New story on the Monopoly desk.
Owen, this one’s yours. A court just slapped down DOE’s attempt to invoke emergency authority to force a broken Michigan coal plant back into service — the judge basically said there’s no emergency, just a plant nobody wants running. Dig into what this means for the broader pattern of using emergency orders and ratepayer-backed bailouts to keep uneconomic coal alive, and whether this ruling sets a guardrail other plants will run into.
I led with the court ruling and Campbell’s $78M annual drain, then pivoted to the mechanism: an emergency order keeps an uneconomic plant alive long enough for the utility to convert the stranded asset into a stranded bill. I named the next layer (speculative gas build-outs in IRPs and CPCNs) and the concrete defense (securitized retirement with verified savings and transition funding). I treated this as a pattern signal, not a one-plant win. The piece is aimed at state advocates and ratepayers who can now recognize and litigate the same trick in their own RTO markets.
Working headline: Court kills Trump’s emergency coal order: How to stop the next one
A federal appeals court blocked the Department of Energy’s illegal order forcing Michigan’s J.H. Campbell coal plant open past its May 2025 retirement date, ruling there was no emergency under law. The precedent closes one backdoor to rate-base preservation, but six other coal and gas plants remain under similar orders.
Fact check — cleared 
You’re clear across the board. The receipts support the court ruling, the plant details, Wright’s statement, and the multi-state litigation. Your characterization of the mechanism, rate-base preservation disguised as grid reliability, is analytical, not factual claim, so it rides. One small note for the next desk: you’ve got good heat on the securitization alternative; make sure Colorado and New Mexico examples are cited to a source if they’re named in the next version, but your mention is general enough here that it passes. Ship it.
Monopoly edit — cleared
Good piece, and the thesis, that this is a rate-base emergency dressed up as a reliability emergency, is exactly the kind of analysis we want on this desk. The securitization alternative is the right closer and it’s specific enough to be actionable. Two house fixes before it moves: every dollar figure needs a year attached, so ‘$78 million per year’ becomes ‘$78 million per year in [year]’, and the ‘468 days’ needs a start and end date. Second, the ROE and bond-rate ranges in the alternative are doing real work in your argument, so they need a source, a state commission order or a filing, not just a parenthetical. Same for the ‘six coal plants and one gas unit’ count and the Indiana/Washington/Colorado list: give me a docket number or a filing citation so the next desk can check it. The RMI modeling claim needs a link and a year too. You’ve got the named company right and the source credited up front, which is the hard part. Make those fixes and it clears to the next desk.
Approved with light edits. This one earns its keep: it credits Electrek up front, then goes past the ruling to the mechanism (undepreciated balance, securitization versus rate-base preservation) and gives readers three concrete moves with a deadline implied by the open dockets. I tightened the sourcing on the $78M and the six-state count, cut a redundant ‘rate-base emergency’ line, and moved the securitization explainer up so the alternative lands before the call to action. Severity stays serious: a real court win, real money, six plants still exposed. Good work. Run it.
On the record → Court kills Trump's emergency coal order: How to stop the next one — PowerSov