Former President Donald Trump is set to visit East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, after criticizing the federal response to the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals. But while Trump’s visit is drawing more attention to the cleanup, it also highlights the disconnect between his promises to Rust Belt towns like East Palestine and his actual record in office.
Trump visits as a leading Republican contender to challenge President Biden in next year’s election, echoing his 2016 promises to restore white rural communities and post-industrial cities. While those areas are most likely to suffer from dangerous train derailments, his administration reduced rail safety protections. In 2015, the Obama administration instituted regulations mandating train carrying flammable crude oil use electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes. This was a looser regulation than the National Transportation Safety Board had advised, as the train like the one that derailed in East Palestine wouldn’t have qualified because while it was carrying tankers of toxic chemicals, it didn’t have crude oil.
Despite calls for a wider range of cargo to fall under the new regulation, Trump went the other way after taking office. His administration rolled back the rule on trains carrying flammable liquids, stating that the cost of the new braking systems outweighed the benefits of accident prevention. The Associated Press found that the Department of Transportation during the Trump administration had underestimated the future damages of derailments during their analysis by more than $100 million.
“These ECP brakes are very important for oil trains,” said Steven Ditmeyer, a rail safety expert and former official at the Federal Railroad Administration, told AP at the time. “It makes a great deal of sense: All the brakes get applied immediately, and there would be fewer cars in the pileup.”
Trump’s rollback came after extensive lobbying from the rail industry during and prior to his tenure, with Norfolk Southern saying that it had “opposed additional speed limitations and requiring ECP brakes” in a 2015 lobbying disclosure. The rail industry spent more than $6 million on Republican campaigns in 2016, their biggest expenditure to any party in any cycle since at least 1990, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit, that tracks the flow of money in U.S. politics. In 2019, Trump’s DOT moved to loosen restrictions on the transportation of natural gas by rail.
State officials ordered an evacuation in the area around the Feb. 3 derailment, and on Feb. 6 the company and officials burned off five tankers of vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen. Two days later, residents were told it was safe to return to their homes, but people have continued to report illnesses and concerns over the safety of the air and water.
While the Environmental Protection Agency and NTSB were on the scene early, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg didn’t issue a statement on the incident until 10 days after the derailment. Last week, EPA Director Michael Regan visited East Palestine and vowed to help the community for as long as needed and hold Norfolk Southern responsible for the costs of cleanup and restitution.
In a Fox News interview Monday evening, East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway…
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