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Republican push for tips on Charlie Kirk posts drives firings of public workers

Demonstrators protest the suspension of the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" show outside the El Capitan Entertainment Centre, where the show is performed, in Los Angeles earlier this month. While Kimmel has returned to the air, dozens of public workers have been fired across the country for comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protest the suspension of the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" show outside the El Capitan Entertainment Centre, where the show is performed, in Los Angeles earlier this month. While Kimmel has returned to the air, dozens of public workers have been fired across the country for comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Suzanne Swierc shared two thoughts on her private Facebook page — that the killing of the right-wing activist was wrong, and that his death reflected “the violence, fear and hatred he sowed.”

The post upended her life.

Indiana Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita soon obtained a screenshot of the post by Swierc, an administrator at Ball State University, and added it to an official website naming and shaming educators for their comments about Kirk.

Libs of Tik Tok, a social media account dedicated to mocking liberals, shared her comments with its 4.4 million followers on X. A week after the post, the university fired her.

“The day that my private post was made public without my consent was one of the worst days of my life,” Swierc told reporters this past week. She said she received calls, texts and other harassing messages, including one suggesting she should be killed, that left her terrified.

A wave of firings and investigations has swept through academia and government in the wake of Kirk’s death, as state agencies, colleges and local school districts take action against employees over comments perceived as offensive or inappropriate. Dozens of workers in higher education alone have lost their jobs.

A Texas State University student was expelled after he publicly reenacted Kirk’s assassination; Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans had called for the student’s expulsion. Clemson University in South Carolina fired one worker and removed two professors from teaching. The University of Mississippi fired an employee. An Idaho Department of Labor employee was terminated.

The purge is driven in part by Republican elected officials who are encouraging Americans to report co-workers, their children’s teachers and others who make comments seen as crossing the line. They have been egged on by the Trump administration, with Vice President JD Vance urging listeners of Kirk’s podcast to call the employer of anyone “celebrating” his killing.

President Donald Trump has threatened to expand the crackdown beyond Kirk, warning falsely in the Oval Office last week that negative press coverage of him is “really illegal,” despite constitutional protections for freedom of the press.

Trump headlines Arizona memorial service for Charlie Kirk at packed stadium

At Kirk’s memorial service, Trump said, “I hate my opponent.” His choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission threatened ABC over comments about the reaction to Kirk’s death made by the late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel and the network pulled his show for several days.

Mark Johnson, a First Amendment attorney based in Kansas City, Missouri, who has been practicing law for 45 years, said he had never seen a moment like the current one.

“Not even close,” Johnson said. “What’s been happening in the last month is astonishing.”

In Indiana, Rokita is using his office’s “Eyes on Education” webpage to publicize examples of educators who have made controversial remarks about Kirk. The page, billed as a transparency tool, housed a hodgepodge of submitted complaints about teachers and schools in the past. Now, it also includes 28 Kirk-related submissions as of Thursday afternoon.

Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden threatened to strip an entire town of federal funding after a high school math teacher noted on her personal Facebook page that Kirk had in the past said some gun deaths are worth it to have the Second Amendment. The teacher has been suspended.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, who is leaving his job next month to head up a conservative teachers organization, has launched investigations of school employees in response to tips submitted to Awareity, an online platform that allows parents and others to report concerns. Last week the Oklahoma State Department of Education said it had received 224 reports of “defamatory comments.”

Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Fine has urged people with information about anyone celebrating Kirk’s death who works in government in Florida to contact his office. And South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace wants federal funding cut off for any school that fails to fire or discipline staff who “glorify or justify” political violence.

“It’s at a scale never before seen and I think it’s completely unhinged,” Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said of the rush to fire higher education faculty.

Free speech consequences?

Kirk, who founded the campus conservative activism organization Turning Point USA and was close to Trump, was a hero to many Republicans. They saw a charismatic family man and a Christian unafraid to take his hard-right vision onto liberal college campuses.

But many Democrats and liberals experienced Kirk as a provocateur with a record of incendiary remarks about people of color, immigrants and Islam. While many of Kirk’s opponents have condemned the assassination, some have also emphasized their disagreement with his views or suggested his death arose out of what they saw as his hateful rhetoric.

“I have faculty who are getting fired, who have tenure and are getting fired, for saying things like ‘I condemn political violence but the words that Charlie Kirk used, he sort of reaped what he sowed,’” Wolfson said. “All things told, I may not agree with that statement, but that’s a perfectly reasonable thing for somebody to say. Certainly not something to be fired for.”

MSUN professor on leave as influencers targeted Montanans in wake of Charlie Kirk’s death

Some Republicans have long denounced what they view as past Democratic censorship, including Biden administration efforts to pressure social media companies to censor content during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have also criticized firings and pushed back on perceived political correctness run amok during the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, moments of ascendant progressive influence.

But as the current round of terminations plays out, some conservatives argue public employees who speak out about Kirk are facing the consequences of their actions. Oklahoma state Rep. Gabe Woolley, a Republican, said individuals in a taxpayer-funded role who work with children should be held to a high level of accountability.

“I think the most important factor to consider … is that these people chose to enter the public square on public social media accounts and to mock and celebrate the death of an American patriot who was a Christian martyr who was killed for his faith doing what God called him to do,” Woolley said.

Woolley added that “if you choose to make something public, you should not be shocked or surprised by any type of public pushback.”

Swierc described a relatively restricted Facebook account. It was private and couldn’t be found by searching for her name; only individuals with mutual Facebook friends could request to add her as a friend. She did not list her employer on her profile.

Swierc’s post on Kirk could only be seen by her Facebook friends. At some point, someone — Swierc doesn’t know who — made a screenshot of the post. It was then circulated publicly and ended up on Indiana’s “Eyes on Education” page.

On Sept. 17, Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns fired Swierc, who had been director of health promotion and advocacy within the Division of Student Affairs. In a letter informing Swierc of her termination, Mearns wrote that many current students had written to the university to express concern and that her post had caused unprecedented disruption.

Swierc filed a federal lawsuit against Mearns on Monday, alleging he violated her First Amendment rights. Swierc, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, wants a court to order Mearns to expunge her termination from her Ball State University personnel file, along with unspecified damages.

“I do not regret the post I made, and I would not take back what I said,” Swierc said during a virtual news conference organized by the ACLU of Indiana. “I believe that I, along with every person in this country, have First Amendment rights to be able to speak on a number of things.”

Ball State University declined to answer Stateline’s questions, citing the lawsuit. In an unsigned public statement on the day of Swierc’s firing, the university said the post was “inconsistent with the distinctive nature and trust” of Swierc’s leadership position and had caused significant disruption to the university.

Swierc’s lawsuit is one of a growing number of legal challenges to firings and employee discipline over comments about Kirk. On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the University of South Dakota to reinstate an art professor who had placed on administrative leave after calling Kirk a “Nazi” but later deleted the post and apologized.

Aggressive state attorney general

Swierc didn’t name Rokita, the attorney general, as a defendant in her lawsuit, but the official has loomed over the situation.

Two days after Kirk’s assassination, Rokita urged his followers on X to submit to him any evidence of educators or school administrators celebrating or rationalizing the killing. He wrote that they must be held accountable and “have no place teaching our students.”

But Rokita has also said the Indiana Attorney General’s Office isn’t investigating individuals submitted to his “Eyes on Education” page — suggesting the effort is mainly intended to generate public pressure against employers. Each example on the page lists contact information for the school’s leadership and in some instances information about the next local school board meeting.

“For a government official, especially of that caliber, to be creating a database and doing this has an incredibly chilling effect on speech,” said Ashkhen Kazaryan, a senior legal fellow at The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank located at Vanderbilt University that promotes the values of free speech and free expression.

Rokita didn’t agree to an interview. “Our goal is to provide transparency, equipping parents with the information they need to make informed decisions about their children’s education,” Rokita said in a news release.

On Monday, Rokita sent a six-page letter to school superintendents and public university administrators, providing guidance on the legal authority to fire and discipline teachers for speech related to Kirk. The letter suggested that speech occurring on social media is a factor that weighs in favor of the authority to fire an employee because it carries the risk of being amplified and disrupting school operations.

Rokita also analyzed comments about Kirk by a U.S. history teacher in Indiana who had said the assassinated activist can “suck it” and referred to comments made by Kirk in 2023 that some gun deaths every year are the cost of Second Amendment rights. The district’s employer had chosen not to terminate the teacher, but Rokita laid out a legal justification for firing the employee.

He concluded the letter by writing that many schools would be within their legal authority to fire teachers “who have similarly contributed to the divisive and, for many, painful eruption of controversial discourse on social media and elsewhere concerning Charlie Kirk.”

Joseph Mastrosimone, an employment law professor at Washburn University, said private employers have broad discretion to fire workers over speech. But the government is different, he said, with the First Amendment providing at least some level of protection to employees.

Decades of court cases have established the core principle that if a public employee is speaking in their capacity as a citizen on a matter of public concern, then the government can only take action if the speech causes significant disruption to the delivery of the public service and that disruption outweighs the employee’s interest in the speech, he said.

Mastrosimone said if a teacher’s message made in his or her own time is causing community outrage and pandemonium, “that’s probably going to count as some disruption.”

“And there might be sufficient disruption to outweigh whatever interest the employee has in the speech,” Mastrosimone said. But the closer the teacher’s message is to core political speech — such as voicing support for a candidate for office — the more the scales tip in favor of the employee being able to speak without fear of discipline.

“It is certainly a matter of public concern, what’s going on here with the Charlie Kirk assassination. The interests are probably pretty high, I would think,” Mastrosimone said.

Push to honor Kirk

As some Republican officials have called for action against public employees who have made comments about Kirk, they have often drawn a line at what they see as celebrating or glorifying his assassination. Walters, the outgoing Oklahoma state superintendent, has gone further and is investigating districts for “refusing to honor his memory.”

The Oklahoma State Department of Education last week said in addition to reports on individual teachers, it was investigating 30 reports of schools that didn’t observe a moment of silence. Three reports alleged schools weren’t flying their flags at half-staff.

On Tuesday, Walters announced an official push to start a Turning Point USA chapter in every Oklahoma high school. Later that day, he announced he would resign as superintendent to become CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a new group that casts itself as a conservative alternative to teachers’ unions.

Walters’ Turning Point effort comes after Oklahoma state Sen. Shane Jett, a Republican, filed three pieces of legislation to honor Kirk, including one that would establish “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day” and another requiring public colleges and universities to develop a “Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza” on their campuses.

Walters and Jett didn’t respond to interview requests.

“Charlie Kirk inspired a generation to love America, to speak boldly, and to never shy away from debate. Our kids must get involved and active,” Walters said in a news release on Tuesday. “We will fight back against the liberal propaganda, pushed by the radical left, and the teachers unions. Our fight starts now.”

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Salvation Army Hosts Stuff the Bus Donation Drive in Indiana

As part of the Salvation Army’s annual Stuff the Bus fundraiser, school supplies are being collected to help students in Fort Wayne, Indiana stock up ahead of the new school year, reported 21alive News.

According to the article, the school supply drive will kick off at at local Walmart. A full list of needed school supplies can be found here.

Organizers will at the Walmart until 6 p.m. local time, collecting donations. However, donations will be accepted through Tuesday.

Families in need can sign to receive supplies. The donation distribution is planned for July 30 from 4-7 p.m., at the local Salvation Army.


Related: Arizona Annual Stuff the Bus Back to School Drive Returns
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Related: Massachusetts School District to Host “Stuff-A-Bus” Event for Holiday Toy Drive
Related: Kentucky School Bus Driver Keeps Students Fed During Summer

The post Salvation Army Hosts Stuff the Bus Donation Drive in Indiana appeared first on School Transportation News.

Indianapolis grapples with low compliance on energy benchmarking requirement for large buildings

A street scene in downtown Indianapolis with a tall obelisk of the Soldier's and Sailor's Monument surrounded by high-rise office buildings on either side.

Emissions from buildings make up about two-thirds of the greenhouse gas footprint of Indianapolis. So when the city committed to slash emissions, in its 2019 climate action plan and then as part of the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge in 2020, leaders knew where they had to start.

A 2021 ordinance requires all buildings over 50,000 square feet and publicly-owned buildings over 25,000 square feet to do energy benchmarking and report results to the city, to be made publicly available by 2026. 

The deadline to comply was July 1, 2024. But at year’s end, only about 20% of the 1,500 buildings covered had complied — even though the process can be done in a matter of hours using EPA’s ENERGYSTAR Portfolio manager software. The city also hosted workshops to help walk building managers through the process.

Now the city’s challenge is to boost benchmarking compliance. The penalties for failing to comply are low: fines of $100 the first year and $250 yearly after that. Chicago’s 2013 benchmarking ordinance, by comparison, includes fines of $100 for the first day of a violation and up to $25 each day thereafter, with a maximum fine of $9,200 per year — and the city has a much higher compliance rate.

Lindsay Trameri, community engagement manager for the Indianapolis Office of Sustainability, said the office is continuing outreach, including sending postcards to all relevant building managers and owners. 

“We’re not assessing fines yet, but we’re making sure they’re aware this isn’t a city program that’s going away, it is indeed local law,” Trameri said. “And there are benefits to be gleaned from participating. It might cost hundreds of dollars not to participate, but you could save thousands if you participate and take it seriously.”

Trameri said 27 publicly-owned buildings in the consolidated city and county government must be benchmarked, and the city is planning to use about $800,000 worth of federal Department of Energy funding to hire an energy manager “who will be solely focused on looking at city-owned buildings and how to make them more energy efficient.” 

In Indiana, reducing buildings’ electricity use is particularly urgent since the state got about 45% of its power from coal in 2023. The benchmarking mandate doesn’t require buildings to take any action based on their energy results, but benchmarking often motivates building owners and municipalities to invest in savings, experts say. 

Cities participating in the Bloomberg program saw 3% to 8% energy reductions and millions in savings, with nearly 400 million square feet now covered by benchmarking policies and over 37,000 energy audits completed, according to Kelly Shultz, who leads Bloomberg Philanthropies” sustainable cities initiative. 

Success stories

Though overall compliance is low, some major public and private entities have completed benchmarking in Indianapolis, including the airport, convention center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Target and JC Penney. 

Phil Day, facilities director for the museum, noted that it’s crucial for museums to keep consistent levels of humidity and temperature. That means high energy use, and also vulnerability to blackouts or energy price spikes. Benchmarking has helped him develop plans for reducing natural gas and electricity use with smaller boilers and heat pumps distributed throughout the facilities, a possible geothermal chilling system, and better insulation. These innovations should save money and make the museum more resilient to energy disruptions.

“Museums aren’t typically known as an energy efficient facility, but it is always high on my priority list in everything we program or replace,” Day said.

The firm Cenergistic has done benchmarking since 2017 for Indianapolis Public Schools, and identified more than $1 million in wasteful energy costs that could be cut across 71 schools. Under Cenergistic’s contract, it is paid half of the energy savings it secures. Seventeen school buildings have obtained EPA Energy Star status based on their energy efficiency improvements, Cenergistic CEO Dennis Harris said. 

“Benchmarking provided a clear starting point by identifying high-energy-consuming facilities and systems,” Harris said. “Cenergistic energy specialists track energy consumption at all campuses with the company’s software platform, identifying waste and driving conservation. By consistently reviewing this data, Cenergistic continues to work with IPS to make data-driven decisions, set measurable goals, and continually refine its strategy for maximum impact.” 

Trameri said the schools’ success is “a great message to point to. If they can do it, we can do it. Of course, we want those millions to go back into classrooms and teachers and students versus out the door for utility costs.”

Learning by example

Trameri said in developing its benchmarking program and ordinance, Indianapolis has relied on guidance and lessons from other cities including Columbus, Ohio and Chicago, both fellow participants in the Bloomberg challenge. 

In Chicago, about 85% of the 3,700 buildings covered by the ordinance are in compliance, said Amy Jewel, vice president of programs at Elevate, the organization that oversees Chicago’s program. She said nine out of 10 buildings complied even right after the ordinance took effect, thanks to years of organizing by city leaders and NGOs like the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“A large number of building owners recognized this was coming. They engaged in the process, and saw their fingerprints within the ordinance,” said Lindy Wordlaw, director of climate and environmental justice initiatives for the city of Chicago. 

Chicago passed an additional ordinance creating an energy rating program, where buildings receive a score of 0 to 4 based on their energy benchmarking results. An 11-by-17-inch placard with the score and explanation must be publicly posted, “similar to a food safety rating for a restaurant,” Wordlaw said.

In 2021, Chicago reported that median energy use per square foot had dropped by 7% over the past three years, and greenhouse gas emissions had dropped 37% since 2016 in buildings subject to the ordinance. City public housing and buildings owned by the Archdiocese were among those to do early benchmarking and investments.

Along with Philadelphia, New York and Washington D.C., Chicago was among the nation’s first major cities to institute benchmarking. Jewel said they hope to keep sharing lessons learned.

For example, “it’s actually pretty hard to come up with the covered buildings list,” Jewel noted, since there is no central list of all buildings in a city but rather various records “all used for slightly different purposes — the property tax database, different sources tracking violations. It took a bit of time to get that list together, and it takes time to maintain it as buildings are constructed or demolished.”

In Indianapolis, Trameri said they are hopeful more buildings will get with the program as awareness grows about the requirement.

“There has always been evidence that you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said Trameri. “It’s a market-based strategy. Truly once a facilities owner or manager is able to look at their energy usage over a month, 12 months, or multiple years and make evidence-based decisions based on that data, it will affect your bottom line, and those savings you can reinvest into whatever your organization’s mission is.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed performance information about Bloomberg Philanthropies’ sustainable cities initiative.

Indianapolis grapples with low compliance on energy benchmarking requirement for large buildings is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Steelmaker’s bid to buy U.S. Steel would extend life of Indiana plant — along with its emissions

A blue industrial building labeled "Gary Works"

A prospective buyer’s recent commitment to reinvest in a Gary, Indiana, steel plant sought to address union and government leaders’ worries about the sale’s potential impact on jobs and U.S. steelmaking capacity.

The plan to extend the life of the country’s largest and most carbon-emitting coal-fired blast furnace, however, has also heightened concerns from Northwest Indiana residents most affected by the facility’s air pollution.

“This is not acceptable,” said Susan Thomas, director of legislation and policy for Just Transition Northwest Indiana. “We now have technology for doing this much more sustainably.”

A study released Monday quantifies the public health threat highlighted by local clean air advocates, linking the Indiana plant to dozens of annual emergency room visits and premature deaths, as well as thousands of asthma attacks. 

Japan-based Nippon Steel is seeking approval from U.S. regulators for a $15 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel, the storied domestic steelmaker whose facilities include the Gary Works plant in Northwest Indiana, along with others in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, key battleground states where the proposed sale has been a subject of presidential campaigning. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump oppose the sale, as does President Joe Biden.

Much of the public discussion around the proposed sale has centered on its economic and national security implications, but those living near the plant have different concerns and demands. They say they’ve suffered for too long from steel industry pollution, and they only want Nippon as a neighbor if the company installs a new type of furnace that burns with lower or even zero emissions. 

“I would love to see Gary Works transform to green sustainable steel, bringing more jobs, cleaning up the area, that would be an amazing win-win,” said Libré Booker, a librarian who grew up near the mill. “The people have lived under these conditions for far too long. It’s definitely time for a change.”

Gary Works is the largest integrated steel mill in North America, employing about 2,200 people. Northwest Indiana is also home to two other steel mills — Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor — and two coke plants that turn coal into the high-density raw material for steel. 

The populations in a three-mile radius of the Gary Works and Indiana Harbor steel mills are 96%-97% people of color, and almost two-thirds low-income people. The new study by Industrious Labs, a nonprofit focused on emissions reduction, used the EPA’s COBRA model to find emissions from the Gary Works plant likely are linked to 57-114 premature deaths, 48 emergency room visits and almost 32,000 asthma attacks each year.

The report cited the mills’ and coke plants’ emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and lead, all pollutants with direct impacts on public health. Gary Works is the number one emitter of PM2.5 particulate matter in the state, according to the company’s self-reported data analyzed by Industrious Labs. 

Industrious Labs steel director Hilary Lewis said the results bolster the demands of clean steel advocates, who want to see coal-fired blast furnaces replaced by direct-reduction iron, or DRI, furnaces powered by hydrogen made with renewable energy, known as green hydrogen. 

Booker was among 15 locals who participated in a recent “Sustainable Steel Community Cohort” run by Industrious Labs, attending five workshops learning about the science and policy of cleaner steel. 

Green hydrogen, green steel 

Green hydrogen is still not produced in large quantities anywhere in the U.S., and all the hydrogen currently produced in the country would not even be enough to power one steel mill, noted Seth Snyder, a partner in the Clean Energy Venture Group, at a recent conference in Chicago focused on clean hydrogen. 

But DRI furnaces can be powered by natural gas, which results in much lower emissions than coal. Cleveland Cliffs — which owns the Indiana Harbor and Burns Harbor mills — is transforming its Middletown, Ohio steel mill to gas-burning DRI with the help of a $500 million incentive under the Inflation Reduction Act. The company says the conversion will make it the steel mill with the lowest emissions in the world. 

With some modifications, DRI furnaces can burn a blend of natural gas and hydrogen or almost entirely hydrogen, experts say, meaning investment in a gas-burning DRI furnace could be a step on the way to “clean steel.” Lewis and other advocates, however, say gas-burning furnaces are not their goal, and they want the industry to transition off fossil fuels entirely. 

Hydrogen can be blended into fuel for traditional blast furnaces too, but the maximum emissions reductions that can be achieved that way are 21%, according to a paper on hydrogen-powered steel production in Europe by the Norwegian non-profit science organization Bellona. 

Nippon has announced it would invest $300 million in restoring the aging blast furnace at Gary Works, keeping it running for another 20 years. Installing a DRI furnace, meanwhile, typically costs over $1 billion.

“There is a gap,” said Lewis. “But these companies have the funding available. They have the money to make these decisions, they’re just choosing not to.” 

Incentives for change 

The IRA incentives tapped by Cleveland Cliffs are no longer available, but this summer California U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna introduced the Modern Steel Act, which would provide $10 billion in low-cost loans and grants, plus tax breaks and other incentives for new and revamped low-emissions steel mills, including hydrogen-fueled DRI.

Separately, lucrative tax credits soon to be available for “clean hydrogen” under the IRA could also make hydrogen-powered steel more financially viable. The specific rules for the tax credit — known as 45V — are still being finalized, amid controversy over what should qualify a project’s hydrogen as “clean.” 

“There are a number of different incentives in the IRA that can help steel companies build out their own green hydrogen infrastructure,” Lewis said. “Everything should be on the table. Steel companies would be such huge off-takers for green hydrogen, they can build their own economy here.”

At the BP Whiting oil refinery, 10 miles from Gary Works, there are plans underway for production of blue hydrogen, or hydrogen made with natural gas followed by capture and sequestration of the emissions. The plan is a marquee part of the Midwest (MachH2) hydrogen hub, one of seven planned hubs nationwide slated to receive $7 billion total in federal funding. Such blue hydrogen could be used to power a steel mill, with theoretically no resulting greenhouse gas or public health-harming emissions.

However, local environmental and public accountability leaders are strongly opposed to blue hydrogen production in the region, since carbon sequestration has not yet been done successfully on a large scale in the U.S., and it would entail pipelines carrying carbon dioxide from the refinery to a sequestration site. 

“The carbon capture component makes us very nervous, it seems to me they’re rushing into this without really taking the time to study it more seriously,” said Northwest Indiana resident Connie Wachala, another graduate of the sustainable steel program. “That might be because of all the money DOE is making available to industry. I wish our elected and industry officials would start thinking more creatively about how to make [green hydrogen] happen, how to make things better for the people in the neighborhoods and around the steel mills as well as for the shareholders.”

A different future 

All four of Wachala’s grandparents came from Poland to work in the steel mills. 

“Growing up in the 1950s, I remember my mom hanging the laundry up in the yard on a clothes line. If the wind was blowing a certain way, you’d get black particles on the clothes,” remembered Wachala, who worked as a creative writing teacher before retiring. “My dad’s car was always covered with that soot.”

Booker’s mother worked as a crane operator at the now-closed Bethlehem Steel mill in Burns Harbor, Indiana — among the first wave of women of color to be hired.

“I was proud she worked in the mill and took care of us, but I did not want [that job] whatsoever, seeing her come home every night after the swing shift, with the big old boots and jacket,” said Booker. “I wanted to go to college. It was a source of contention with my mom and I for some years.” 

That was in the days when locals largely believed, “if you want a good partner, you’ve got to get one that works in the mill,” she continued. “It was like a prestigious job and position. People looked up to people who worked in the mill.” 

Now, Booker laments, “Gary is like a joke,” scorned for its economic decline since the steel industry automated and shrunk — hemorrhaging jobs, and for the pollution that is still emitted. If the merger with Nippon does not go through, it’s widely believed U.S. Steel would eventually close the mill, as it closed its South Works plant in Southeast Chicago decades ago. At their height, the South Works and Gary Works plants together employed about 40,000 people in the Chicago area. 

Thomas wrote a frustrated rebuttal to the Chicago Tribune editorial board opining that the Nippon merger was crucial to Gary’s future. She and other local leaders say they don’t want the mill to close, but they can demand better than the extension of heavily polluting industry. 

“It’s just perpetuation of this as a sacrifice zone,” said Thomas. “‘This is what you’ve always been, this is how we’re going to keep you.’ But that’s not going to fly anymore.”

Steelmaker’s bid to buy U.S. Steel would extend life of Indiana plant — along with its emissions is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

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