Comment on Joe Biden Is Bailing Out Papaw’s Steel Plant in JD Vance’s Hometown. Vance Is Trying to Stop Him.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president. Its future, however, may hinge upon $500 million in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition. In March, Joe Biden’s administration announced the US’s largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling the Cleveland-Cliffs facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates the climate crisis and befouls the air for nearby locals. In a blue-collar urban area north of Cincinnati that has long pinned its fortunes upon the vicissitudes of the US steel industry, the investment’s promise of a revitalized plant with 170 new jobs and 1,200 temporary construction positions was met with jubilation among residents and unions. “It felt like a miracle, an answered prayer that we weren’t going to be left to die on the vine,” said Michael Bailey, who is now a pastor in Middletown but worked at the plant, then owned by Armco, for 30 years. “America needs “a leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s green new scam and fights to bring back our great American factories,” Vance said. “It hit the news and you could almost hear everybody screaming, ‘Yay yay yay!’” said Heather Gibson, owner of the Triple Moon cafe in central Middletown.