It was way back on May 9, an eon in Trumpworld terms. A White House press release celebrated a series of “WEEK 16 WINS,” all of which apparently offered evidence of “President Trump Advanc[ing] America’s New Golden Age.” In a subsection about the Big Strong Boy’s “relentless pursuit of manufacturing dominance,” which “spurred onshoring and additional U.S. investment,” one bullet point noted a $1.7 billion investment from Invenergy in “U.S. electric transmission.”
Alas, that was then. On Thursday, Missouri Senator and January 6th insurgency enthusiast Josh Hawley announced that after a “great conversation” with the president and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the transmission project in question would soon be halted. The $11-billion “Grain Belt Express,” in the works for a decade, would carry electricity produced by wind power from Kansas all the way to Indiana. Or not.
“It’s costing taxpayers BILLIONS,” Hawley yelled on X, about the project the company says is the biggest privately funded transmission project in the country. Up until recently, it seemed to have bipartisan support; even the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee celebrated it back in the halcyon days of two months ago, pointing out its utility in a country beset by a supposed crisis: “President Trump’s energy emergency declaration made it clear we need more power than ever before, and this project will help meet the demand.”
But then something changed. Last week, Missouri’s Republican attorney general Andrew Bailey opened an investigation into the Grain Belt Express, alleging that the company’s promises about job creation and cost savings to consumers. A few landowners on the transmission line’s route have been pushing back, and seemed to have made the right amount of noise; the president’s long-standing grievance against being forced to look at wind turbines from a golf course probably helped.
Fake energy “emergency” aside, the US is, in fact, in fairly desperate need of updated transmission infrastructure. A 2023 Department of Energy report found that “nearly all regions” would benefit from upgraded and added lines, while some have “acute reliability and resilience needs” that lines exactly like the soon-to-be-canceled project would address. That same Department, now under the direction of a fracking executive, suddenly doesn’t think a wind-related transmission project is such a good idea.
The Grain Belt Express isn’t entirely dead just yet. The Missouri Public Service Commission is reviewing the AG’s request to halt it, but with the president’s say-so there’s a reasonably good chance the project is doomed. As that long-ago “WINS” press release said, “President Trump is delivering results that matter to every American.”
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