NEXT: LOYALTY OATHS

Texas lawmaker denounced over ‘racist’ remarks questioning Rep. Judy Chu's loyalty to US



Michelle De Pacina
Fri, February 24, 2023

House Democrats are demanding an apology from Rep. Lance Gooden (R, TX-5) over his “racist” remarks that questioned the loyalty of Rep. Judy Chu (D, CA-27) to the U.S.

In an appearance on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Wednesday, Gooden said that Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, "needs to be called out.”

I question her either loyalty or competence. If she doesn’t realize what’s going on, then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies. I’m really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu would have a security clearance and be entitled to confidential intelligence briefings until this is figured out.

Gooden, who is a third-term Texas Republican representative, believes Chu should be denied access to classified materials and be investigated for previously defending Dominic Ng, the CEO of East West Bank in California, from accusations that he is working with the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

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Ng was appointed by President Joe Biden last year to the chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council.

In a statement released on Thursday, Chu described Gooden’s remarks as “racist.”

Rep. Gooden’s comments on Fox News questioning my loyalty to the USA is absolutely outrageous. It is based on false information spread by an extreme, right-wing website. Furthermore, it is racist. I very much doubt that he would be spreading these lies were I not of Chinese American descent.

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Chu’s democratic allies have rushed to Chu’s defense and demanded an apology from Gooden.

On Friday, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D, WA-1), head of the Democrats’ campaign arm, noted the importance of holding political colleagues accountable for “racist” statements, particularly anti-Asian rhetoric.

At a time when anti-Asian hate continues to threaten communities, it’s critical that we condemn these racist and xenophobic attacks immediately and hold our fellow colleagues accountable to rid our politics of such dangerous statements and hatred.

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY-8) also called out Gooden and pointed out his own “disloyalty” for siding with the majority of House Republicans for voting to overturn the presidential election results in favor of former President Donald Trump in 2021.

Lance Gooden’s slanderous accusation of disloyalty against Rep. Chu is dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic. Congressman Gooden appears to sympathize with violent insurrectionists and spreads big lies to the American people, having voted not to certify the election of President Joe Biden. Look in the mirror, Lance. You have zero credibility.

Gooden then responded, “Rather than following facts that indicate the presence of Chinese espionage, Chu and Jeffries are playing the race card in a sick display of disloyalty to our nation.”

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The dispute comes as lawmakers in both parties take steps to limit the power of Beijing in global affairs. Beijing’s influence has become an urgent matter due to China’s ties to Russia and the concerns that Beijing might aid Moscow amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Rep. Judy Chu hits back at Texas Republican over 'racist' remarks questioning her loyalty to U.S.



Zoë Richards and Scott Wong
Thu, February 23, 2023 

Rep. Judy Chu, the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, blasted GOP Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas on Thursday over his comments this week questioning her loyalty to the U.S.

Chu, D-Calif., issued a statement in response to Gooden's remarks in a Fox News interview Wednesday night, when he suggested Chu should not have a security clearance or access to classified briefings. Chu had defended Dominic Ng, a Biden appointee featured in an article by the conservative Daily Caller that alleged Ng has ties to a Chinese Communist Party front group.

"Rep. Gooden’s comments on Fox News questioning my loyalty to the USA is absolutely outrageous," said Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress. "It is based on false information spread by an extreme, right-wing website. Furthermore, it is racist. I very much doubt that he would be spreading these lies were I not of Chinese American descent."

Gooden said in the interview, “I think that Judy Chu needs to be called out.”

“I question her either loyalty or competence. If she doesn’t realize what’s going on, then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies,” he said. "I’m really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu would have a security clearance and entitled to confidential intelligence briefings until this is figured out."

Daily Caller publisher Neil Patel defended the article in a statement, saying: “It was well researched, fairly reported and based largely on direct Chinese language source materials. Rep. Chu is lashing out wildly instead of engaging substantively since she can’t refute the facts presented.”

Gooden, a third-term lawmaker who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, was joined Feb. 15 by five other House Republicans in asking the FBI to investigate Ng, the CEO of East West Bank in California, whom Biden appointed last year to be the chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council.

Chu and other members of the Asian Pacific American Caucus — Democratic Reps. Grace Meng of New York, Ted Lieu of California and Mark Takano of California — fired back at their GOP colleagues two days later in a joint statement.

"As with every presidential appointee, Dominic Ng, who is Chinese American, has undergone an extensive vetting process and sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution and serve the American public," they said. "No Chinese Americans—indeed no Americans—should face suspicions of disloyalty or treason based on their ethnicity, nation of origin, or that of their family members."

Federal Election Commission records show that Ng has donated to various Democratic congressional candidates, including Lieu, as well to the Biden Victory Fund and the Democratic National Committee in recent years.

Asked on Fox News whether Chu should be "looked into" in light of her defense of Ng, Gooden said, “I think everyone that's standing up for China’s Communist Party should be looked into, yes."

He added that he believed Chu had acted as a “ringleader” and dragged along “the other Chinese American members” of the caucus in supporting Ng.

Lieu and Meng are Taiwanese American, and Takano is Japanese American.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., castigated Gooden in a statement Thursday.

“Gooden’s slanderous accusation of disloyalty against Rep. Chu is dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic,” Jeffries said.

Gooden stood by his comments Thursday, saying, “Rather than following facts that indicate the presence of Chinese espionage, Chu and Jeffries are playing the race card in a sick display of disloyalty to our nation.”

A spokesperson for East West Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Democrats erupt with fury after Republican questions ‘loyalty’ of Rep. Chu



Mike Lillis
Fri, February 24, 2023 

House Democrats are up in arms after a GOP lawmaker suggested Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), the nation’s first Chinese American congresswoman, is disloyal to the United States.

Rep. Lance Gooden, a third-term Texas Republican, suggested this week that Chu should be denied access to sensitive classified materials — and investigated — after she defended Dominic Ng, President Biden’s selection to lead U.S. trade interests in Asia, from accusations that Ng is working on behalf of communist leaders in Beijing.

“I question her either loyalty or competence,” Gooden told Fox News on Wednesday. “If she doesn’t realize what’s going on then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies.”

Chu issued a statement Thursday calling Gooden’s remarks “racist,” and her Democratic allies in the House are now rushing to Chu’s defense and demanding an apology from Gooden.

“At a time when anti-Asian hate continues to threaten communities, it’s critical that we condemn these racist and xenophobic attacks immediately and hold our fellow colleagues accountable to rid our politics of such dangerous statements and hatred,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), head of the Democrats’ campaign arm, said Friday in a statement.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also blasted Gooden, suggesting the Texas Republican was disloyal himself for siding with the majority of House Republicans who had voted in 2021 to overturn the presidential election results in favor of President Trump.

“Lance Gooden’s slanderous accusation of disloyalty against Rep. Chu is dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic,” Jeffries said Thursday in a statement. “Congressman Gooden appears to sympathize with violent insurrectionists and spreads big lies to the American people, having voted not to certify the election of President Joe Biden. Look in the mirror, Lance. You have zero credibility.”

Gooden quickly responded by doubling down and accusing both Jeffries and Chu of disloyalty.

“Rather than following facts that indicate the presence of Chinese espionage, Chu and Jeffries are playing the race card in a sick display of disloyalty to our nation,” Gooden said in an email.

The accusations are reminiscent of the Republicans’ charges against another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), whose association with a suspected Chinese spy in 2014 led Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to block Swalwell from serving on the Intelligence Committee this Congress.

The controversy swirling around Ng, a wealthy banker and Democratic donor whom Biden appointed last year to represent the U.S. on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), began earlier this month when the Daily Caller News Foundation reported allegations that Ng was tied to a pair of “front groups” gathering intelligence for the Chinese Communist Party.

The report sparked an outcry from Gooden and other Republicans, who are demanding an FBI investigation into Ng and questioning the vetting process that preceded Biden’s decision to appoint him to APEC. In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the Republicans suggested Ng may have violated the Espionage Act.

The GOP letter prompted its own response from Democratic leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, headed by Chu, who issued a statement last week defending Ng as a patriotic American being smeared by Republican “profiling.”

“No Chinese Americans — indeed no Americans — should face suspicions of disloyalty or treason based on their ethnicity, nation of origin, or that of their family members,” the Democrats said.

Aside from Chu, the statement was also endorsed by Reps. Grace Meng (N.Y.), Mark Takano (Calif.) and Ted Lieu (Calif.), the vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus.

That defense prompted Gooden to go after those Democrats during his Fox News appearance on Wednesday, when he characterized Chu as “the ringleader” who “drug along” the other three signatories.

“We’re standing up to communist China and these Democrats’ first reaction is to come to their defense and call us all racists,” Gooden said. “I’m really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu would have a security clearance and be entitled to confidential intelligence briefings until this is figured out.”

The tense back-and-forth comes as lawmakers in both parties are taking steps to limit the power and influence of Beijing around the world — an effort that’s grown more urgent given China’s ties to Russia and the mounting concerns that Beijing might expand its assistance to Moscow amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

–Updated at 11:54 a.m.

 The Hill.

3 contenders running to replace Sturgeon as Scottish leader

CAN'T TELL THE PLAYERS APART WITHOUT A PROGRAMME

This combo shows from left, lawmaker Ash Regan, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, who have all secured sufficient backing to put their names on the ballot to be the next SNP leader and Scottish first minister, Feb. 24, 2023. (Jane Barlow/Andrew Milligan/PA via AP) 

JILL LAWLESS
Fri, February 24, 2023 

LONDON (AP) — Three members of the Scottish parliament will battle to become leader of the governing Scottish National Party, officials said Friday after the deadline for nominations closed.

Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and lawmaker Ash Regan are running to replace First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. She announced her resignation last week after eight years as leader of Scotland and the pro-independence SNP.

The party said all three passed the threshold of at least 100 nominations from 20 or more local party branches.

Voting by party members for the new leader, who will also become first minister, will open March 13, with a winner announced on March 27.


Forbes was considered the frontrunner, but dented her chances when she said this week that her faith would have prevented her from voting in favor of allowing same-sex couples to wed. Forbes, who belongs to the evangelical Free Church of Scotland, was not yet a lawmaker when the Scottish Parliament legalized same-sex unions in 2014.

Several SNP lawmakers withdrew their support from Forbes following her marriage comments, though others praised her for being open about her faith.

Forbes and Regan both oppose legislation championed by Sturgeon that would make it easier for people in Scotland to legally change their gender.

The gender recognition bill has been hailed as a landmark by transgender rights activists, but faced opposition from some SNP members who said it ignored the need to protect single-sex spaces for women, such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

The party’s next leader will have to decide what to do about the divisive bill, which has been passed by the Scottish parliament but blocked by the U.K. government

The winner will take charge of Scotland’s semi-autonomous government and of a party that came to dominate Scottish politics under Sturgeon. But Sturgeon failed in her main goal of taking Scotland and its 5.5 million people out of the United Kingdom, and attempts to secure a new referendum on independence have reached an impasse.

Scottish people voted to remain in the U.K. in a 2014 referendum that was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. The SNP wants a new vote, but the British government has refused to authorize one, and the U.K. Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland can’t hold one without London’s consent.

Who could replace Nicola Sturgeon and where they stand on key issues

Dominic Penna
Thu, February 23, 2023 

Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes, and Ash Regan SNP Scotland First Minister leadership race - Jane Barlow/PA Wire/Paul Campbell/Ken Jack/Getty Images

Three candidates have now entered the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and Scotland’s First Minister.

Kate Forbes, a devout Christian and the country’s current Finance Secretary, formally announced her candidacy on Monday.

Over the weekend Humza Yousaf, the SNP health secretary who is the favoured choice of Ms Sturgeon, entered the contest and is widely seen as a continuity candidate.

Bookmakers, who had initially made Ms Forbes the favourite in the race, now believe Mr Yousaf is by far the most likely to succeed Nicola Sturgeon.

The shift in support came after Ms Forbes admitted she would have opposed gay marriage when it was voted for in 2014. Mr Yousaf, although a practising Muslim, has said he supports gay marriage.

Going up against Ms Forbes and Mr Yousaf is Ash Regan, a backbench MSP who is seen as an outsider having quit her frontbench role to vote against plans to reform transgender laws.

This is how Ms Sturgeon’s potential successors stack up on the biggest issues facing Scotland including independence, gender and the current wave of public sector strikes.

Independence

Despite the splits between the SNP and Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, Ms Regan has insisted they would be welcome at an independence summit held as soon as she became leader.

She has insisted any majority for independence-supporting parties at an election, either in Westminster or Holyrood, should be seen as a mandate for independence.

Gender

Ms Regan resigned as a community safety minister over Ms Sturgeon’s proposed gender law, which would allow 16-year-olds to self-identify without needing a medical certificate.

She has vowed to ditch the reforms, telling the Sunday Mail as she launched her leadership campaign: “Women’s rights will never be compromised with me.”

Insisting she would “never vote for anything that would put women and girls in danger”, Ms Regan also suggested she could change the rules around trans prisoners after the Isla Bryson case.

Benefits

Ms Regan insisted in her leadership campaign announcement that it was vital for the Government to provide support to Scots amid the current economic headwinds.

“People expect a First Minister to concentrate on boosting the economy, creating jobs and helping them deal with the cost of living crisis,” she said.

Public sector pay

Ms Regan has said relatively little about public sector pay. In line with other SNP MSPs, she backed the Government’s four per cent pay uplift offer to health workers in the run-up to the 2021 election.

Net zero

Ms Regan is currently a member of Holyrood’s net zero, energy and transport committee.

She previously said Scotland had “a moral duty to future generations to tackle climate change now” and voiced support for the objective of reaching net zero by 2045.

Humza Yousaf

Independence

Mr Yousaf has said that while he has a full plan for achieving a second referendum on independence, he does not share Ms Regan’s belief in treating a Holyrood poll as a de facto referendum.

He insisted it was time to talk about “policy” rather than “process”, adding: “Let’s get back to the basics of growing our support for independence and talking about the policies.”

Gender

Mr Yousaf has pledged to continue to fight for Ms Sturgeon’s controversial gender reforms.

He came under fire in 2021 for refusing to say how many genders the Scottish Government believed there were, insisting it was important to be “inclusive, particularly of non-binary persons”.

However, during his time as justice minister, Mr Yousaf submitted an amendment to the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill which looked to exempt “criticism of matters relating to transgender identity”.

Benefits

Mr Yousaf has been vocal in his support for an extensive welfare programme north of the border.

In 2019, he wrote on Twitter: “I am a taxpayer – and yes, I’m lucky to have a good salary and rightly pay more tax because of it. Either you believe in universal benefits, funded by progressive taxation, or you believe in means-tested benefits. I know which one I prefer.”

Public sector pay

Mr Yousaf, the SNP’s Health Secretary, insisted there was no money left to increase NHS pay deals following a series of walkouts.

Nonetheless, he submitted a request for extra funds to cover pay rises, which was rejected by Westminster, and views the trade unions’ demands as “not unreasonable”.
Net zero

Mr Yousaf defended the extra £5 million allocated by Holyrood to its climate justice fund last November, despite saying there was no extra money to pay nurses.

He told broadcasters: “People in the Global South are suffering tragedy [and] they might not have food or shelter. Taking money away from them, and reinvesting it back in Scotland, you can make that argument if you wish, but it’s not one I subscribe to.”

Kate Forbes

Independence

Launching her campaign, Ms Forbes insisted she could not “sit back and watch our nation thwarted on the road to self-determination”.

She insisted it was important for the party to “reach out” to its members and beyond in order to “persuade others of the merits of the independence” – suggesting it would be a medium-term priority, rather than an immediate focus.

Gender

Ms Forbes was on maternity leave when Holyrood voted through Ms Sturgeon’s gender reforms and during the subsequent row with Westminster.

She was one of 15 SNP politicians to sign a letter in 2019 that urged the leadership not to rush plans to overhaul the Gender Recognition Act.

The letter warned that “conflating sex with gender identification affects a wide range of policy and service delivery”. Ms Forbes, an evangelical Christian, faced backlash from some in her own ranks over her position.

Benefits

As Finance Secretary, Ms Forbes has overseen Scotland uprating benefits by six per cent. Last year, she called on Rishi Sunak, the chancellor at the time, to increase all social security benefits in line with inflation.

In May 2022, the Scottish Government also confirmed an extra £22.9 billion on social security to raise devolved welfare spending.

Public sector pay

Ms Forbes’s stint as Finance Secretary saw her take key decisions around public sector pay, defending a three per cent pay rise in 2021 despite unions branding it a “slap in the face”.

The Scottish Government has offered a £568 million package to NHS workers in an attempt to end an ongoing nurses’ pay dispute.

Net zero

Ms Forbes has insisted private sector firms must take “meaningful, tangible action” to help Scotland achieve its net zero goals.

She has also said those objectives cannot be met without the Scottish Government levering in private investment.

Illinois Jeep plant idling Tuesday will cost 1,200 jobs. 

An auto town will become a ghost town


Robert Channick, Chicago Tribune
Fri, February 24, 2023 

BELVIDERE, Illinois — When the whistle blows at the Belvidere Assembly Plant on Tuesday, it may signal the end of an era.

For nearly six decades, the massive auto plant has been the economic engine of the small river city near Rockford, churning out everything from the Plymouth Fury and the Chrysler New Yorker to the Dodge Dart.

But after several years of downsizing and dwindling demand for its current product, the Jeep Cherokee, Stellantis is idling the plant “indefinitely,” laying off the last 1,200 workers and perhaps closing it for good.

“Everyone’s on edge,” said Kevin Logan, president of UAW Local 1268, which represents the remaining plant workers about to be laid off. “It’s going to be catastrophic for this community.”

The Belvidere plant became the exclusive home for the Jeep Cherokee in 2017. The region’s largest employer at its zenith, the plant had 5,464 workers on three shifts at the start of 2019, after building 270,000 of the SUVs during the previous year. But the plant has been in dramatic decline since then, slashing jobs and eliminating shifts as demand for its sole product waned.

Last year, Jeep Cherokee sales fell 55% to 40,322 vehicles, according to Stellantis.

Stellantis was created by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Peugeot of France in January 2021. Like many automakers, Stellantis is gearing up to convert from combustion engines to electric vehicles. It is aiming to have EVs account for 50% of all U.S. sales by 2030.

Sources said Belvidere was lined up to transition to an electric vehicle plant, specifically the new STLA large EV platform for the next generation Charger and Challenger. Instead, Stellantis announced in June the vehicles will be built in Windsor, Ontario, dashing the hopes of Belvidere boosters and dealing a major blow to the state’s EV manufacturing ambitions.

Stellantis is also building a $5 billion battery plant in Windsor.

“It was a big slap in the face,” said Logan, a lifelong Belvidere resident and 29-year plant veteran. “They were dangling the carrot in front of us and pulled it away. I rack my brain several times every day, driving myself crazy trying to figure out what is the fate of this facility, why is the company doing this and what is their endgame.”

In December, Stellantis announced the indefinite layoffs and the plant idling. The final shift is scheduled to punch out Feb. 28, the 5-million-square-foot auto plant will go dark and Belvidere will face an uncertain future.

For Belvidere, a city of 25,000 rising up from farm fields about 75 miles northwest of Chicago, the fear is palpable.

“Everyone’s talking, ‘is it going to be a ghost town in Belvidere?’ ” said Patty Ibraimi, owner of Uncle John’s Family Restaurant, a longtime local gathering spot. “It’s definitely going to be an issue if they don’t reopen.”

Most of the workers at the Belvidere plant are hourly employees who could be eligible for a combination of state unemployment and supplemental unemployment benefits. There will be no severance package, but Stellantis will “make every effort to place indefinitely laid off employees in open full-time positions as they become available,” Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said in an email.

That could mean uprooting for plants in Ohio, Michigan or points more distant. Workers who decline the transfer offer lose all their unemployment benefits, retaining only their seniority if Belvidere reopens under Stellantis, Logan said.

Those terms were part of a four-year UAW contract set to expire in September. Stellantis can’t permanently close the Belvidere plant until then, potentially leaving the laid-off workforce in limbo until the automaker decides its fate.

Stellantis could use Belvidere as a bargaining chip in union negotiations by agreeing to put a product back in the plant in return for other concessions, according to industry analysts. That vehicle is unlikely to be the next-generation Jeep Cherokee, which is headed to the Stellantis plant in Toluca, Mexico, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, a Pennsylvania-based research firm.

The Toluca plant is also home to the Jeep Compass, which moved there from Belvidere in 2017 to make way for the Cherokee. Stellantis would not confirm where the Cherokee will be built going forward.

“We will make an announcement regarding the next generation Jeep Cherokee in due course,” Tinson said.

Fiorani said Belvidere will likely remain idle until at least September. Down the road, Fiorani sees a dearth of products that could go to the Belvidere plant after it missed out on the STLA EV platform.

Belvidere is the only one of a dozen Stellantis plants in North America without a product in the pipeline, Fiorani said. All of the plants, he said, will eventually produce EVs.

Stellantis provided a glimpse of that EV future at the Chicago Auto Show in February, where the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV concept car was on display along with the last of Charger and Challenger gas-powered muscle cars.

The Illinois auto manufacturing industry also includes Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, the Rivian EV plant in Normal and Lion Electric, a startup building EV buses and trucks in Joliet, as well as a handful of parts suppliers.

The state has been aggressively pursuing EV development, enacting legislation in an effort to get manufacturers and suppliers to locate in Illinois, with decidedly mixed results. It has been lobbying hard for Stellantis to electrify the Belvidere plant.

Seeing the Stellantis EV platform, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment head to Canada while Belvidere sits idle was not part of the state’s development playbook.

“I certainly don’t like the idea of an indefinitely idled plant,” said Dan Seals, CEO of Intersect Illinois, the state’s public-private economic development arm. “I want them to be able to retool it and use it for EVs. Just having it sit there out of use, that’s the worst outcome from my perspective.”

Seals said Stellantis is “still trying to figure out if there’s an option” to power up the Belvidere plant after it closes in March. He cited the existing workforce, infrastructure and cost efficiencies of converting it to an EV plant as a compelling case for Stellantis, or another automaker.

The state has already received an inquiry from a site consultant, Seals said.

“I think you’re going to find a lot of interest in that site,” Seals said. “There’s a lot of demand for sites just like the one that we’ve got in Belvidere.”

Illinois is beefing up its financial incentives to lure or keep automakers in the state in the wake of Stellantis’ decision to idle the plant.

In February, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Invest in Illinois Act, which created a $400 million “closing fund” to incentivize EV manufacturers and other businesses to locate, expand or remain in the state through favorable financing.

The 2021 Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act incentivizes EV manufacturers to locate in the state through tax credits. The legislation was amended in December — 10 days after Stellantis announced it was idling the Belvidere plant — upping the incentive to 75% of state income tax for automakers that retain employees as they transition to EV production.

Last month, the legislation was renamed the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois Act and expanded to incorporate renewable energy projects.

Illinois is still lagging behind neighboring states such as Michigan, which approved a $1 billion economic incentive fund in December 2021 aimed at EV manufacturing development. Last year, Michigan attracted more than $14 billion in electric vehicle and battery investments, according to the state.

“The incentive conversation is one place where we’re at a disadvantage,” Seals said. “But at the end of the day, incentives are just one of many factors about why a company locates.”

The center of the Illinois EV ecosystem is Rivian, which bought an idled Mitsubishi plant for $16 million in 2017, completed a $1.2 billion renovation and breathed new life into Normal, a college town about 130 miles south of Chicago.

California-based Rivian launched production in September 2021. It now has 7,000 employees building an electric pickup truck, SUV and Amazon delivery van in a formerly vacant, 3.3 million-square-foot auto plant.

Rivian has struggled to ramp up production, narrowly missing a downwardly revised target of 25,000 vehicles last year. It had 114,000 electric pickup trucks and SUVs on back order as of November.

Canadian EV truck manufacturer Lion Electric invested $70 million to convert a 900,000-square-foot Joliet warehouse into a factory to produce up to 20,000 electric commercial trucks and buses a year. The first EV school bus rolled off the line in November, and the company has more than 2,000 on order, Lion spokesman Brian Alexander said.

Lion, which is in line to receive $7.9 million in state tax credits if it meets investment and job creation goals, has about 100 employees, with plans to hire 1,000 workers as it ramps up to full capacity over the next four years, Alexander said.

“We expect it to be the largest dedicated medium- and heavy-duty EV truck manufacturing facility in the country,” Alexander said.

It remains to be seen whether the Belvidere Assembly Plant will undergo a similar EV transformation under Stellantis — or another automaker — after the factory goes dark in March.

For Belvidere, industrial roots run as deep as the abundant farm fields that surround it. Beyond a quaint downtown straddling the Kishwaukee River, where colorful murals adorn the sides of its brick buildings, a factory has long loomed large.

Belvidere’s previous manufacturing giant, the National Sewing Machine Co., set up shop in 1886 and was one of the region’s largest employers for more than half a century, with about 2,000 workers at its peak. It closed in 1957 and most of the expansive factory, which took up 26 acres, including an iconic tower and foundry, was demolished.

“The factory was huge,” said Anna Pivoras, executive director of the Boone County Museum of History in downtown Belvidere. “There’s only just a couple of vestiges left of it.”

In 1965, Chrysler turned Belvidere into an auto town when it opened the assembly plant, with a white Plymouth Fury II sedan the first vehicle to roll off the line. Over the years, the plant was retooled several times, making everything from the compact Dodge Neon to the full-size Chrysler New Yorker.

During Chrysler’s bankruptcy in 2009, the plant was down to 200 employees before Fiat and a government bailout rescued it and the company.

By 2012, fresh off a $700 million investment to gear up for production of the Dodge Dart, Fiat Chrysler’s chairman, Sergio Marchionne, visited the plant to announce the addition of a third shift and 1,800 workers.

The plant’s future seemed secure when it became the exclusive home for the Jeep Cherokee in 2017. It was soon hitting on all cylinders, with more than 5,000 workers building 270,000 of the SUVs in 2018.

But Fiat Chrysler eliminated the third shift in 2019, downsizing 1,400 workers out of a job amid declining demand for the Cherokee. Then the pandemic hit, disrupting production with closures and supply chain issues.

Stellantis took the keys to the factory at the start of 2021. The plant was mostly closed from March through October of that year due to the semiconductor shortage. When production resumed in November, the plant was down to one shift and about 2,100 employees.

The ranks were thinned by smaller cuts last year, dwindling to 1,350 workers before Stellantis announced the indefinite idling in December.

Within days, that employee count will be zero.

Pam Lopez-Fettes, executive director of Growth Dimensions, the economic development organization for Belvidere and Boone County, said about 2,000 jobs will be lost from the plant’s idling, including layoffs at nearby suppliers such as Syncreon.

The impact, she said, will stretch far beyond Belvidere, with the workforce coming from a 70-mile radius.

While she is hopeful that Stellantis, or another automaker, will restart the auto plant, she believes the area is less dependent on the plant than it used to be.

“Belvidere, Boone County has diversified,” Lopez-Fettes said. “We have very strong distribution and logistics that’s growing, and we also have food processing that is growing.”

In the broader Rockford region, the aerospace industry is now the largest employer, followed by logistics and advanced manufacturing. Lopez-Fettes said she has already been contacted by a number of area manufacturing businesses looking to hire displaced autoworkers.

The imminent plant idling is nonetheless causing some anxiety at Uncle John’s Family Restaurant, a Belvidere fixture since 1992.

“We all thrive on that huge plant,” said Ibraimi, 46, who grew up in Belvidere and began working at her family-owned restaurant when she was a teenager. “They’re a big part of the community, we have a lot of people that work there. When they’re working, they’re eating, they’re going out. And for them to close completely, it’s devastation for the town and the businesses.”

The restaurant launched just before the Plymouth and Dodge Neon in 1994, which boosted employment and created a steady base of customers for the restaurant. Business slowed during the Great Recession, and whenever the plant was down for retooling

The arrival of the Jeep Cherokee in 2017 was a boon for Boone County and the restaurant, which completed an extensive remodeling last summer. Then came the December plant idling announcement from Stellantis.

“We’re already feeling it a little bit because they’re getting ready to close,” Ibraimi said. “We have regulars that work there, but you’re not seeing them as much. They know they’re getting ready to get laid off.”

One of those getting laid off is Ibraimi’s brother, a 20-year plant veteran who left the family restaurant business for a job on the assembly line. In a city of 25,000, it’s hard to find someone who isn’t related to a current or former worker at the auto plant.

While Belvidere and the state’s economic development organizations continue to make the case for Stellantis to turn the lights back on at the plant, the company remains noncommittal.

“The company is working to identify other opportunities to repurpose the Belvidere facility,” Tinson said. “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Inside the Boone County Museum of History is a white, four-door Plymouth Fury II sedan. Cordoned off by a white chain stanchion, a large sign proudly proclaims the rear-wheel drive sedan the “1st Car Built Here.”

The car, which carried a sticker price of $3,206.90 — including extras such as an AM radio, an electric clock and undercoating — was minted July 7, 1965.

“The Plymouth Fury is the first car off the assembly line,” said museum director Pivoras. “It is the most popular artifact in our entire museum — we’ve had people travel here just to see it. It’ll always be here.”

Many locals are hoping it won’t be joined by a Jeep Cherokee circa February 28, 2023, as the last vehicle built in Belvidere.

What to know about H5N1 bird flu in humans as a girl dies in Cambodia and her father tests positive

Catherine Schuster-Bruce
Fri, February 24, 2023 

A strain of bird flu, H5N1, can transmit between humans but it's rare.

Peter Garrard Beck/Getty Images

A girl has died in Cambodia from bird flu, health officials said.


The girl's dad is infected, but we don't know if he caught it from her.


Experts have said the risk of the virus spreading among people is low.

An 11-year-old girl has died in Cambodia from bird flu, health authorities in the country said.

The girl initially fell ill with a high fever and cough on February 16 and later died in the National Children's Hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, on Wednesday, the authorities said, per Reuters.

The case comes amid an outbreak of bird flu that has lead to the deaths of more than 200 million birds worldwide since early 2022, either from disease or mass culls, the World Organisation for Animal Health told Reuters.

The bird flu strain "H5 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A" or "H5N1" has infected 868 people since it was first detected in humans in 1997, and 457 of those confirmed cases died, according to the World Health Organization. Officials in Cambodia said that the girl was the first human case in a Southeast Asian country since 2014, per Reuters.

Officials believe that the young girl caught the virus from dead wild birds or animals near her home in the Prey Veng province in south Cambodia, close to the border with Vietnam — 22 chickens and three ducks were found dead nearby, per The Telegraph.

Officials have taken samples from those birds as well as at least 12 people who came into contact with the girl, according to Reuters. As of Friday, the girl's father had tested positive for the virus, but we don't know how he caught it.

Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, UK, told the Science Media Centre on Friday that human infections are rare, and the likelihood of onward human to human transmission was "very low."

"There is always a risk of human infection, particularly in people in close contact with poultry or wild birds, and this risk increases during times where circulation of avian influenza is particularly high, as it is now," he said.
Humans don't usually catch bird flu, but it can be deadly

H5N1 causes fever, cough, and then can rapidly progress to respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome — a life-threatening condition when fluid builds up in the tiny air sacs in the lungs — and multi-organ failure, according to the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. It states that 50% of people who catch it die, but that figure can vary between countries.

James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK, told the SMC that many people will have been exposed to H5N1 in recent years, but only a few had caught it.

"This one case in itself does not signal the global situation has suddenly changed," he said.

Ball said that the risk to humans is still "very low."

Experts, including Ball and Wood, told the SMC that H5N1 needs to be closely monitored, in part due to recent reports of it infecting mammals like sea lions in Peru.

"There are two ways H5N1 can change – the mutations it accumulates itself over a period of time, or the mutations it develops as it links with other species," David Heymann, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,UK, told The Telegraph.

But he cautioned that "no one can say the risk is low, high or intermediate," because a mutation or "spillover" from another species was an unpredictable, "chance event."

"By far the most likely scenario for H5N1 is that nothing happens right now," Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, UK, tweeted on Friday.

What is bird flu? 11-year-old girl in Cambodia dies from virus

Health agencies are modelling potential human-transmission scenarios for the H5N1 virus based on the Covid pandemic and the 1918 influenza outbreak

Harriet Sinclair
·Trending News Reporter
Fri, February 24, 2023 

Bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe in the most recent outbreak among poultry. (Reuters)

An 11-year-old girl has died from bird flu in Cambodia, after contracting the first known human case of the H5N1 virus in the country since 2014.

The girl became ill on 16 February and died on Wednesday, according to the country's health ministry. Her father has since been confirmed to have contracted the virus and 11 other people who came into contact with the child are being tested.

The case has put other countries on high alert for human cases of the virus, which has resulted in the deaths or culling of more than 200 million birds around the world.

Although the virus has spread rapidly among the UK's avian population, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said there is "no evidence so far that the virus is getting better at infecting humans or other mammals".


Girl, 11, dies in Cambodia after catching bird flu, government says (The Independent, 2-min read)
What is bird flu?

Avian influenza, otherwise known as bird flu, is categorised as influenza A H5N1. The virus has spread widely in birds around the world since 2021 but has thus far resulted in very few infections in humans.

According to the European Centre of Disease Control the virus is a "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus", meaning it has a high mortality rate among infected poultry.

The 2021/2022 epidemic has been among the worst recorded in Europe, and the UKHSA is currently looking into potential response scenarios should the virus begin to transmit to humans more widely.

The agency is currently assessing whether the lateral flow devices used to detect COVID could be used to test for the H5N1 virus in humans, and has been monitoring people who have come into contact with infected birds.

Arturo Casadevall, the chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins University in the US, which supplied widely used coronavirus tracking data, said information on whether the 12 suspected new infections in Cambodia would be key.



The UKHSA is currently modelling several different potential scenarios of human transmission - one based on the recent coronavirus pandemic, and one based on the 1918 flu outbreak, whose fatality rate was higher.

In a potential scenario with a higher fatality rate, people could see "significant behavioural differences relative to the recent pandemic experience", UKHSA said.

Dr Meera Chand, incident director for avian influenza at UKHSA, said: "The latest evidence suggests that the avian influenza viruses we’re seeing circulating in birds do not currently spread easily to people.

"However, viruses constantly evolve, and we remain vigilant for any evidence of changing risk to the population, as well as working with partners to address gaps in the scientific evidence."

Bird flu: Health officials draw up COVID-style model looking at pandemic possibilities (Sky News, 3-min read)

Bird flu situation 'worrying'; WHO working with Cambodia


Fri, February 24, 2023
By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON (Reuters) -The World Health Organization is working with Cambodian authorities after two confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu were found among one family in the country.

Describing the situation as "worrying" due to the recent rise in cases in birds and mammals, Dr Sylvie Briand, the director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters in a virtual briefing that WHO was reviewing its global risk assessment in light of the recent developments.

The U.N. health agency last assessed the risk to humans from avian flu as low earlier this month.

Cambodian authorities on Thursday reported the death of an 11-year old girl due to H5N1, and began testing 12 of her contacts. Her father, who had been showing symptoms, has also tested positive for the virus.

"The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans," Briand said. "WHO takes the risk from this virus seriously and urges heightened vigilance from all countries."

Briand said it was not yet clear whether there had been any human-to-human transmission, which was a key reason to focus on the cases in Cambodia, or if the two cases were due to the "same environmental conditions," likely close contact with infected birds or other animals.

A new strain of H5N1, clade 2.3.4.4b, emerged in 2020 and has been causing record numbers of deaths among wild birds and domestic poultry in recent months. It has also infected mammals, raising global concerns.

However, unlike earlier outbreaks of H5N1, which has been around for more than two decades, this subtype is not causing significant illness in people. So far, only about a half dozen cases have been reported to the WHO in people who had close contact with infected birds, and most of those have been mild. Experts have suggested that the virus might need to change in order for human transmission to occur.

However, WHO said it was stepping up preparedness efforts regardless, and noted that there were antivirals available, as well as 20 licensed pandemic vaccines if the situation changes, although they would have to be updated to more closely match the circulating strain of H5N1 if needed.

That could take four to five months, said Richard Webby, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St. Jude Children's Hospital. However, some stockpiled vaccines would be available in the meantime.

WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus, which manufacturers can use to develop new shots if needed. A global meeting of flu experts this week suggested developing another strain that more closely matches H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, Webby told the briefing.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; editing by Jon Boyle, Jason Neely and Tomasz Janowski)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BIRD FLU 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for H5N1 

US judge won't block huge lithium mine on Nevada-Oregon line

A federal judge has sided again with the Biden administration and a Canadian-based mining company 


Melissa Boerst, a Lithium Nevada Corp. geologist, points to an area of future exploration from a drill site at the Thacker Pass Project in Humboldt County, Nev., Sept. 13, 2018. On Friday, Feb. 24, 2023, a federal judge sided again with the Biden administration and a Canadian-based mining company in a fight with environmentalists and tribal leaders trying to block a huge lithium mine in Nevada near the Oregon line. (Suzanne Featherston/The Daily Free Press via AP, File)

SCOTT SONNER
Fri, February 24, 2023

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal judge has sided again with the Biden administration and a Canadian-based mining company in a high-stakes legal battle with environmentalists and tribal leaders trying to block a huge lithium mine in Nevada near the Oregon line.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno denied the opponents' request Friday for an emergency injunction to prohibit work at the largest known lithium deposit in the nation until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear their latest appeal.

Her ruling clears the way for Lithium Americas' subsidiary Lithium Nevada to begin construction as early as next week at the mine they say would speed production of raw materials for electric vehicle batteries critical to combatting climate change.

Opponents say the mine would destroy key wildlife habitat and sacred cultural treasures, harm groundwater and pollute the air.

The conflict is driven largely by what Du described Friday as “tension” between environmental and economic trade-offs associated with efforts to speed the transition from fossil fuels emitting greenhouse gases to cleaner, renewable energy sources. It also wades into evolving legal interpretations of the reach of a 150-year-old mining law that could eventually prove more onerous to mining companies.

Her new ruling marks the third time in two years she has refused to grant injunctions sought by the conservationists, Native American tribes and a Nevada rancher who lives near the mine 200 miles (322 kilometers) northeast of Reno.

Opponents argued in their request for an emergency court order last week that without it, the developer would begin to rip up a high-desert sea of sagebrush that holds some of the most critical habitat still intact for the dwindling sage grouse in the West.

Du said she denied the latest request because she concluded the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on an appeal challenging her Feb. 6 ruling that found the Bureau of Land Management complied with federal law — with one exception — when it approved plans for the Thacker Pass mine in January 2021.

Du said in Friday’s 11-page ruling that she understood when she issued her decision earlier this month that it meant “Lithium Nevada could start construction on the project, and thus disrupt the sagebrush ecosystem within the project area.”

“The court indeed expects that Lithium Nevada unfortunately will soon begin ripping out sage brush that will not grow back for a very long time,” she wrote.

Du said the government and Lithium Nevada argue that the project will “on balance, be environmentally beneficial because the lithium produced from the mine will enable various clean technologies.”

“And there is, if nothing else, a tension between the macro environmental benefit that could result from the project and the micro (relatively speaking) environmental harm that will likely flow from" allowing the mine to go forward, she said. “This court does not resolve that tension here.”

The environmentalists' latest challenge centered on the reach of mining rights claimed under the 1872 Mining Law to neighboring lands where a developer plans to dispose of waste rock and tailings — in this case, 1,300 acres (526 hectares) where waste would be dumped from an open pit mine as deep as the length of a football field.

Last year, in a potentially precedent-settling ruling, the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that voided the Forest Service's approval of Rosemont Copper's mine in Arizona because the service failed to establish — or even consider — whether the company had valid rights where the waste dump was planned.

Both the service and the Bureau of Land Management long have maintained the same mining rights automatically extend to such lands.

Du said in her Feb. 6 ruling she was adopting the 9th Circuit's new standard, but instead of vacating BLM's approval of the Thacker Pass mine, she directed the agency to go back and determine whether such rights exist on the neighboring land.

Opponents of the mine said that instead of allowing BLM to revisit that matter and “fix its error,” she should have ordered a “wholesale re-evaluation” of the entire mining project.

Because the company has no rights to dump waste on the neighboring lands, BLM “approved what is now essentially half a mine,” they said in their final brief filed Thursday.

Without an injunction, Lithium Nevada “will consider itself free to blast and excavate the mine pit, construct the sulfuric acid processing plant and build other facilities on thousands of acres of public land, to produce waste rock and tailings with nowhere to legally put them,” they said.

Du said Friday she allowed BLM to revisit the matter partly because the 9th Circuit's latest interpretation of the law came more than a year after the agency approved the Thacker Pass mine, and partly because of the “serious possibility that BLM could fix its error.”

Analysis: Decree adds to doubts about Mexican lithium industry's future


 Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signs a decree for the nationalization of lithium, in Bacadehuachi

Fri, February 24, 2023 
By Carolina Pulice

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican government's latest move to tighten control over its potentially lucrative lithium reserves fails to resolve the puzzle of how it can lure needed private industry expertise while keeping most profits for state coffers.

Last Saturday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signed his latest presidential decree on lithium, establishing a more than 900-square-mile (235,000 hectare) lithium mining zone in northern Sonora state, stating that existing concessions within it "remain safe."

But the order also declared "no mining activity can be carried out related to lithium" within this area.

The decree could pave the way for Mexico's newly-created state-run company to get exclusive rights to exploit local reserves of the white metal, coveted by rechargeable battery makers across the globe, sector experts and analysts said.

"It's counterintuitive to declare (lithium) as reserved for the state, but that the concessions already granted will be respected," said Fernando Quesada, a lawyer with extensive experience working on extractive projects in Mexico.

He added that the new decree could mean the government may use its power of expropriation as a tool to force negotiations with companies that already have concessions in the zone, like Chinese lithium miner and battery maker Ganfeng, which controls Mexico's most advanced lithium project.

Last year, Lopez Obrador's allies in Congress enacted a sweeping lithium nationalization aiming to ensure that Mexico can profit from surging demand for the ultra-light metal, which is needed to power future fleets of electric vehicles.

Since he took office in late 2018, Lopez Obrador has rejected new private investment in oil and gas, including even joint venture partnerships between state-owned Pemex and would-be private producers. He may view lithium the same way, with some experts describing the politics of the metal as echo of his broader state-centric approach regarding commodities deemed strategic.

Armando Alatorre, a geologist and lithium expert, said the latest decree could lead to further changes for existing concessions, and he argued that establishing a new legal mining area superimposed over existing mining concessions is a recipe for confusion.

"It creates a lot of uncertainty for investors," he said.

Neither Lopez Obrador's office or Mexico's economy ministry, which was part of the decree, responded to a request for comment.

Created last August, state-run LitioMx will likely launch further exploration efforts in the new mining zone, BTG Pactual analysts said in a research note. But they said it remains unclear if those efforts will be carried out alone or in partnership with private players.

"It is reasonable to expect that the locations just defined may be awarded to LitioMx," according to the research note.

Studies suggest Mexico may hold some 1.7 million tonnes of lithium, but those deposits are mostly trapped in clay-based soils.

To date, no commercial-scale lithium extraction from clay soils has been deployed, meaning the Mexican deposits will likely require new technology, extra investment and perhaps on-site processing plants.

BTG Pactual stressed that LitioMx lacks the necessary "capacity, technology, or mining know-how."

Such plants would require a significant spending commitment given their complexity, said energy and mining analyst Ramses Pech.

He emphasized the need to minimize political risks associated with the government's latest decree, if Mexican lithium has any hope of transforming its raw potential into a thriving industry with a long-term horizon.

"They have to give you certainty that the reserves they're granting, that you'll be able to keep exploiting them for years to come," he said.

(Reporting by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Alistair Bell)

Carbon-removal companies launch group to lobby U.S. government on policies



Thu, February 23, 2023 
By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 20 companies in the burgeoning carbon removal industry on Thursday launched a coalition that will lobby the U.S. government for new policies to help commercialize the nascent technology, which has received a flood of private investment in recent years.

The CRA will represent companies developing technologies to remove carbon emissions, buyers of credits from carbon removal projects and groups supporting the development of the field, creating a unified industry voice in policy discussions with lawmakers and government officials.

For years, technologies such as direct air capture, which extracts carbon emissions from the ambient air, had been seen as fringe ideas. But after the passage of the federal infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, investors have been pouring millions into the emerging field.

Under those bills, the U.S. government has committed to spend more than $580 billion to support the development of carbon dioxide removal technologies through grants, technical support and tax credits for start-up companies and investors.

"Together, we will work to realize the potential of the trillion-dollar carbon removal industry — catalyzing innovation, creating high-quality jobs, driving economic development, and ensuring we achieve our climate goals," the CRA said in a statement.

No large-scale direct air-capture projects are operational in the United States, though some projects are underway. The two main types of carbon dioxide removal involve chemical processes like direct air capture or enhance existing natural processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere such as planting trees.

As of 2021, carbon removal companies only permanently stored fewer than 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide, "orders of magnitude below the billions of tons" needed to be removed and stored to keep the world on track to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels - the level scientists say can stave off severe climate disruptions.

Giana Amador, founder of carbon removal NGO Carbon 180, will head up the CRA. Member companies include DAC start-ups Sustaera, Climeworks and Heirloom.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Leslie Adler)

5 unanswered questions on East Palestine derailment after preliminary NTSB report



Zack Budryk
Thu, February 23, 2023 

The National Transportation Security Board (NTSB) issued its first preliminary report Thursday on the Feb. 3 derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

While the report seemingly faults an overheated bearing for the derailment, the NTSB investigation is ongoing, and a number of questions remain.

Here are five remaining questions about the train derailment:

1. Did the tank car design contribute?

In the preliminary report, the NTSB said it has decontaminated the train cars that contained hazardous material, which included vinyl chloride. Exposure to the substance, which is used for production of plastics, has been linked to higher rates of liver and lung cancer.

NTSB officials said they have removed and examined the top fittings from the cars that contained the substance, and those fittings will be sent to Texas for further testing.

2. What was the role of rail regulations or lack thereof?

Public safety advocates have frequently pointed to the Trump administration’s delay of a 2015 rule, vocally opposed by railroad companies, that would require the use of more modern electronically-controlled pneumatic brakes.

Although the Transportation Department has said the rule would not have prevented the East Palestine disaster, both Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and President Biden have pointed the finger at the railroad lobby for deregulation and its potential role in the accident.

3. Are there still environmental hazards?

The NTSB noted in its report that it is not involved in “air monitoring, testing of water quality, environmental remediation, or evacuation orders” relating to the disaster. Much of this falls under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has taken over the response. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said last week that the agency will require Norfolk Southern, which operates the railroad, to assume financial responsibility for all cleanup efforts.

While the EPA and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) have said water in the area tested as safe to drink, they recommended drinking bottled water, and state officials have reported at least 3,500 fish have died in surrounding waterways.

4. Was the controlled burn the right move?

DeWine ordered an evacuation of the area days after the derailment. Shortly after, concerned about a potential explosion due to the presence of flammable compounds, first responders conducted a controlled burn. In its preliminary report, the NTSB listed “venting and burning of the vinyl chloride” as an ongoing subject of investigation. A number of lawsuits have been filed in the meantime alleging the controlled burn exacerbated hazards, including a complaint by local injury firm Morgan & Morgan claiming it has contributed to locals’ health problems.

5. How long will it take to determine the exact danger?

Many of the potential risks associated with environmental disasters — from cancer to developmental issues — can take months or years to become apparent and will require ongoing investigations by both the NTSB and the EPA.

Regan and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) have urged residents to continue testing their homes’ air quality, and Brown has also said he is working to ensure Norfolk Southern does not manipulate residents into waiving their right to sue.

Another unknown is any possible risk to the surrounding areas, not just other parts of Ohio but the other side of the state line as well. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) told NPR this week that Norfolk Southern’s response has “given the middle finger to the good people of Pennsylvania and Ohio” and that testing of western Pennsylvania water is ongoing as well. “We’ve seen no concerning readings yet, but we’re going to continue to test for months and months and months, if not years,” he said.

Four systemic safety issues the East Palestine crash report may point to



Saul Elbein
Fri, February 24, 2023 

A new report on the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, points to several possible systemic safety issues that advocates and safety experts say go well beyond this specific crash.

The preliminary report released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the runaway overheating of a ball bearing in one of the train’s wheels caused it to careen off the tracks.

Rail bearings are small in comparison to the size of a freight train, weighing about 80 pounds.

But when they overheat, they can cause a great deal of damage. Historically, bearing failures have been a leading cause of train crashes, according to research from the University of Illinois, though last year they caused just 1 percent of derailments.

Federal regulators, advocates and safety experts suggest the crashes could point to broad issues with federal regulations and the methods America’s freight railways use to detect and respond to overheating car wheels. Here are four possible problems they’ve raised.

The speed of the detection system

“Roller bearings fail. But it’s absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a Thursday press conference.

Railroads like Norfolk Southern, the company that operated the train that derailed in East Palestine, rely on a network of temperature sensors every 10 to 40 miles. These are placed along rail lines to catch rising wheel temperatures before they reach the critical point at which breakdown is imminent.

Homendy pointed to one potential weakness in that network: the distance between its sensors. “Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred. But that’s something we have to look at,” she said.

Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg echoed these concerns in comments from East Palestine when he singled out the detectors as “something that needs to be looked at to try to prevent things like this from happening again.”

In the case of train 32M, which ultimately derailed in East Palestine, the NTSB report found that the train passed through two of these wayside hot-bearing detectors.

Those registered the train’s wheel temperature as hotter than average — but still below the “warm bearing” threshold that would have triggered an automatic inspection, let alone an emergency stop.

By the third detector, it was too late. Railside sensors noted that one of the wheels had soared to 253 degrees Fahrenheit above average and transmitted an alarm over the engine’s radio warning the crew to stop at once. At that point, the crew began emergency braking.

Emergency braking is far more aggressive than a train’s usual controlled stop — so violent that the force of the sudden braking can be enough to derail a train all by itself. By the time the train stopped, 38 cars had derailed — 11 of which carried hazardous materials.

Federal regulations — or the lack thereof

The report comes out amid charged and often conspiratorial speculation about the role the nation’s rail safety policies played in the crash.

“We’ve been saying the same thing about a degrading safety culture for the past five years,” AFL-CIO transportation department head Greg Regan told The Hill.

Regan and his colleagues pointed to federal data showing that the rate of incidents per train mile has doubled at Norfolk Southern since 2013 — and the rate of total accidents and accidents per mile also sharply increased.

Rail critics have specifically highlighted what they say is a lack of adequate braking regulations in the wake of the East Palestine derailment. Rail industry lobbying weakened an Obama-era push to require new-model electro-pneumatic brakes — which cause railcar wheels to stop all at once, rather than in a slow backward cascade from the engines — to a simple mandate restricted to oil trains and other high-hazard flammable trains, as The Lever reported.

Under the definitions adopted at the time, train 32M would not have needed to use the advanced brakes — even had the Trump administration not withdrawn that requirement in 2018.

In proposed rail safety reforms released on Tuesday, Buttigieg called on Congress to strengthen braking rules and said his agency was considering its actions on the topic.

Christopher Barkan, who runs the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center at the University of Illinois, some of whose research has been supported by the Association of American Railroads, argued that the new brakes were “a red herring.” The Federal Railway Administration withdrew its Obama-era rule because studies from agencies like the Government Accountability Office failed to verify that the brakes would make a substantial difference in safety.

Research over the past decades has shown that the brakes were more effective — but not substantially so, Barkan said. Had Norfolk Southern train 32M had the brakes, the crash “would have been slightly less severe,” he said. “The last car to derail wouldn’t have derailed — but that car wasn’t the problem.”

The electro-pneumatic brakes are “a band-aid” that would have been little use in this situation, said Constantine Tarawneh of the rail safety department at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

The bigger problem, his research suggests, is that a bearing can go from warm to on fire in just a couple of minutes — a system that the national trackside detection system simply isn’t set up to head off.

How train companies respond to warnings

Other critics pointed to another problem regarding the detectors: human crews have to make snap judgment calls about what to do with their alerts.

Sometimes that means ignoring them. Norfolk Southern is unusual among the Class I freight railroads in that it allows controllers to disregard warning signs rather than immediately stopping a train for inspection, a report by ProPublica found.

Last October, a Norfolk Southern train passed through a hot bearing detector with a wheel reading too hot — something the Norfolk Southern dispatcher reportedly told them to disregard.

Twenty miles later, that train derailed, spilling molten candle wax across Sandusky, Ohio.

Norfolk Southern says it has invested more than $200 million to install about 1,000 hot-bearing detectors, generating more than 2 billion readings each year.

But “in the absence of regulation, there’s no cause for the railroad to comply with any of the information these defect detectors provide,” John Esterly of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen told Ohio lawmakers this week.

Regan of the AFL-CIO concurred, noting that the NTSB report “leads us to believe that there is room for improvement surrounding Norfolk Southern’s use of these detectors.” He told The Hill that his union would publish proposals for how best to use the detectors shortly.

Norfolk Southern representatives defended the company system in a statement on Thursday, which noted that the company’s sensors trigger a cockpit alarm at temperatures “among the lowest in the rail industry” and that while all detectors in the vicinity of the accident were operating normally, it would be inspecting all of its nearly 1,000 sensors.

“Once the rail crew was alerted by the wayside detector, they immediately began to stop the train,” the statement noted.

What triggers the detection system

But Tarawneh argued that those looking to blame the speed of the detectors or the railways’ responses had missed a far more significant problem with the system. He says the sensors — which track heat — are looking at the wrong factor.

“Bearings are like humans,” he said. “What is the first sign you’re getting sick? Not temperature. You start sneezing — first comes noise.”

It’s the same with a bearing, he said. “Vibration increases first, not the temperature.”

As a bearing breaks down, wheel lubricant fills the new pits and pockets opening on its surface — reducing the friction that would otherwise cause heat to spike.

Until that is, the bearing is fatally compromised. “When things happen, they happen very quickly — in 1-2 minutes,” Tarawneh said. “Within a mile, the bearing could catch fire.”

Adding to the difficulty of the snap judgment call is the fact that the data is ambiguous. The trackside sensors can’t pick up absolute wheel temperature. Instead, they assemble a map of the train’s average heat — from which proprietary algorithms pick out specific outlier points where a problem may be developing.

This system presents rail controllers like those working for Norfolk Southern who are seeing elevated wheel temperatures with a tough choice, Tarawneh said: Stop the train and cause costly traffic delays based on an uncertain reading, or keep going and risk a potential disaster.

Tarawneh has a dog in this fight: his lab has developed an acoustic sensor that picks up on the vibrations as a bearing begins to grind itself apart — something he says would allow technicians to foresee a failure 50,000 miles in the future.

But that is investment companies have been reluctant to make, Tarawneh charged. The U.S. also has a system of acoustic sensors and accelerometers that could have caught such a problem early — but with “only about 30 in the entire U.S., some bearings will go entire lives never passing through one,” Tarawneh said.

Barkan of the University of Illinois noted that rail safety is generally moving toward more proactive and predictive solutions, allowing companies to schedule repairs at leisure.

Tarawneh’s device — currently in use on a railway company pilot project — might predict bearing failure better than the trackside detectors, he said.

“But here’s the challenge: there are 1.5 million freight cars, with about eight wheels per car. That’s 12 million of these detectors are needed, and a lot of information to process, and reliability to consider.”

Such an increase in data would also bring a corresponding rise in misfires and false positives, he noted — causing more train delays.

Representatives of the Association of American Railroads pointed to another problem — rail companies don’t generally own the cars they transport, which are far more likely to belong to leasing or shipping companies. That limits the companies’ ability to make unilateral safety upgrades.

Tarawneh brushed these concerns off. Companies haven’t gone with the safer technology “because no regulation says you have to do it,” he said.

Between 2016 and 2020, federal statistics showed that derailments cost railroads an average of $10 million per year — less than the cost of avoiding them, he said. “In every conference, people tell me ‘$10 million is nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket.’ Yes, it is — but not for the people of East Palestine.”

The Hill.