Your skyrocketing energy bill should be signed by Donald Trump

Donald Trump never stops lying and contradicting himself, often in the same few words. Rhetoric scholar Jennifer Mercieca calls this paralipsis — AKA “I’m not saying / I’m just saying.” The tactic immediately distances him from threats, jokes, and promises coming out of his mouth. And it’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t let a seven-year-old get away with, even after a Jolt Cola and nine hours of screentime.

But occasionally, evil great-grandpa lets himself get pinned down.

For instance, he told the Economic Club of New York in September 2024, with the confidence of a man who has never paid a utility bill: “My plan will cut energy and electricity prices in half or more than that within 12 months of taking office.”

West Virginia believed him. West Virginia is a red state. West Virginia runs on coal, which Trump has promoted like one of his kids’ memecoins. And some West Virginians are now getting $1,300 to $1,500 electric bills.

One gallery owner in Ravenswood — 1,900 square feet, temperature kept low, 71 years old — pays $700 to $800 a month for electricity. Her rent for the commercial space is $600. She called the power company to ask if there was any program that could help. The answer was no.

A bakery owner was two days from Valentine’s Day when the electric bills — a $700 to $1,000 day, she said — finally closed her down. Three employees lost their jobs.

“Once I got behind,” she said, “it was like I could not dig out of that hole. And every time I would pay a big lump sum, then the next bill would come in, and it would be even higher.”

A coal miner’s wife put it directly: “I find it fascinating that they go and give him a trophy saying he’s the friend of a coal miner. Our coal miners are dying of black lung. They don’t have clean water. They can’t feed their children. Their schools are closing. Their electric bills are through the roof. And they can’t afford groceries. Where’s the trophy for us?”

Who pays for Donald Trump’s lies? Not Donald Trump. Well, not yet.

The Numbers

The typical household paid about $123 more for electricity in 2025 — a 6.3% increase, more than twice the rate of inflation. Gasoline hasn’t touched two dollars in any week since Trump returned to office. After his Iran war blocked roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz, gas climbed above $3.98 a gallon nationally, with residential heating oil up about 35%. One in three Americans reported cutting back on food or medicine to keep the lights on. Fourteen million households are 90 days delinquent on their energy bills. Forced disconnections — families losing power because they cannot pay — climbed from 3.5 million in 2024 to 4 million in 2025.

Here in Michigan, the numbers are an indictment of Trump’s policies. Nearly 4.2 million — or 82 percent — of Michigan’s electric customers will pay more for electricity this year due to new Trump administration policies. DTE Electric and Consumers Energy — which together serve those 4.2 million customers — are seeking approval for rate increases that would cost Michigan customers an additional $3 billion through 2028. Separate from those rate hikes, Michigan households are already projected to pay an additional $160 per year by 2030 and $320 per year by 2035 due to the Big Beautiful Bill. Testimony from both DTE and Consumers Energy cited Trump’s policies as fueling fears of higher inflation and interest rates — one utility’s own vice president said so in sworn regulatory testimony.

Trump’s war in Iran is not incidental to the energy crisis. It is the inevitable fruition of a brain jacked directly into the lusts of carbon polluters. The conflict has disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global oil supply moves — and Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have cut production as exporters struggle to move crude through the region. Three weeks into the conflict, once the buzz of a fake ceasefire wore off, oil prices held above $100 a barrel, about 55% above pre-conflict levels.

Goldman Sachs estimates that a $10 rise in oil prices sustained for three months could lift U.S. inflation from about 2.4% to roughly 3%. The impact goes well beyond what you pay at the pump. Diesel has risen nearly 40% because of the conflict, and with trucks moving 83% of agricultural goods, those increases are feeding directly into grocery prices. Disruptions to fertilizer exports from the Persian Gulf are pushing up food production costs. Shipping and air travel prices are climbing.

The question of who benefits deserves a plain answer. Because you know Trump knows, even if we don’t. Because we know it’s not American families. Not the coal miners of West Virginia.

The beneficiaries of record LNG exports are the eight export terminal operators — Cheniere Energy, Venture Global, Kinder Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway — who sell American gas to Europe at prices roughly double what we pay domestically. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spent 2025 flying to Europe as, in Public Citizen’s description, global gas salesmen, signing export deals and gutting methane regulations. Meanwhile, European benchmark natural gas prices declined at the same rate that U.S. prices increased. American families are subsidizing cheaper gas for Europeans.

And a majority of voters — 52% — say they would rather end the war than take temporary half-measures to somewhat lower the price of gas, like tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or pausing the federal gas tax. Trump’s own voters know what this war costs. They just don’t have anyone connecting the dots or the squiggles.

They, unlike you, don’t know how Trump’s whole candidacy was propped up by a filthy deal where big oil gave him a billion. And now we’re seeing the payback, $1.4 billion in the last few months alone for oil executives cashing out on Trump’s war of aggression.

I bet those CEOs can afford their bills.

Trump is wringing every dime out of you

Natural gas hikes are to blame for most of your rate hikes. But don't forget the tariffs. Utilities depend on imported transformers, cables, switchgears, and substations. All of it hit. All of it passed to your bill. Michigan utilities told state regulators as much — DTE and Consumers Energy both cited tariff-driven inflation fears in sworn testimony. Nearly 47% of voters now say tariffs are responsible for what they pay for electricity. In Akron, Ohio, one utility raised rates 86%. In New Jersey, up to 20%. New Hampshire, 11%. Pennsylvania, 14.4%.

Meanwhile, Trump has clawed back or gutted every program designed to offset these costs. The Weatherization Assistance Program saved individual households an average of $372 a year. The Home Energy Rebates would have saved households up to $1 billion annually. A federal judge struck down Biden-era home-efficiency standards — challenged by Republican-led states — that would have improved efficiency by 37% and cut energy costs by more than $950 per year. Congressional Republicans repealed the Residential Clean Energy Credit, which helped homeowners lower the upfront costs of solar panels and energy-efficiency upgrades. Clean energy project cancellations surged to $35 billion last year, dwarfing the roughly $3.4 billion canceled over the previous two years combined.

And don't forget the higher medical bills you'll be paying for the rest of your life!

In Michigan specifically, the Trump administration has ordered the Campbell coal plant to keep running nearly a year beyond its planned retirement date — an old, expensive plant whose pollution plume, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, appreciably impacts the health of every person across the eastern seaboard.

Send it home

We know Donald Trump, like many children, is obsessed with his signature, whether it’s on Covid relief checks or celebrating his wonderful secrets with Jeffrey Epstein. That’s why he wants to put his autograph on all our dollar bills, as the evil president in any corny dystopian fiction would.

This presents a golden opportunity, Trump’s favorite kind, to literally drive home the pain he’s inflicting on the people he promised to help. The goal isn’t to turn his diehards against him. Only cult deprogramming can do that. But to demoralize them. To keep them from preaching to friends and family. Maybe even keep them from voting, while charging up the rest of the population that has been voting abnormally Democratic at margins ranging from 10-20%.

So here is the campaign Democrats are not running but should be, and the one that every organized constituent group, every union, every advocacy organization should pressure them to run: Send every American household an energy bill with Donald Trump’s signature on it.

Not metaphorically. A real mailer, timed to arrive when the bill does. “Donald Trump promised to cut this in half. Here is what he delivered instead. Here is why. Here is who he delivered it to.”

Let voters hold the evidence in their hands, next to the number that went up.

Democrats have spent years talking about energy policy in language that sounds like a utility commission filing. Nobody is repeating that to their neighbor. Nobody is putting it on a shirt.

That is the baton that gets passed. The gallery owner in Ravenswood already knows it. She doesn’t have anyone handing her the language yet.

The woman in Ravenswood said, “We are a red state. I don’t want us to be the left behind state anymore.”

The left-behind state is paying $800 a month to keep the lights on in a 1,900-square-foot gallery. Is that all Donald Trump’s fault? Nope. But he owns it, owns it far more than the Covid relief checks sent out with his signature on an accompanying note in 2020. Now people need to remember that the dividend for Trump’s second term is everything they need being more expensive, as a result of Trump’s actions, as this Ill-douche focuses on golfing, crying about his ballroom, and souping up his giant billion-dollar plane.

Trump promised to cut this in half. He doubled it for his donors.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

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