WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright had said the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell Generating Plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region, and he used emergency powers to keep it operating. Environmental groups and three states — Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota — went to court to try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the states and the groups, saying there was no real emergency under the law.
The section of the Federal Power Act that allows emergency orders “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop," Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
By reversing the Campbell plant's “long and carefully planned retirement ... the results are disruptive," Pillard wrote. There was “no ‘emergency’ within the meaning” of the statute, she added.
The Michigan case is one several legal disputes that have emerged across the country as the Trump administration uses emergency powers to force a half-dozen coal-fired plants from closing.
The orders, which also apply to plants in Indiana, Colorado, Florida and Washington state, are raising ratepayer bills and adding air and water pollution that could have been avoided, critics say. An oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania was also ordered to keep its turbines running as a hedge against electricity shortages in the mid-Atlantic grid.
Keeping the Michigan plant open beyond its May 2025 retirement has cost about $259 million so far, according to new financial filings. Those losses will likely be paid by families and businesses in the Midwest, opponents of the order say.
Ted Kelly, U.S. clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the court ruling rejected the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to force “unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online.”
The Energy Department's “unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” Kelly said Friday. The Campbell plant and other aging sites are “incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health and break down frequently,” he said.
Sanjay Narayan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, called the ruling a victory for families across the Midwest who are “paying to keep this old, expensive and dirty power plant online.”
The Trump administration “has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels at public expense. This reckless agenda will not succeed,” Narayan said. "We will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FILE - An aerial image of Consumer Energy's J.H. Campbell Generating Complex is seen in Ottawa County, Mich., Sept. 21, 2024. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP, File)
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks after the signing of an oil agreement between the US and Venezuela at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The Ebola outbreak in Congo, the world's fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country, local authorities said. And it's showing no signs of slowing down.
According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, Congo’s national research institute tested a sample and found traces of the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.
The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, said the sample was from the Bulu health district in Sud-Ubangi. It did not disclose other information about the source of the infection.
Local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said on X on Thursday a positive case was recorded in Gwaka, a town in Sud-Ubangi province. He said the patient was a 23-year-old man and has died.
Mbungani said in just three weeks the man had departed from South Kivu province — where confirmed Ebola cases have been reported — and then traveled to Rwanda and Uganda. He then traveled to Congo's Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
He then traveled from the northeast of the country to the northwest through the provinces of Tshopo, Mongala and Sud-Ubangi, according to Mbungani.
Doctors and local authorities in Sud-Ubangi were alerted to a patient that had a fever and was vomiting blood, Mbungani told The Associated Press on Friday in a telephone interview, adding that the man had died on Tuesday. Samples were then taken after the patient had died and were sent to the national research institute.
“It worries me. … Our province borders Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic. We fear it may spread regionally,” said Mbungani.
The development makes Sud-Ubangi the seventh province affected by the outbreak — and the first in western Congo — a worrisome spread outward from what was previously concentrated in the country’s east. A case was detected in Kinshasa in May in a person who had traveled from eastern Congo, but the Congolese capital, more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away from the epicenter, was not classified as an affected province.
As of Wednesday, 6,942 cases and 3,349 deaths have been reported, according to the latest government figures.
The World Health Organization has said the outbreak remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In recent weeks, new cases and deaths have declined in Ituri province, the outbreak’s epicenter, but risen sharply in neighboring North Kivu and Haut-Uele.
The outbreak is spreading under extremely difficult conditions for aid efforts, fueled by insecurity, displacement, a health workers’ strike and intense population movements. The situation is particularly concerning at displacement sites, where residents already live in extremely precarious conditions.
Sud-Ubangi, which borders the Central African Republic, does not border any of the six provinces in eastern Congo where confirmed Ebola cases had previously been reported. They include Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Tshopo and Bas-Uele.
WHO said last month there is a risk the outbreak could spread from Congo to the Central African Republic and South Sudan, which border the affected provinces.
Neighboring Uganda, which had reported 20 cases since May, declared itself free of Ebola in July.
Last month, Congo began vaccinating health and other front-line workers with the Ervebo vaccine that was effective in past Ebola outbreaks caused by a different, more common type of the virus called Zaire.
Clinical trials are underway to find a licensed vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus.
The vaccination trials started in Tshopo, Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele provinces, Placide Mbala Kingebeni, Africa CDC’s director for research, clinical trials and innovation, said Thursday. Vaccinations in Ituri are set to start next week, he added.
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This story has been corrected to give the full name of the lawmaker and former health minister quoted: his full name is Jean-Jacques Mbungani.
Health workers who are members of the safe and dignified burial team prepare to bury Abineno Justine, a 38 year old woman who died of the Ebola virus, in Bunia, Congo, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
