Trump Forgets to Mention the Train Safety Regulations He Gutted During Visit to East Palestine, Ohio

During a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, Donald Trump accused the federal government of “indifference and betrayal” in the wake of the February 3 freight train derailment the resulted in residents within a one-mile radius being forced to evacuate. He added that “what this community needs now are not excuses…but answers and results,” and, throwing a bit of red meat to the right, said that he “sincerely hope[s]” that Joe Biden will have “some money left over” to deal with the disaster when he gets back from “touring Ukraine.” One thing Trump didn’t mention? The train safety regulations he gleefully gutted as president.

Among the biggest relevant regulatory rollbacks Trump has conveniently remained mum over is the 2018 scrapping of a 2015 Obama-era rule requiring advanced braking technology on trains transporting particularly hazardous materials. That rule would have required compliance by certain trains by 2021 and others by 2023, but as Fortune reported at the time, Trump’s Department of Transportation decided that “the cost of installing these more sophisticated brakes outweigh[ed] the benefit.” While it has been noted that, technically, the rule would not have required the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in Ohio to have such brakes, some believe it would have if not for Trump. “He should be embarrassed,” Cynthia Quarterman, who helped craft the rule, said of Trump in an interview with Bloomberg. “Regulations force people to advance technology,” and if the train at the center of the derailment had had the advanced braking system, “there is no question the accident would have been less dramatic.” As Bloomberg notes, the Obama mandate, which was introduced along with a bunch of other new safety rules, would have forced trains to swap out what the then head of the Federal Railroad Administration likened to a “Civil War–era braking system.” But, of course:

…the rules came under fire from the rail industry, including Norfolk Southern, as being too expensive, and the Trump administration rescinded them after conducting a congressionally mandated analysis that found their costs would be “significantly higher than the expected benefits.” 

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for Trump to feign concern for the community of East Palestine after years of openly mocking and rolling back environmental safeguards,” said Sara Chieffo, a vice president with the environmental group League of Conservation Voters. “Trump bent over backwards to cater to corporate polluters at every turn and put East Palestine and other communities directly in harm’s way.”

The other rules scrapped by the 45th president were for recurring safety audits of railroads and the requirement of having at least two crew members aboard freight trains. (Though the Norfolk Southern train that derailed had three crew members aboard, Politico notes that in regard to the two-member rule, the Trump administration claimed “a train crew staffing rule would unnecessarily impede the future of rail innovation and automation.”)

“Congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail-industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. He added that GOP lawmakers “laid the groundwork” for the Trump administration to get rid of safety requirements and, while he was at it, claimed House Republicans want to “defund our ability to protect drinking water.” (House Republicans last year proposed major cuts to the EPA, including scrapping its Surface Water Protection Program.) “There is only one way they can prove that they are finally disowning their long history of giveaways to rail-industry management at the expense of communities like East Palestine: work across the aisle with us to put Obama-Biden protections back in place and go further, including with higher fines for rail pollution and properly equipping the EPA.”  

Could Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have publicly addressed the disaster sooner and visited the site before Trump? Yes, sure. (In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Buttigieg admitted as much, saying: “I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.“) Is it completely ridiculous for Trump to show up while failing to acknowledge the damage done by his administration? Also yes!