Biden Vague About East Palestine Visit One Year After Train Derailment

As the one-year anniversary approaches of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, President Joe Biden says he will soon visit the area to meet with locals and assess the recovery efforts.

The White House has not confirmed when, but said that a trip to the site near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border would be made in February. The derailment of the Norfolk Southern train, just east of the town center, led to a conflagration when officials decided to burn off vinyl chloride, exposing residents and nature to chemical smoke and fumes.

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Transportation Department Rejects Ernst’s Request to Review Telework Policies

The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) inspector general declined a request by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa to look into telework abuses in government agencies, according to a Thursday letter provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Ernst sent a letter to 24 agencies on Aug. 28 requesting that they review their telework policies to determine how taxpayer money was being spent, which Transportation Department Inspector General Eric J. Soskin declined to do, according to the letter. Ernst introduced the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act on Sept. 13 to address issues with telecommuting as part of a package of legislation to rein in the “administrative state.”

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Pennsylvania House Democrats Propose Letting ‘All Incarcerated Individuals’ Vote

Several Democratic lawmakers this week proposed legislation allowing all imprisoned Pennsylvania citizens to vote by absentee ballot. 

State Representatives Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia), Christopher Rabb (D-Philadelphia), Donna Bullock (D-Philadelphia), Jason Dawkins (D-Philadelphia) and Aerion Abney (D-Pittsburgh) announced they will cosponsor the bills. 

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‘Don’t Want to Get in the Way’: Pete Buttigieg Declines to Visit Site of Minnesota Fiery Train Derailment

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Thursday that he will not visit a small Minnesota town that was evacuated after a Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) train derailed and caught fire earlier that morning.

Raymond, Minnesota, residents who live within a half mile from the derailment site were evacuated after approximately 22 cars derailed and four caught on fire around 1:00 a.m. CST. The train was carrying mixed freight including ethanol and corn syrup.

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Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Blasts DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg for ‘Tokenizing’ People of Ohio

Nearly three weeks after a toxic chemical-spewing train derailment, U.S. Secretary Pete Buttigieg finally toured the devastation left behind in East Palestine, OH. 

Ohio resident and newly announced Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at a campaign stop in Iowa criticized President Joe Biden’s transportation chief for “leadership from behind.”

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U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Visits East Palestine, Ohio

Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, visited East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced the preliminary findings of its investigation into the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train transporting hazardous materials.

The February 3rd derailment has caused significant health and environmental concerns for the locals, who have expressed dissatisfaction at how slowly the federal government has responded to the emergency.

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‘So Creepy’: Pete Buttigieg Taking Photo of DCNF Reporter Sparks Backlash

Twitter users reacted to a Tuesday evening confrontation between a Daily Caller News Foundation reporter and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, with some calling Buttigieg out for taking a photo of the reporter.

DCNF investigative reporter Jennie Taer posted a 45-second video on social media of her asking Buttigieg if he had a message for residents of East Palestine, Ohio, the location of a train derailment that resulted in the spilling of toxic chemicals. Buttigieg referred her to comments he made in press interviews, said he was taking “some personal time” and took a photo of Taer at the end of the interaction.

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Ohio State Senator Blasts Biden for Prioritizing Ukraine over Americans Affected by Derailment

State Senator Michael Rulli (R-OH-Salem) this week castigated President Joe Biden for failing to visit East Palestine, Ohio in the aftermath of the train derailment and controlled toxic chemical burn. 

Speaking on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show, Rulli described the president’s failure to visit communities surrounding the site where a 53-car train crashed on February 3. Rail company Norfolk Southern subsequently conducted a controlled vent and burn of five of the rail cars containing vinyl chloride. Biden did however visit Ukraine and Poland early this week to express his ongoing support for Ukraine’s military struggle against Russian encroachment — a trip that didn’t escape the state lawmaker’s notice. 

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Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro Was for the Controlled Burn of the Derailed Train Before He Was Against It

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s opposition to Norfolk Southern Corp.’s handling of its East Palestine, Ohio train derailment contrasts strongly with his initial satisfaction with the controlled vent and burn of the rail vehicle’s toxic cargo.

The 53-car train with some cars carrying vinyl chloride derailed on February 3 in the village of about 5,000 residents one-quarter mile west of Beaver County in Pennsylvania. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the train went off the rail as a result of a defective axle. 

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Pennsylvania Governor Blasts Norfolk Southern for ‘Vent and Burn’ Plan In Aftermath of Train Derailment

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is blasting Norfolk Southern Corp. for its handling of a Feb. 3 train derailment that spewed Hazardous chemicals in in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania state line. 

In a letter to Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw, Shapiro excoriates the railway for acting unilaterally, failing to establish a Unified Command, and creating confusion that resulted in a general lack of awareness for first responders and emergency management of Norfolk Southern’s response. 

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Commentary: The Truth Behind George Santos’ Lies

The uproar over George Santos and his crude fabrications has given official Washington an opportunity to do what it does best: moralize and deflect. It is all a little amusing to watch. Who are these scoundrels to hold forth on truth and transparency? Are we meant to be astonished that a politician lied to secure public office? The freshman congressman from New York is distinguished only by the chutzpah of his act. His dishonesty, in an ironic way, is more truthful than the posturing of the preening hypocrites denouncing him.  

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Pete Buttigieg Vacationed in Europe amid Rail Strike Crisis

While the country was facing a possible supply chain crisis due to the looming threat of a massive rail strike earlier this year, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was vacationing in Portugal.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Buttigieg was in Porto, Portugal in September, a tourist destination over 3,500 miles away from Washington, D.C., that is best known for its wineries. He began his vacation on August 29th, just one week before Amtrak started canceling long-distance trips ahead of a likely strike due to failed attempts to negotiate a deal that satisfied the rail workers’ unions.

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Stacey Abrams Repeats Already-Debunked Claim That Women Seek Late-Term Abortions Due to ‘Traumatic Experience’

Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams defended abortion through all nine months of pregnancy using an already debunked claim by the abortion industry and its allies that women seek late-term abortions due to some “traumatic experience.”

“There is no example of a woman — you’ve gone through the trouble of buying a crib and naming that child — there is no one who wakes up and says at eight months, never mind,” Abrams said last week on ABC’s The View.

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Phoenix to Receive $25 Million Grant to Construct Pedestrian Bridge

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego revealed that the city will receive a $25 million grant to construct the long-proposed Rio Salado Bike/Pedestrian Bridge.

She joined Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, and other community officials at the Rio Salado Audubon Center, according to a news release from the city. The funding comes from a Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant.

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Commentary: Buttigieg Missing in Action on Supply Chain Disasters

Pete Buttigieg is the United States Transportation Secretary elevated from his role as a failed presidential candidate and a marginally competent mayor of South Bend, Indiana. During his tenure, our nation has suffered from unprecedented supply chain disruptions ranging from on-going back-ups at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, where forty percent of our nation’s imports arrive, to airline pilot shortages which are causing thousands of flights to be cancelled during high volume travel days. 

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Commentary: Democrats’ Radical Green Policies Don’t Help, They Hurt

Joe Biden

Last week, Michigan Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow bragged that on her way to Washington, D.C. she drove past “every single gas station” in her brand-new electric vehicle “and it didn’t matter how high [gas] was.” Apparently, Stabenow’s message to Americans struggling to afford their commute to work and school is to buy an expensive electric vehicle. For Americans – and especially Michiganders like me – Stabenow’s comment is as unhelpful as it is condescending. But Stabenow isn’t the only Democrat embracing a “let them eat cake” attitude. Climate activists are hurting Americans with their green agenda.

The Biden administration has made EVs a pillar of its anti-U.S. energy agenda. Last year, Joe Biden set a goal that by 2030, half of the vehicles sold in the country would be EVs. More recently, Biden pledged to use taxpayer dollars to build EV charging stations across America. And just a few weeks ago, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that families anxious about rising gas prices should just buy an EV, which have an average price tag of more than $60,000. Meanwhile, in more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia, drivers are paying more than $5 for a gallon of gas. Painfully high fuel prices aren’t an accident. They’re the momentum driving Biden’s energy “transition.”

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Michigan Railroads Get $30 Million Federal Grant

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $368 million in rail infrastructure grants to 46 projects in 32 states, including about $30 million for two Michigan rail projects.

“Americans deserve a world-class rail system that allows people and goods to get where they need to go more quickly and affordably, while reducing traffic and pollution on our roads,” Buttigieg said at the Mackinac Policy Conference. “We’re proud to award these grants to improve passenger rail for riders and strengthen the freight rail that makes our supply chains and our economy work.”

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: Biden Helping Dictators and Harming Americans

When the Biden administration appeals to Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia for oil but rejects American and Canadian oil and gas production, there is something profoundly wrong.

Why does Joe Biden think dictators are better than Americans? Why send money to Iran instead of Oklahoma – or to Venezuela instead of Texas? If he wants to send money outside the United States, why not send money to Canada rather than Saudi Arabia?

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Majority of Americans Say Pete Buttigieg Is Failing to Deal With Supply Chain Crisis: Poll

A majority of Americans say Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is failing to handle the ongoing supply chain crisis, according to a new poll.

Roughly 55% of likely voters rated Buttigieg’s handling of the supply chain crisis as “poor,” according to the results of a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll released Monday, while around 30% said Buttigieg’s job performance on the crisis is “good” or “excellent.”

Republican voters particularly disapproved of Buttigieg’s job performance, with over 80% saying Buttigieg was doing a poor job handling the crisis. Democrats were more favorable to the secretary, with roughly one-third rating Buttigieg’s performance as poor.

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Georgia Congressional Candidate Says He Knows How to Repair America’s Trucking Industry Troubles

A Republican who wants to replace U.S. Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10) and owns a Jackson-based trucking company said it wouldn’t take much for the government to increase productivity within that industry, especially with current driver shortages. But government officials would have to have enough willpower to make those changes.

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Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Others, Propose Way Pete Buttigieg Could Ease Supply Chain Crisis

Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) and nearly 90 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives this week urged Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to allow certain 18-20-year-olds to operate Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs) in interstate commerce. This, Loudermilk and other members of Congress said in a letter to Buttigieg, to help alleviate the nation’s growing supply-chain emergency. The representatives said there are too few truckers on the road to meet demands. They asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to proceed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA’s) Under-21 Commercial Driver Pilot Program.

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65 Percent of Voters Agree with Sen. Blackburn: Buttigieg Should ‘Get Back to Work or Leave

According to a Rasmussen Reports poll, 65% of voters agree with Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s comment that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg should either “get back to work or leave” after taking off work for two months of paternity leave.

The Tennessee Republican made the comment to Breitbart after Politico reported that the Transportation Secretary had been on paternity leave since August. “We’re in the middle of a transportation crisis, and Pete Buttigieg is sitting at home,” Blackburn said. “Meanwhile, cargo boats are unable to dock, and shelves are sitting empty. Pete needs to either get back to work or leave the Department of Transportation. It’s time to put American families first.”

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Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to Visit Arizona on Thursday

Pete Buttigieg

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit Phoenix on Thursday to discuss the Biden Administration’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan. The Arizona Sun Times inquired with the DOT for further details of Buttigieg’s visit. They didn’t respond by press time.

Buttigieg is scheduled to host a press conference at 10 am MST. During the press conference, Buttigieg is expected to address the infrastructure plan’s impact on tribal communities. In April, Buttigieg promised that tribal communities would benefit from the infrastructure plan’s investments into roads, broadband, water, higher education, and transportation.

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Blackburn Tours I-40 Closure, Calls for Targeted Infrastructure Spending

Sen. Marsha Blackburn

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) traveled to Memphis on Thursday to tour the damaged I-40 bridge and met with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to discuss infrastructure spending to meet the logistical needs of Tennessee.

“The I-40 bridge closure affects not only Memphis and the Mid-South region, it affects the entire nation. I-40 is a coast-to-coast federal interstate highway crossing our nation from North Carolina to California,” Blackburn described in a statement. “This bridge situation deserves to have the full and immediate attention of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Biden administration.”

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Northam, Beyer and Buttigieg Announce $3.7 Billion Transforming Rail in Virginia Initiative

New U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Congressman Don Beyer (D-Virginia-08) joined Governor Ralph Northam at Alexandria’s Amtrak station Tuesday. Northam announced a partnership with Amtrak, CSX and the Virginia Rail Express (VRE).  The partnership includes a $3.7 billion investment into expanding infrastructure, funded by Amtrak, state, and regional partners.

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Commentary: The Myth of the Moderate Democrat

Our friend Deroy Murdock posted a great column about the Democrat candidates for President which we caught on NewsMax.

Mr. Murdock’s point was that while not all of those still in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President may not be full-blown socialists, like Senator Bernie Sanders, the balderdash that they are even vaguely centrist is either desperately uninformed or deliberately dishonest.

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Klobuchar Calls for Over 500 Percent Increase in Refugees, But Just Not in Her Neighborhood, Reports Say

  “Do what I say, not as I do,” could be the mantra for Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar when it comes to resettling more than 500 percent more refugees under her proposal since virtually none of them would end up in her neighborhood, according to a report. And one of her motives is to support the big businesses that handle resettlement, according to reports. The Democratic U.S. senator from Minnesota wants to skyrocket the number of refugees taken in every year from President Trump’s cap of 18,000 to the Obama-era level of at least 110,000, Breitbart reported. While Minneapolis has resettled thousands of refugees since 2009, almost none live in Marcy-Holmes, where Klobuchar owns a home with her husband. Nearly 85 percent of all residents in Klobuchar’s neighborhood are native-born American citizens and of the less than ten percent of foreign-born residents, half arrived from China, India, Korea, Germany, Thailand, and Malaysia — countries from where only five refugees have been resettled in Minnesota in the last decade and none of whom have been resettled in Minneapolis much less Klobuchar’s neighborhood. Klobuchar is not the only Democratic presidential candidate to call for drastically flooding America with refugees. South Bend, Indiana,…

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Mayor Pete Would Increase Refugee Influx by 511 Percent If He Becomes President Pete

Mayor Pete says he would inundate America with at least 110,000 refugees a year if he were to become President Pete, an increase of 511 percent. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, made the remark in a Q&A interview on human rights with Amnesty International. The full interview is available here. Going from the current limit of 18,000 annually to 110,000 annually would represent a 511 percent increase. One question was, “What role should U.S. refugee admissions play in our response to the global refugee crisis?” His response was: The world is facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Instead of providing leadership, the Trump administration has abdicated its responsibility. We need to restore our place as a global leader in refugee resettlement. I would return to the 110,000 admissions target last proposed by the Obama administration and would be open to going beyond that number. Far from being “full”, many communities like my own have actually lost population and would welcome more immigrants and refugees. It is not only the right thing to do, but in our interest, as it would help grow our tax base and plug labor gaps as Americans age.…

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The Battleground State Report: Leahy Explains How Iowa Will Become a Battleground State for the Senate and Not the 2020 Presidential Election

The Battleground State Report, airing Fridays at 8 a.m. CST with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – is a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication rollout. With Kellett out of the studio, Michael Patrick Leahy discussed the recent debacle of the Iowa caucus.

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