dismantle Any Protections For Workers Party would dismantle my etc.:

For federal safety inspectors, the urgent call to their sprawling mining office near Pittsburgh was bleak: Man crushed in the rubble of an aging mine in the heart of coal country.

Agents from the Mount Pleasant office arrived at the scene shortly after the body of Joseph Guzzo Jr. had been pulled from under the massive chunk of earth that collapsed in the mine tunnel four years ago.

Then, months after launching an investigation that found the operator failed to provide critical protections, it happened again.

Another worker in a mine just an hour away suffered catastrophic injuries after a large rock broke from a wall and slammed him against a machine.

Agents from the Mine Safety and Health Administration office carried out an inquiry once again and found the operator failed to detect the breakdowns in the wall that led to its collapse.

Year after year, investigators from the Mount Pleasant office — the most active mine safety center in the nation — launched inquiries into deaths and devastating injuries in some of the largest underground mines in the country.

Now, the facility long entrusted with the protection of miners is among 34 centers in the United States that are expected to be shuttered in one of the most sweeping cuts to the federal agency in years.

The rest of the article is very good and very chilling — searching for deeper coal reserves is only going to make mining more dangerous, and needless to say Trump and Elon couldn’t give a shit about the workers they most fetishize.