Energy has been a highlight of the Trump 2.0 presidency. But the administration needs more cooperation from Lansing and Baton Rouge to bring its ambitious goals to fruition.
Michigan and Louisiana may not have a lot in common, but there are few places in the U.S. more critical to the Trump administration’s energy agenda. Michigan, an industrial powerhouse, needs abundant affordable energy to fuel the “manufacturing boom” that the White House is promising. Louisiana, a leading liquid natural gas exporter, is key to Team Trump’s goal to make the U.S. the signature supplier of energy to domestic industries and foreign allies.
Yet politicized lawsuits against oil and gas companies are proliferating in both states, backed by rivals and fair weather friends whose lawfare crusades are undercutting President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.
For Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, it’s time to decide whether to get behind America First energy policies or side with powerful forces within their states that are pushing in the opposite direction.
Whitmer, widely viewed as a 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful, nonetheless quotes Trump’s call for a “golden age of American manufacturing.”
During her tenure as governor, Michigan has leaned into aspirational net-zero timelines, discouraged in-state gas production and created roadblocks to energy infrastructure. But there’s also the legal offensive. Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) continues to defend her six year-old lawsuit to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, which supplies more than half of Michigan propane use, while she taps contingency lawyers to sue oil and gas companies for far-flung climate-related damages. That’s not the posture of a state preparing to power an industrial renaissance.
Meanwhile, Landry touts Trump’s energy dominance agenda, yet at the same time supports dubious claims against oil and gas companies in his state. As state attorney general, Landry entered a joint prosecution agreement with trial lawyers seeking to hold the oil and gas industry liable for 2,000 square miles of Louisiana wetlands and barrier islands lost to coastal erosion since the 1930s.
As governor, he has taken in more campaign contributions from trial lawyers than his Democratic predecessor. The support has paid dividends. A lawyer from the Landry administration backed up the trial lawyers who recently won a $744.6 million verdict against Chevron in a coastal erosion case.
Although research shows that leveeing of the Mississippi is the main culprit, oil and gas companies are now defending 43 lawsuits in Louisiana blaming them for coastal land loss. Despite the obvious federal issues at play, the trial lawyers behind the cases are trying to keep the litigation in friendly state courts — precisely the kind of jurisdictional charade that Trump’s order against state interference with American energy dominance was designed to prevent.
Just this week, the United States Supreme Court agreed to review whether these cases belong in federal court where the oil and gas companies can get a fair hearing. If Landry and the trial lawyers dodge federal jurisdiction, it will be “pay, baby, pay,” not “drill baby drill” for oil and gas companies — much to the chagrin of the Trump administration and the detriment of the nation’s energy consumers.
Unless Team Trump follows through on its promise to defend domestic energy producers from state overreach, U.S. energy dominance will remain elusive. Taking on deep blue states over their climate lawfare is a solid first step, but it’s not enough.
The next time that Whitmer visits the Oval Office, Trump should remind her that Michigan consumes almost five times more energy than it produces. If the manufacturing golden age returns to Michigan, the demand side of that equation will only rise. The state’s leadership needs to bury its green utopianism, drop its anti-pipeline crusade, and start producing more reliable and affordable energy needed to power autonomous vehicles, chip fabs, AI data centers and other industries that Whitmer is trying to attract.
Likewise, Team Trump needs to tell Landry to put the energy dominance agenda ahead of his alliance with powerful trial lawyers. If Landry is unwilling to pull out of the retroactive cases against oil and gas companies, the Trump Department of Justice should intervene and defend federal energy policy interests against Louisiana’s egregious overreach. For Louisiana’s liquefied natural gas sector to propel U.S. energy dominance in the future, the state needs a predictable legal system, not one where industry is at the mercy of politically-connected trial lawyers.
The key to the Trump administration’s early energy successes has been the rollback of federal rules like the Biden administration ban on liquefied natural gas exports. Unleashing American energy over the long term, however, requires the states to push in the same direction. For states like Michigan and Louisiana, that doesn’t require a new vision. It means having the political courage to make it real.
Michael Toth is a practicing lawyer and a research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.