JD Vance, born and raised in Middletown, has repeatedly referred to clean energy projects as a “scam”. As an Ohio senator, his election campaigns were partly bankrolled by fossil fuel companies.

The move follows the Trump-Vance administration’s ending of a $500m grant for the facility to replace the coke-burning infrastructure with a hydrogen-powered furnace that, by some accounts, would have resulted in the Middletown facility becoming the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting steel plant in the world.

Instead, residents could find themselves locked into decades more of dirty, chemical-polluted environmental risks. Despite the Biden administration’s attempts at cleaning up the steel industry, last year Goncalves told Politico: “I believe what Trump’s trying to do is for the betterment of the country.”