Today’s executive order takes a different route to propping up coal: artificially inflating demand. “The Secretary of War, in coordination with the Secretary of Energy,” the order reads, “shall seek to procure power from the United States coal generation fleet by approving long-term Power Purchase Agreements, or entering into any similar contractual agreements, with coal-fired energy production facilities to serve Department of War installations or other mission-critical facilities.”

The justification for this seems to come from an alternate reality with little relationship to the US grid. “It’s going to be less expensive and actually much more effective than what we have been using for many, many years,” Trump said at the event. “And again, with the environmental progress that’s been made on coal, it’s going to be just as clean.” None of that is true.

The executive order instead seeks to highlight coal’s supposed ability to produce a constant power output, touting the “proven reliability of our coal-fired generation fleet in providing continuous, on-demand baseload power.” This seemingly ignores Texas’ recent experience, in which coal plants contributed significantly to the collapse of the state grid, having gone offline for a wide range of reasons.

The Trump administration, however, has rarely let spurious justifications stand in the way of its preferred policy actions. The key action here is likely to be locking the military into long-term contracts that would persist beyond the end of Trump’s term in 2029.