Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Federal officials, then-Governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb, union leaders, company representatives, and dozens of guests assembled at Heidelberg Materials in Mitchell, Indiana, last year to celebrate a milestone for North America’s second-largest cement plant.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the company up to $500 million through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for a groundbreaking modernization project aimed at building industrial might, strengthening supply chains, and revolutionizing a critical industry.

With that support in hand, company representatives drilled a 7,300-foot-deep test well and took other steps to launch the carbon-capture initiative at the heart of the effort. Production workers, represented by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-00030, looked forward to widening their impact on the local economy and leading the nation into a new manufacturing era. Community leaders united behind the initiative.

And then Donald Trump stabbed them all in the back.

On May 30, he summarily canceled billions in IRA funding at Heidelberg Materials and dozens of other companies, stopping some cutting-edge manufacturing projects in their tracks and leaving others with uncertain futures.

Trump claims to want to build manufacturing power and make more products domestically. But that’s just more of his empty bluster.

He showed his disregard for the economy and contempt for working people by gutting the IRA, a law indisputably moving America in the right direction.

“It was........

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