Election-year politics combined with a tight legislative schedule are complicating the effort to pass rail safety legislation stemming from last year’s East Palestine, Ohio, derailment, as the bill’s main GOP supporter, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, joins Donald Trump on the campaign trail.
The bill, introduced by Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown with Vance as co-sponsor, has been stuck in the Senate for the past year, despite attempts by Vance to lure GOP votes with assurances that it isn’t “big government.”
Since the Norfolk Southern train derailment in February 2023 that spilled hazardous materials in surrounding air, soil and water, the community became a prime opportunity for the freshman senator to flex his populist Republicanism by calling out powerful railroads in the name of small-town working-class folk — a voter demographic Trump has eagerly courted.
