Donald Trump repeatedly pledged during his campaigns and terms to revive coal mining employment by rolling back regulations and boosting domestic production. Those commitments have not translated into sustained job growth for miners amid shifting energy markets and automation. The cartoon underscores the gap between the repeated assurances and the persistent lack of visible progress for workers in the sector.
The cartoon by Peter Kuper portrays Lee Zeldin, appointed EPA administrator in 2025, across four panels that show a progression from intact natural habitats to scenes of industrial pollution and species loss. Early panels place Zeldin amid trees, animals and an EPA emblem. Later panels show him consuming the agency logo and exhaling flames from a smokestack. The caption states that Zeldin fired scientists and advanced deregulation targeting climate and environmental statutes. The work responds to ongoing policy shifts at the agency during the second Trump administration.
The September 2024 cartoon by Andy Singer presents three horizontal panels that place a familiar farm activity beside two industrial ones. In the top panel visitors gather strawberries at a pick-your-own stand and carry trays to an SUV. The middle panel shows workers collecting buckets of crude oil beneath drilling rigs and loading them into the same style vehicle. The bottom panel depicts miners pushing carts of coal from a tunnel and dumping the load into the vehicle. The signs read Pick Your Own Berries, Drill Your Own Oil and Mine Your Own Coal. The drawing underscores differences in scale, safety and equipment required for each activity.
