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ROUNDING UP THE LATEST ON EAST PALESTINE: House and Senate lawmakers announced new investigations, documents requests, and hearings into the East Palestine train derailment this week.
Here’s a roundup of the latest actions:
- The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said yesterday it is investigating the EPA’s response to the train derailment, as well as the factors that may have played a role in the incident.
- Top House Energy and Commerce Republicans sent a letter yesterday to Ohio EPA Director Anne Vogel seeking detailed information on the clean-up effort in East Palestine. The request includes information about how they are testing soil and water for contaminants, who is overseeing their efforts, and what additional toxic substances might have been caused by the “controlled burn” ordered by state officials after the derailment.
- Republicans on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the Department of Transportation’s handling of the derailment, as well as when Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was made aware of the incident.
- Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Norfolk Southern CEO, Alan Shaw, to testify before the chamber.
Complaints are divided along party lines. Democrats blame former President Donald Trump for his 2018 rollback of a mandate requiring electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, or ECPs, on some trains. But that rule only applied to high hazard flammable trains—a designation that Norfolk Southern, as a mixed freight, did not have.
Members of Ohio’s congressional delegation said they plan to introduce legislation to change designation criteria for “high-hazardous” trains.
WHAT’S NEXT: The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said it will hold a hearing to examine any environmental and public health harms of the derailment, as well as the local, state, and federal response to the catastrophe, though a date has not yet been set.
FEARS: The Ohio EPA is not testing for all the chemicals that were on the train when it derailed, EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said this week. Nor is it testing for any toxic materials that may have been created during the combustion process, such as dioxins, which can be created by burning of vinyl chloride.
“We are talking to our toxicologist” about testing for the chemical, she said.
FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were deployed by President Joe Biden over the weekend, as residents reported symptoms such as sore throats, rashes, and nausea. “We do understand that there were a lot of hazardous materials that were spilled at the incident,” a CDC spokesperson said. “However, we really need to look a little bit more at the data.”
EPA Administrator Michael Regan is in East Palestine today for the third time since the derailment, where he will hold a round table and press conference.
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REPUBLICAN ESG RESOLUTION TEED UP FOR HOUSE VOTE TODAY: The House is scheduled to vote on a Republican-led resolution this afternoon that would nullify the Department of Labor’s rule permitting retirement fund managers to consider environmental, social, and governance factors in investment decisions.
DOL’s rule is a replacement to the Trump-era rule, which restricted fiduciaries’ ability to employ ESG in investment decisions.
The Congressional Review Act resolution, which has a companion in the Senate supported by half the chamber’s members, including Sen. Joe Manchin, is the culmination of the last year of anti-ESG campaigning Republicans have carried out at the state level and in Congress.
This mostly Republican-led effort to thwart ESG and related environmental policies in the investment and finance world illustrate the fundamental disagreement between parties about the threats associated with climate change and what serves investor interests best.
The Republican line has been that ESG considerations prioritize a climate agenda over investor returns. Democrats and green finance groups insist considerations about things like climate change and its risks (warmer temps, sea-level rise) and greenhouse gas emissions are about maximizing returns by limiting exposure to such risks.
The White House circulated its opposition to the Republican CRA resolution yesterday, saying the Trump administration’s restrictions interfered with the market “in a manner that stands in the way of retirement plan fiduciaries’ ability to protect these hard-earned retirement savings and pensions and unnecessarily limit the options available to retirement plan participants and investors.”
HOUSE T&I ADVANCES RESOLUTION TO REPEAL WOTUS: It’s all Congressional Review Act resolutions today. House Transportation and Infrastructure passed Republicans’ measure to cancel the Biden administration’s “waters of the United States” rule.
The resolution, led by Chairman Sam Graves and backed by more than two-thirds of the conference, passed through T&I on a party-line vote.
Republicans on the committee said Biden’s WOTUS rule would cripple landowners and farmers and even threaten the food supply by restricting what farmers can do on their land. Graves, in his comments before the vote, longed for the Trump-era Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which narrowed the list of water bodies subject to regulation under WOTUS.
Ranking Member Rep. Rick Larsen, who opposed the resolution, said the resolution would not deliver more clarity to WOTUS and stressed that the GOP measure would not bring back the Trump-era rule. A federal judge blocked the NWPR in August of 2021.
Several WOTUS storylines going on at once: Republicans passed their resolution as the Supreme Court weighs whether to put new constraints on the federal agencies’ regulatory authorities under WOTUS in Sackett v. EPA. Justices heard argument in that case in October and a ruling could come imminently.
Republican attorneys general and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also filed separate lawsuits against the Biden administration’s WOTUS rule.
OTHER MARQUEE HOUSE HEARINGS TAKE UP GOP ENERGY PACKAGE: Both Energy and Commerce and House Natural Resources are holding multiple hearings today to markup or otherwise consider elements of Republicans’ energy package, the culmination of the pro-energy independence agenda the party promoted to voters during the 2022 election cycle.
E&C is marking up a slate of bills that seek to do things like enable expanded LNG exports and speed up approvals for natural gas pipelines.
Other proposals before Natural Resources today would reform NEPA in a bid to speed up permitting and amend federal law to ensure more regular oil and gas leasing on federal lands.
Read more about some of the GOP bills here and here.
RUBIO TARGETS BIDEN, INDUSTRIAL EV PUSH AS ‘TROJAN HORSE’ FOR CHINA: Sen. Marco Rubio said the push by the industry and the Biden administration to increase manufacturing and sales of electric vehicles and their components in the United States is a “trojan horse” for China, citing Ford’s plans to build a battery plant in the U.S. with Chinese partner CATL.
The battery plant, which Ford announced earlier this month would be built in Michigan, will be beneficial for the state’s economy but “will also bring America’s greatest geopolitical adversary into the heartland,” Rubio said in an op-ed published today.
Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has asked the administration to scrutinize the Ford-CATL deal, arguing both that it exposes the U.S. to security risks and that the U.S. should not subsidize a venture that benefits a Chinese company.
Ford said it expects to take advantage of subsidies for battery manufacturing passed in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
The automaker’s plant with CATL landed in Michigan after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose state was among those being considered as a site, said he would not approve a subsidy package to lure Ford into the state, to the chagrin of Democratic legislators who said he deprived rural southern Virginia of a major economic opportunity.
It highlights a growing divide on China between Republicans, whose hawkishness toward China is overriding the economic advantages of hosting the $3.5 billion facility, and Democrats, who are ready to take the jobs.
Of note: The House Select Committee on China, established with broad bipartisan support at the outset of the Congress, is holding its first hearing today.
The Rundown
Financial Times Shell explored quitting Europe and moving to the US
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 1
The American Bar Association will host the Environmental Summit of the Americas in New York City, where environmental, social, and governance will be on the agenda.
MONDAY | MARCH 6
The annual CERAWeek conference kicks off in Houston, Texas. Learn more and register here.
TIME AND DATE TBA
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing in early March on the emergency response and cleanup effort related to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
