For Democrats, the derailment and chemical leak in the East Palestine village, Ohio, was a story of logic, action, and consequences: Railroad safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration only to prevent such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.
For Republicans, East Palestine is symbolic of something much larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative country, like so many others in China. America, is struggling to survive in the face of a large heartless corporation and a heartless government whose concerns have never been taken into account. like a town with 4,718 souls.
Carrying those irreconcilable stories, politicians have begun marching through East Palestine with agendas of their own to pursue. On Wednesday, it was the former president and current presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, Branded water dispensers and campaign hatswhile assuring the supportive crowd, “You are not forgotten.”
On Thursday, three weeks after 38 Norfolk Southern trains carrying toxic chemicals slipped over tracks in East Palestine and a few days later a swath of vinyl chloride was intentionally dropped on the town, Transport Minister Pete Buttigieg arrived, after days of fighting with Republicans over the issue. Safety regulations.
“What I am really proud of is the community that I see here,” he told an entourage of right-wing reporters shouting at him. “You have federal agencies, you have local first responders, you have states, but above all you have a community that has been through a lot, which I think is pretty disappointing with the who tries to do politics. advantage of this situation.”
In a sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in today’s divided American politics, neither argument matters.
In 2015, after the fatal case derailment of an Amtrak . train moving so quickly outside Philadelphia, President Barack Obama moved to require the installation of life-saving automatic braking technology by 2023 in the face of objections from the biggest railroad companies. In 2018, as part of a widely regulated rollbackMr. Trump repealed the regulation.
But, according to the website PolitiFact, the rule will have no impact on the derailment of East Palestine. The Norfolk Southern train will not be covered as it is not classified as a high-risk freighter. Besides, the National Traffic Safety Board initially indicates a failure of a wheel bearingIt was not the speed of the train that caused the derailment.
Such details didn’t stop the White House from issuing an official statement on Wednesday titled, “Republicans, stop tearing down railroad safety and selling out communities like East Palestine to the corridor.” rail.” Nor did it prevent the anti-Trump Lincoln Project from released a video on Wednesday frankly blamed the former president.
Politics across the US
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Coalition officials blame cost-cutting and years of staff cuts for the series of incidents, a message that President Biden’s interests have been undercut by his intervention last year in a railway labor dispute that prevented a strike but undermined union efforts to improve working conditions.
However, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, called the crash “100% preventable” at a news conference Thursday in Washington.
“I don’t understand why this has become so political – this is a community that is suffering,” she added.
Republicans simply ignored that debate, instead highlighting seemingly contradictory instances that the Biden administration was more interested in Ukraine than East Palestine and that the White House was fabricated. shoot down three unidentified flying objects to distract attention from the derailment – this means that in practice, the officials care a lot.
The consequences of the derailment coincided with Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine – by rail – and his speech in Poland in which he pledged billions of dollars more in military assistance to Ukraine. That led to the Republican narrative that, for all the talk about caring for blue-collar workers, the president would rather deal with geopolitics than a domestic one.
Indifference and late arrival of support have become a prominent topic of discussion about Eastern Ohio on Fox News and in a host of other conservative news outlets, even as the Biden administration repeatedly says federal officials arrived at the scene of the accident within hours.
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And in the District of Columbiana, home to East Palestine, Republicans were playing on their home turf. Mr. Trump won the county with 72 percent of the vote in 2020, compared with 27% for Mr. Biden.
“On Presidents Day in our country, he went to Ukraine,” East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway raged this week. “That tells you what kind of person he is.”
Conspiracy theories have only deepened the trauma, swirling around far-right podcasts and social media accounts of conservative celebrities before reaching Congress’s passage. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican who was a supporter from Georgia whose alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy made her the center of congressional power.
“Eastern Palestine, Ohio, is experiencing an ecological disaster as authorities blow up train cars carrying toxic chemicals and newspapers are being arrested for trying to tell the story.” she wrote on Twitter through impressive footage of the plume of fire and its aftermath. “Oh but of UFOs!”
Trump’s campaign on Thursday fueled the story with a daily timeline of “Neglect and Betrayal,” including “February 5: Shooting down the Spy Ball” and “The 13th. February: Dodges questions about unidentified object shot down on Sunday,” followed by, “February 16: Responses to unidentified objects in the sky and sets movie ‘Till.’”
Smash another conspiracy rumor, East Palestine The fire chief, Keith Drabick, had to spend time this week assuring people that the medical identification bracelets given out to people in case they show signs of weakness are not government tracking devices.
The fever of suspicion is understandable for a community that has seen what appears to be a doomsday chemical plume rising from railroad wreckage, then filmed dead fish and frogs in the mountains. springs in East Palestine and complained of headaches, sore throats, coughs and skin rashes – all as government officials assured them that the air and water were safe.
But if East Palestine feels overlooked immediately after the derailment, its difficulties are now playing out across a vast national landscape of partisan politics.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich is planning town hall event on friday at town high school. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman turned conservative, took a tour of town earlier in the week, then ran to the television camera to describe it.
Fox News presenter Bret Baier admitted that derailment visits by transportation ministers, including Mr. Trump’s Elaine Chao, are rare, especially when the crashes are not fatal.
But more broadly, the derailment is an opportunity for Republicans and their supporters in conservative media to showcase the white, working-class voters who have flocked to Mr. and the people Mr. Biden has struggled to regain — and the power that Mr. Trump and other celebrities still in his orbit still wield in places like East Palestine.
After Mr. Trump on Wednesday praised John Rourke, owner of Florida-based Blue Line Moving, for his relief efforts in Ohio, Tucker Carlson invited Mr. Rourke to join the news program His highest rated cable TV let him explore the present. chairperson.
“The reality is that President Biden refused to come to this small town when he was supposed to be Scranton Joe, a working man’s small town hero, and he couldn’t even pop his face out of a town. of American citizens in need of him. He’s proven what everyone, I think, already knows in this country, that he’s not the leader of this country,” Rourke said Wednesday night. “Donald J. Trump is the leader we all know, and he is the leader of this country.”
On Thursday, Mr Buttigieg appeared after weeks of mockery by Republicans demanding to know why he didn’t mind. But it was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and a confidant of Trump, who attracted much attention from residents and local politicians when he toured the crash site. and sign the memorabilia.
“Politicians come in and they do a big show and then they don’t come back,” he said, promising, “This is a rollback situation.”
pedestrian marking And Aishvarya Kavi contribution report.
