Norfolk Southern CEO Says He’s Committed to Safety—While Another Train Derails

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw told senators Thursday morning that his company is doing “what’s best” for the community of East Palestine in the wake of a disastrous train derailment. Shortly before he began speaking about the company’s renewed commitments to rail safety, another Norfolk Southern train derailed in Alabama.

The morning’s proceedings were the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s first hearing on the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train last month that has left people sick, animals dying, and residents wondering if it’s still safe to remain in the place they’ve lived in for generations.

Committee members spent much of their time grilling Shaw on questions ranging from how much support the company will pledge to the community to what it will do to lead the industry away from the kinds of practices that have resulted in disasters like those in East Palestine. Over and over, Shaw promised company support to those affected; over and over, he also demurred on the nitty-gritty questions about exactly how far companies will go to make railroads safer for both workers and the public.

The hearing began with opening remarks from Senators Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey Jr., and J.D. Vance. Casey challenged Shaw to support his bipartisan rail safety bill, which, among other things, calls for stronger safety standards for all trains carrying hazardous materials, expands those standards to trains not deemed “high-hazard,” and calls for a minimum of two-person crews on freight trains.

Brown echoed this suggestion and criticized Norfolk Southern’s adoption of the industry-wide, Wall Street–blessed, precision-scheduled railroading, or PSR, practices.

Precision-scheduled railroading is essentially a series of cost-saving measures, in the name of which rail companies have cut jobs and consolidated dispatch centers, making trains less safe, as fewer workers have less time to manage bigger trains.

Vance was a bit more idiosyncratic with his remarks. On one hand, the senator who likes to position himself as the sage of working-class America denounced some of his Republican colleagues “who seem to think that any public safety enhancements for the rail industry [are] somehow a violation of the free market.” Vance suggested the industry’s exclusive subsidies are already intervening in the free market. “Do we do the bidding of a massive industry that is embedded with big government, or do we do the bidding of the people who elected us to the Senate into the Congress in the first place?” Vance challenged.

On the other hand, Vance still maintained that it wasn’t simply deregulation bought by corporate greed that has led to these disasters. Vance claimed there was a slow response to the crisis in Ohio “because a certain segment of our leadership feels like the people of East Palestine are a little out of style. They have their own politics. They’re a little too rural, maybe a little too white.”

Shaw responded favorably to the idea of reforms but did not explicitly say he supports the entire bipartisan rail safety bill. Throughout the hearing, Shaw repeatedly claimed that Norfolk Southern has a “culture of safety”—one he commits to making better, by working with others to learn from the East Palestine derailment.

For her part, Senator Debbie Stabenow pointed out that at least 20 derailed Norfolk Southern trains had chemical releases; she questioned how Norfolk Southern would be “learning” from this instance if they hadn’t seemed to learn from the previous 20. “I don’t want number 21 in Michigan, or anywhere else for that matter,” she said.

On broader industry trends, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse described how much money the industry has pumped into lobbying for weaker regulation. Whitehouse focused specifically on the industry fighting against the implementation of updated electronic brakes, as opposed to the Civil War–era brakes generally used on freight trains now.

Senator Bernie Sanders asked Shaw point-blank whether the CEO would commit to leading an industry-wide charge to stop the practice of profit-chasing, job-cutting PSR. Shaw insisted the company was on a “hiring spree,” but Sanders pressed, countering that the company was just recouping from previous layoffs. Shaw declined to answer directly, instead saying that he “charted a new course in the industry,” by moving “away from a near-term focus solely on profits” and taking a “longer-term view,” with regard to its workers.

Sanders then brought up paid sick leave, which is still not guaranteed to all rail workers (though companies including Norfolk Southern have begun giving some workers paid sick days, ostensibly to stave off further regulation).

“Senator, I share your focus on our employees. I will commit to continuing to discuss with them important quality of life issues with our local craft colleagues,” Shaw said.

“With all due respect, you sound like a politician,” Sanders responded. “Paid sick days is not a radical concept in the year 2023. I am not hearing you make that commitment to guarantee that to all of your workers. Will you make that commitment, sir?”

Shaw repeated that he would speak to employees about “quality of life issues that are important to them.”

Iowa and Arkansas are the latest red states to pass bills cracking down on gender-affirming care for minors. Both bills are expected to become law.

The Iowa House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would prohibit doctors from giving puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or gender-affirming surgeries to people under age 18. Five Republican lawmakers broke ranks to vote against the bill with Democrats. The measure had passed the Senate along party lines the night before. It now moves to Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, who is expected to sign it into law.

In Arkansas, the House passed a medical malpractice bill that would make it easier for people to sue doctors who give gender-affirming care to minors. Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said she supports the measure.

The bills are part of a much larger wave of state-level legislation targeting LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people. Also in Iowa this week, the Senate passed a bill that would prohibit transgender kids from using the school bathroom that does not match their sex at birth; and the state House passed a bill Wednesday that bans teaching kids about gender identity or sexual orientation until sixth grade.

The most common argument from lawmakers who support such bills is that they are looking out for the best interests of children. “Children should not be pushed to receive experimental medical treatments that can leave them permanently sterile and physically marred for life,” Iowa Senator Jeff Edler said when debating the gender-affirming care bill, citing false information.

“The governor has said that she supports bills that protect our kids and will support legislation like this that does just that,” a spokeswoman for Sanders told the Associated Press. “Only in the far-left’s woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children.”

Both states have also introduced legislation easing child labor protection laws. On Tuesday, Sanders signed a law rolling back her state’s only oversight mechanism for child labor. In Iowa, Republicans unveiled a bill in February that would allow teenagers to work in previously prohibited jobs, such as in slaughterhouses or meatpacking plants, or operating heavy machinery.

While that proposed law could endanger teenagers, gender-affirming care can be lifesaving for LGBTQ minors. A study published in January in the New England Journal of Medicine found that trans and nonbinary teens who receive gender-affirming care have significantly less depression and anxiety than before treatment.

The Human Rights Campaign and ACLU urged the states’ governors not to sign the bills. Iowa’s “heartless legislation puts craven politics ahead of the health and safety of young people, and should strike fear in the hearts of parents” throughout the state, said Cathryn Oakley, the HRC’s state legislative director.

The ACLU also slammed the Arkansas state legislature. “By choosing to ignore the voices of those who are most directly impacted by this legislation, Arkansas politicians are sending a clear message that they value political posturing over the health and wellbeing of their constituents,” the group said.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 81–14 to overturn the District of Columbia’s criminal codes, subverting many months of work that residents and officials invested to update laws that haven’t been dusted off in over 100 years.

It was all part of a right-wing charade against D.C.’s autonomy and fearmongering against even modest criminal justice reform. One D.C. resident described it as a “slap in the face.” Here’s every Senate Democrat and independent who joined Republicans in that slap:

• Tammy Baldwin
• Michael Bennet
• Richard Blumenthal
• Sherrod Brown
• Maria Cantwell
• Bob Casey Jr.
• Chris Coons
• Catherine Cortez Masto
• Kirsten Gillibrand
• Maggie Hassan
• Martin Heinrich
• John Hickenlooper
• Tim Kaine
• Mark Kelly
• Angus King
• Amy Klobuchar
• Ben Ray Luján
• Joe Manchin
• Bob Menendez
• Patty Murray
• Jon Ossoff
• Alex Padilla
• Gary Peters
• Jacky Rosen
• Brian Schatz
• Chuck Schumer
• Jeanne Shaheen
• Kyrsten Sinema
• Tina Smith
• Debbie Stabenow
• Jon Tester
• Mark Warner
• Ron Wyden

Thirteen Democrats plus Bernie Sanders voted “nay.” Raphael Warnock voted “present,” while Senators Tom Carper, Dianne Feinstein, and John Fetterman did not vote.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 81–14 to overturn D.C.’s criminal code reforms, subverting months of work that residents and officials invested to update codes that haven’t been dusted off in over 100 years.

The vote signals the official death of D.C.’s proposed criminal code updates. Local officials will have to continue using archaic codes until the D.C. City Council can pass new ones that again have to be approved by the federal government.

The House voted last month to block both the updated criminal codes and another bill that would have extended voting rights to noncitizens in D.C. (An estimated 7 percent of D.C. residents are noncitizens of some form.) It did so with the help of 31 Democrats, including Elissa Slotkin, the party’s heir-apparent Senate candidate in Michigan, and lone anti-abortion Democrat Henry Cuellar.

Inspired by the moderate wing of his party, President Joe Biden announced last week his own support for joining the right-wing campaign against D.C.’s duly owed autonomy. Though Biden called “denial of self-governance” in Washington, D.C., “an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded,” in April 2021, he announced last week that “if the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did–I’ll sign it.”

He cited only one specific change, “lowering penalties for carjackings,” as a cause for concern. In reality, the bill updated an obsolete and unusual 40-year maximum sentence for carjacking to a more realistic 24-year maximum (still higher than most actual sentences).

With the Senate now joining the House in the rejection, and Biden presumably set to finish the task, the rule of a government overseeing 700,000 residents has been wholly subverted by the federal government. Not only is this a complete federal takeover of local government rule (one that seldom happens in any other community in America), but it also was one spurred forward by a dishonest fearmongering campaign propelled by conservatives.

The bill was approved unanimously by the D.C. City Council. It then voted 12–1 to override Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of it (she had said she approved 95 percent of the bill anyhow). And the reforms did not haphazardly reduce criminal sentences. The council tasked with updating the code (staffed by legal experts, including representatives from the D.C. attorney general’s and U.S. attorney’s offices) used data from a decade’s worth of cases to align the code with the kinds of penalties judges were already sentencing people to.

The bill also updated the court’s ability to stack offenses like building blocks. Though maximum sentences for various stand-alone offenses might’ve gone down (often because the existing ones were outdatedly high), the new codes defined many more offenses, and degrees of them, enabling courts to put together more proportional and logical sentences. For instance, in cases related to carjackings that also have a violent component, court sentences would more accurately reflect each characteristic of the crime.

The D.C. City Council was simply dusting off old codes and making them more efficient for courts. The updates didn’t even embody the larger shift of resources from overpolicing to community investment actually needed to start making the public safer. But moderate Democrats joined the right-wing charade anyway. Predictably, Democrats are getting no reward from Republicans for playing along; in her remarks today advocating to overturn D.C.’s reforms, Senator Joni Ernst displayed a sign that read “Life in Biden’s America,” depicting a crime scene with a chalk outline, yellow tape and all. Moderate Democrats, led by Biden, betrayed their supposed principles just to embarrassingly lose the politics of it all too.

The Ohio Senate passed a bill Wednesday loosening labor protections for minors, a measure that is likely to become law as Republicans also control the state House and governor’s office.

The bill, which passed 25-7 along party lines, would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work until 9:00 pm any time of the year if they have permission from their legal guardian. Current law prohibits kids under the age of 16 from working between those hours during the school year.

The bill would still limit kids under age 16 from working more than three hours a day on a school day and for more than 18 hours a week during the school year.

Republican backers of the bill argued that the measure would help tackle the workforce shortage seen as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as teach teenagers work ethic.

But Democrats argued that letting kids work wouldn’t address the root of the problem. Senator Kent Smith noted that two million people retired due to the pandemic and have not rejoined the workforce.

Instead, he said, lawmakers should focus on addressing the shortage of child care workers. More than half of the country without access to child care after child care workers quit en masse during the pandemic, according to the Center for American Progress.

“Twenty percent of stay-at-home mothers would enter the workforce if they had child care assistance,” Smith said. “That’s where we need to be targeting our workforce shortage.”

Ohio’s bill comes at a time when U.S. labor protections for minors are at a high-stakes crossroads. On Tuesday night, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a measure that rolls back child labor protections. The new law eliminates one of the state’s only means of oversight for child labor.

Sanders’s easing of child work protections also comes shortly after states including Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Hampshire introduced bills that would roll back child labor protections.

But all of these measures have come alongside a shocking New York Times investigation into a “shadow work force” of migrant children “across industries in every state,” working dangerous jobs that violate existing child labor protections.

The report has outraged labor activists and lawmakers, but apparently that hasn’t stopped state-level politicians from making it easier for children to end up in those roles.