As the Trump administration seeks to resuscitate the moribund American coal industry, it has decided to invoke “national security” as the justification for a plan to subsidize coal-fired power plants.

Three things are notable about the administration's proposal. First, invoking “national security” has become a favored tool for getting around existing regulations, precedents and the Constitution. It's also handy for labeling one's opponents as unpatriotic in order to avoid a genuine discussion of the true purpose of a proposed action. Second, the coal industry used to be the one attacking renewable energy sources as too expensive to stand on their own without subsidies. As the cost of renewable energy has continued to plummet, the tables are now turning.

Third, the move has united an unlikely coalition in opposition that includes the oil and gas industry, anti-nuclear activists (since nuclear power plants are included in the subsidy plan), environmentalists and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which is dominated by Trump appointees. It takes amazingly bad policy to get an alliance like this together.

In asking whether the U.S. energy supply has become a national security problem, the administration takes on thorny definitional issues. What does the seemingly endlessly elastic term “national security” mean? The term has been used to justify U.S. military intervention in places ranging in size from Grenada to Iraq. It has been used as a justification for wholesale spying on every American with an internet connection or a cellphone. It has essentially become a Swiss Army knife for anything the government wants to do that isn't quite legal or constitutional or that is at the very least contrary to obvious logic and precedents.

The administration's plan is to invoke a wartime measure called the Defense Production Act to impose its will on the energy markets. The act was designed to harness necessary industrial production during wartime.