Many of the Doge people, Elon, are staying behind, too. So they're not leaving. And Elon's really not leaving, he's going to be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling. It's his baby and I think he's gonna be doing a lot of things. But Elon.

When Elon Musk appeared in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump late last month to mark the end of his time as a special government employee, didn't really feel like a full goodbye.

But the Doge team will only grow stronger over time. The Doge influence will only go stronger. It's likened to a sort of Buddhism. It's like a way of life.

Well, by Thursday.

Republicans to kill Trump's massive budget bill.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that cordial event was an optical illusion.

I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.

Then you have Elon Musk on X responding. Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51 to 49 in the Senate.

'Disagreements over Trump's big domestic policy bills sitting in the Senate had quickly escalated into a full-blown feud between the world's richest man and the President of the United States.

President Trump, who just days ago was handing Elon Musk a golden key to the White House, is now threatening to terminate all of Musk's government contracts.

Well, no matter where their relationship eventually ends up, Musk's time with the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE will be remembered as extremely impactful. But whether it's for better or worse depends on who you ask. For the thousands of government employees who were fired or had programs cut, they say many of those cuts targeted crucial programs that do vital research, provide essential services, and keep people safe. Recently, CNN found that some of those decisions are directly hitting Trump's most faithful supporters. My guest is CNN senior investigative correspondent, Kyung Lah. She has the story of how spending cuts in D.C have left some coal miners grasping for air. From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Rind.

So Kyung, you've been doing a lot of reporting, looking into the actual impacts of the Trump administration's vast government spending cuts. And you recently found yourself in West Virginia, right? What'd you find there?

In a part of West Virginia that reporters generally don't go to. So it was really just a cool look at a place that really feels forgotten. And the person who we met and spent a lot of time with is David Bounds, 77 years old. He mined for three and a half decades in West Virginia. By all accounts did exactly what he set out to do in life. He raised a family, he took care of his wife, was able to build a home, but the cost of it is that he can barely breathe.

is this that you're wearing?

I'm wearing a cannula, puts oxygen in my system.

In the time that we were there, I saw him use his nebulizer. He was connected to oxygen because even just trying to have a conversation, his lungs barely function.

Excuse me. Are you okay? Yeah, I just got to get a little bit of wind, I'm talking too much.

No, no, no. It's all right. This is what happens, huh?

And the reason why is because he is diagnosed with black lung.

We'd get out in Myrtle Beach for a vacation, lay on the beach, and spit up coal dust.

Now, for people who don't know what black lung is, it is something that from the coal that is crushed and brought above ground, those miners breathe in that dust. And for years, like David Bounds, he has watched that coal mine dust settle into his lungs.

This is like the trademark disease that you hear about when you hear about coal miners.

Absolutely. From 1970 to 2016, the CDC reported that it was an underlying or contributing cause of death for some 75,000 minors. But if you actually go on the ground and talk to the minors, they tell you that everyone they know has it.

I got nephews, I've got kinfolk that has children that's in the mines. I don't want them to be like me now. I don't want them suffer.

In many ways, he feels like it's too late for him, but what he has spent the latter part of his years doing is to try to fight for protections for minors so they don't end up like him. And what he is seen in just the last five months has just shaken him to his core.

Something that would help miners. Why would you do it? Why would you go that route?

The protections that miners have, that the older miners have fought for, like mine inspections, like diagnosing for black lung, access to machinery, access to health inspectors, all of that is essentially being gutted. And those are his words, that they're just simply disappearing.

I call it Beautiful clean coal.. I tell my people never use the word coal unless you put beautiful clean before it. Right, Doc? So we call it beautiful clean coal. Beautiful clean coajl!

The big irony here is that President Trump says, we're going to bring back coal, we're going to boost coal. He signed four executive orders saying that he was going to do that.

We are slashing the regulations at target the beautiful clean coal, we will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands....

So coal miners were excited, but that very same week, the very protections that are keeping these coal miners alive have been slowly taken away. And that in coal country feels like history repeating itself and rhyming in a way that they simply cannot believe is happening so quickly. What do you mean by that history repeating itself? What has happened over time, coal has allowed to progress through the Industrial Revolution, to turn on the lights, to get our cities moving. But it has come at a cost. And so what this feels like is, there might be a huge mine disaster that will suddenly shake America and wake up Americans to say, we need to protect the miners who are going down and getting the energy source that keep our lights on. And so then the protections come in, but then somehow, they'll slowly drip away and get slowly torn apart. And it is something that the miners have seen again and again.

Breaking news tonight, the urgent search and rescue recovery operation underway right now after something, we don't know what, triggered a deadly coal mine explosion in West Virginia.

The Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster in 2010.

It's the deadliest mine accident in the United States since 1984. More than two dozen miners are dead after an explosion.

Led to impact inspections because of how disastrous that was.

Starting today, we'll go back and take another look at mines across this country with troubling safety records, and get inspectors into those mines immediately to ensure they aren't facing the same unsafe working conditions that led to this disaster.

The then president, Obama, started these impact inspections and it had a huge impact. There have not been these mega mine disasters since 2010.

We can't eliminate chance completely from mining any more than we can from life itself. But if a tragedy can be prevented, it must be prevented. That's the responsibility of mine operators. That's a responsibility of government. And that is the responsibility that we're all going to have to work together to meet in the weeks and months to come. Thank you very much, everybody.

So they're worried that there could be another, some kind of catastrophic thing, or just massive deaths or injuries that could prompt more change, but they're like, why do we have to get to that point?

Why?

Well, so tell me more about these spending cuts, programs that have been gutted, what does that actually look like on the ground?

'The very agency that conducts these impact inspections in just the first part of this year, they've dropped 75% compared to the same time frame as last year. Another impact, the silica dust rule. What silica is because we have mined away the upper levels of the coal mines, miners and companies have to dig further through rock. And that creates a new type of dust called silica dust. And that is settling into the lungs and killing miners and making them sicker even faster. So in April, Emsha, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is under the Department of Labor, suspended a silica-dust rule. This is a rule to try to get companies to pay attention to this, to restrict and to protect the miners from silicadust. It is now being suspended until mid August. This is being fought out in the courts, but what this feels like is just like the history that I was talking about. And then another bit of this, staff has been cut. Agency offices have been cut, now some of those offices, these MSHA offices, have been coming back online, but a lot of them were closed. And the gutting of staff of MSHA. Some of these staffers found out through an extraordinary way. One of the epidemiologists who works in Emsha and has worked there since 2008 says that he found out that he was losing his job through a signal chat. And I'm gonna quote him here. He says, they were having a meeting of the CDC division director. Someone at the meeting sent out a signal message that said, Oh no, sorry, NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Help, with a frowny face emoji.

Oh, an emoji and that's how he found out that he was out of a job.

Exactly. It were not bad enough for coal country, what they're seeing in these first few months of the Trump administration. Looking down the road, the proposed budget cuts the budget even further for these protections for these miners. Cutting more positions, cutting a grant program that trains miners to better identify, avoid, and prevent these unsafe working conditions.

So, Kyung, before the break, you described the raft of protections or rules for minors that have been pulled back, some of which have actually been put back on after court challenges, and the proposed budget that could slash things even further. What did the government have to say about your reporting?

When we reached out, because there are two agencies that essentially we looked at, the Department of Labor and Health and Human Services. They're two different parts of the federal government that control and oversee mine safety. When we reach out to the Department of Labor, that spokesperson says that the MSHA inspectors are exempted from the deferred resignation program. And that the overall inspection numbers are similar to historical trends, despite what CNN found, and that agency is confident it's going to achieve its statutory yearly inspection obligations. The HHS Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson says that the Trump administration is committed to supporting local minors and said that NIOSH's essential services will continue as HHS streamlines its operations. But as far as the actual impact, the numbers, and what we're seeing on the ground, it doesn't match these statements that we've received from the Federal Department of Labor as well as HHS.

Well, I guess I'm wondering, like you said earlier, Trump promised to bring back coal. It's been a big part of his runs for the White House that he's going to bring back this industry and protect the workers. So how do folks on the ground square the political support with what they're seeing, this lack of protections through the gutting of these agencies?

With David Bounds. He left his ballot in November blank.

You left it blank.

There was the lesser of two evils. That was my opinion.

He has been so thoroughly left behind and so disgusted by Washington that he doesn't care anymore.

I think we've been deceived. I think took for granted.

Hard for him to see how Washington even matters to him, even though he relies on these black lung benefits. He just has a complete disgust and disdain for Washington.

So like whatever Trump may say about coal and coal country, it just doesn't resonate for him.

Doesn't resonate for him. It's important to note that 70% of West Virginia supported Donald Trump in November 2024, in the last election.

It's very clear that somebody doesn't know the very valuable work that we do here in NIOSH, because if they did, we wouldn't be being cut, right?

And there is this argument being made by some protesters we met outside of Washington. And these are protesters of these cuts. They all gathered standing outside HHS to save our jobs.

'The shock of me losing my job and being told that, you know, we're not going to be protecting minors anymore. It was devastating to me, it-

There is some thought that maybe the White House doesn't quite understand what is happening, that they're moving so quickly, that they don't understand the people they are hurting are the people who supported them in the election. And that might explain why, after some of these MSHA offices were ordered closed, they were suddenly told to reopen.

Can I play devil's advocate for a second? Cause certainly a lot of people in West Virginia and broader Appalachia rely on these mining jobs to make a living. You know, they say it's a way of life for a lot families there. But I imagine for a of our listeners, it can feel, you know, far away or a bit of a niche industry. So like, are there broader impacts at play when we talk about these cuts?

When you think about this one slice, what's happening to these workers and to these communities that, yes, it seems like it's so far away, but it is a microcosm of the impact that we're seeing across the federal government. Whether you're talking about USAID or any of these other agencies where we're see federal workers walk out with boxes, each one of those jobs has an impact in America. Maybe someplace you don't see, maybe someplace, you would never go, but those are real American lives, real American jobs that need and have relied upon the federal government, whether it be for a job, protection, environmental, or just keeping their family safe and secure.

What is this place?

This is Pax, West Virginia. This is Fayette County. It's been dominated by the coal industry for, well, since the late 1800s.

And I spoke with a very passionate Democrat after standing at a truck stop where coal trucks come by, we were there for hours, you know, we spoke to a number of people who simply just didn't want to share their opinion with us. But Paul Corbit Brown said he wanted to talk.

Have you ever watched someone die from black lung? I have.

His father had recently died of black lung, and he described what it was like watching his father slowly slip away and essentially suffocate to death.

It's the most horrible thing you can imagine is watching someone you love die from black lung. And then you don't get the benefits. You have to fight and fight and the government's fighting us all away. Where's Donald Trump on that?

And what he says is, coal has been a blessing. It has given us jobs. It has allowed us to protect our families. He is the beneficiary of a father who had a job and was able to educate him. But it has come at such a high cost.

It's all the same, all the time, but these coal industry, you know, they keep making their profits. What's left for the people here? What's ever been left for us here?

It doesn't seem to make a difference, regardless of whether it's a Democrat in office or if it's Republican in office.

Yeah, the party lines just kind of fall away when you're talking about just medical care and preventing further accidents, no matter what kind of industry you're in. Well, it's great reporting, Kyung, thanks so much.

Thank you for having me.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producers are Matt Martinez, Felicia Patinkin, and Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan DZula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Alex Manasseri, Mark Duffy, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namarow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundidge. I'll be back on Wednesday. In the meantime, if you like the show, leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. It really helps other people discover the show. I'll talk to you later.