The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dealt a notable setback to the Trump administration by blocking an effort to keep a Michigan coal-fired power plant operating under claimed emergency authority. In siding with a coalition of states and environmental groups, the court concluded there was no genuine emergency sufficient to justify extraordinary federal intervention.

At a high level, the dispute tested how far the executive branch can go in invoking emergency-based energy powers to override market, regulatory, or retirement decisions involving aging generation assets.