Vance returns to site of catastrophic East Palestine derailment, vows to complete cleanup



Vice President JD Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, on the second anniversary of the Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment, which blackened the sky over the village with hazardous chemicals, threatened the health of nearby residents, and poisoned the surrounding environment.

Vance stressed that the people of East Palestine have not been forgotten, signaling a desire to ensure a proper cleanup of the area in his home state.

The derailment

A Norfolk Southern freight train with 141 packed cars, nine empty cars, and three locomotives derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3, 2023. Thirty-eight cars, 11 containing hazardous materials — including vinyl chloride, benzene residue, hydrogen chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene — ultimately went off the tracks as the result of a failed wheel bearing.

Fearing that the initial fires engulfing the wreckage might cause a "catastrophic tanker failure," emergency crews for the railroad — which spent over $1.5 million lobbying in Washington, D.C., just last year and hundreds of millions more going back to 1990 — conducted a vent and burn of five tanks of vinyl chloride, darkening the sky with what the National Transportation Safety Board called a toxic "mushroom cloud."

'This community will not be forgotten.'

Blaze News previously reported that burning vinyl chloride, as the accident-prone railroad did with some of the over 877,000 pounds contained in its derailed cars, produced hydrogen chloride and phosgene gas, the latter of which was used to massacre troops in World War I.

The NTSB revealed last June that the decision to execute the controlled burn, which forced 2,000 residents to flee their homes, killed thousands of local creatures, heavily contaminated nearby waters, and sent possibly cancer-causing airborne toxins into the air across multiple states well beyond the accident week, "was based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern officials and contractors. The vent and burn was not necessary to prevent a tank car failure."

Vance on the ground

Two years after highlighting the environmental damage in East Palestine and demanding that its residents cannot be forgotten, Vance returned, underscoring that the village was not and would not be forgotten.

"I talked to the president about this visit a couple days ago. The president loves this community. Of course, he visited it personally," Vance told a crowd in the village's firehouse. "President Trump just wanted to deliver a message that this community will not be forgotten, will not be left behind, and we are in it for the long haul in East Palestine."

Vance indicated that the "environmental cleanup has to get done," calling it a "tragedy and a shame" that the Biden administration dropped the ball.

The vice president also signaled an interest in helping rejuvenate the local economy, stating, "We are committed not just to finishing the environmental side of the cleanup but hopefully seeing East Palestine built back better and stronger and more prosperous than it was before the disaster happened in the first place."

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin indicated that Vance's office told him immediately after his confirmation that his first order of business was East Palestine and that the cleanup effort is now the EPA's highest priority.

Litigation

In the meantime, locals are looking for accountability by way of litigation.

A new lawsuit involving 744 current and former residents of East Palestine that was recently filed against Norfolk Southern and agencies at all levels of government alleges that seven people including a 1-week-old baby died in the aftermath of the railroad wreck, reported KDKA-TV.

The lawsuit reportedly also claims that Norfolk Southern — already on the hook for a $600 million class-action settlement approved in September, an over $310 million settlement with the federal government, and a settlement with East Palestine that was announced on Jan. 27 — fumbled the cleanup efforts, while government agencies failed to properly warn residents about health risks.

The Associated Press indicated that at least another nine lawsuits have been filed in recent days by individuals and businesses, claiming that Norfolk Southern's greed was responsible for the derailment and suggesting that the $600 million settlement is insufficient to compensate the victims or to prompt the railroad to change its behavior.

While a railroad spokeswoman Heather Garcia declined to comment on the lawsuits, she told the Associated Press, "We've made significant progress, and we aren't done."

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'Word salad city': Media liberals recognize that Harris' CNN town hall was a total disaster



Kamala Harris' Potemkin town hall with Liz Cheney Monday in Michigan was not the winning performance her campaign was likely banking on. She had yet another opportunity this week, however, to convince voters that she deserves their vote and to do so without tossing more word salads.

Unfortunately for the vice president, her CNN town hall in Aston, Pennsylvania, Wednesday was an unmitigated disaster — with even friendly talking heads and former Obama adviser David Axelrod hinting as much.

Former Trump campaign adviser David Urban told CNN's Van Jones, "Republicans would take another hour of Kamala Harris. We just press play and let her keep going. We'd pay for another hour ... let her keep not answering the questions."

The Trump campaign has already turned at least one of Harris' responses from the town hall into a mock ad.

While Harris spokesman Ian Sams later claimed his boss "isn't afraid of voters or real questions," the vice president dodged questions about the border wall, Israel, raising taxes, decriminalizing border crossings, subsidizing benefits for illegal aliens, expanding and stacking the U.S. Supreme Court, expensive groceries, and banning fracking.

'It's nothing, nothing, nothing.'

"What I'm hearing from people who I've been talking to," CNN host Dana Bash noted afterward, "is that if her goal was to close the deal, they're not sure she did that."

"On the question of who she is, people are understanding that a little bit more," continued Bash. "But what she will do, the question about her legislative priorities — 'name one' — there wasn't one."

CNN panelist Scott Jennings noted, "She's a true double threat. She's terrible on her feet when she gets unexpected questions, and simultaneously, she can't even answer the expected questions. It's nothing, nothing, nothing."

When Harris did decide to provide answers, they were frequently labyrinthine and borderline nonsensical.

Democratic strategist and former Obama adviser David Axelrod told his fellow CNN panelists, "The thing that would concern me is when she doesn't want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city, and she did that on a couple of answers."

When CNN's Anderson Cooper asked, "Is there something you can point to in your life — political life or in your life from the last four years — that you think is a mistake that you have learned from?" Harris responded:

I mean, I've made many mistakes. And they range from, you know — if you've ever parented a child, you know you make lots of mistakes too. In my role as vice president, I mean I probably worked very hard at making sure that I am well versed on issues, and I think that is very important. It's a mistake not to be well versed on an issue and feel compelled to answer a question.

Axelrod noted that Harris also said a whole a lot about nothing in particular when asked about Israel.

"Anderson asked a direct question, would you be stronger on Israel than Trump? And there was a seven-minute answer, but none of it related to the question he was asking," said Axelrod. "And so, you know, on certain questions like that, on immigration, I thought she missed an opportunity because she would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration's policies."

When Anderson asked Harris whether she regretted working with President Joe Biden to eliminate Trump's effective border policies and open the floodgates, Harris said, "I think we did the right thing."

"And that's a mistake," continued Axelrod. "Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn't concede much."

Instead of intelligibility and policy, Harris appeared focused on attacking President Donald Trump, who has begun eclipsing her in the polls. Not only did she employ the kind of incendiary rhetoric that set the stage for two known assassination attempts, at one point Harris indicated that she thinks her opponent is a fascist.

Jake Tapper said, "[Harris] focused a lot more on Donald Trump, I think it's fair to say, than she did on many specifics in terms of what she would do as president."

Harris' abysmal performance caused some supporters to melt down online.

Former Vox associate editor and journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted, "The Kamala Harris town hall was fine. She's more than capable. Vote against the fascist, for god's sake. The end."

Blaze News senior editor Cortney Weil responded to Rupar, "'She's good enough! She's smart enough! And gosh darn it, Trump's a fascist.'"

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