TJ Meadows continues to champion the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL) while attacking opponents for supposedly misunderstanding the grid or rejecting economic progress. His arguments overlook the core reality of this project: it is primarily a transmission corridor allowing Pennsylvania energy producers to sell power directly into Northern Virginia’s data center market, with West Virginia serving as nothing more than a geographic and financial pass-through. The line begins at a substation in Dunkard Township, Pennsylvania, near the West Virginia border. It then cuts through roughly 59 miles of West Virginia counties before reaching Virginia. While it is technically bi-directional, its selection and design address the massive electricity demand surge in Northern Virginia driven by data centers. Pennsylvania generators gain improved access to that high-demand market. West Virginia gains the costs, the land seizures, and the ratepayer burden—with minimal offsetting economic returns. Meadows claims MARL will help West Virginia generators reach broader markets and relieve congestion for the good of the regional grid. In practice, the urgent need driving this line is Virginia’s inability to meet its own exploding load with local resources. Virginia’s energy policies over recent years—including aggressive clean energy mandates, restrictions on traditional generation, and heavy tax incentives to lure data centers—have created a supply-demand imbalance. Rather than build adequate in-state generation or pay for their own transmission upgrades, Virginia now relies on neighboring states to wheel power across their territory to feed those data centers. Why should West Virginians sacrifice for that? We are being asked to: • Accept hundreds of millions in added costs to our electric rates over decades, as PJM socializes the expense across the region. • Endure eminent domain takings across private farms, homes, and land in our state so a high-voltage corridor can be built for power flowing from Pennsylvania producers to Virginia consumers. • Absorb permanent impacts to property values, landscapes, and communities with only modest, temporary construction jobs and scattered local tax revenue in return. West Virginia already produces far more power than it uses. Our coal and natural gas resources are valuable exports. We do not need this particular line to sell our generation. The project’s main function is to open a more efficient pathway for Pennsylvania power to reach Northern Virginia while shifting part of the infrastructure cost and all of the physical footprint onto West Virginia. Meadows suggests opponents want grid benefits without obligations. The real imbalance is that Virginia gets the data center economic development and the imported power, Pennsylvania generators get expanded market access, and West Virginia gets the bill and the bulldozers. That is not fair participation in a regional grid—it is one state’s policy choices being subsidized by its neighbors. West Virginians should not be required to subsidize Virginia’s decades of energy policy decisions through higher rates, lost property rights, and land disruption. If Northern Virginia data centers need more power, the logical and fair approach is for Virginia to either generate it locally, pay the full cost of any necessary transmission, or compensate pass-through states like West Virginia directly and substantially. Passing the costs and burdens onto us while calling it “regional progress” simply does not add up. Opposition to MARL is not anti-grid or anti-development. It is a defense of West Virginia’s ratepayers, landowners, and long-term interests against a project that treats our state as a convenient corridor rather than a partner with equal standing.

I was tasked by President Trump to protect land owners from egregious behavior, including eminent domain. I'm calling on @GeorgiaPower to connect me with CEO Kim Greene tomorrow. I've just received screen shots of your "condemnation threat" letters, and will be posting them on X.