Another Biden scandal is blowing up—this time in East Palestine, Ohio. Newly uncovered emails reveal that the Biden administration knew cancer-causing toxins may have been released into the community following a catastrophic train derailment, even as officials publicly claimed everything was under control.
The disaster began on Feb. 3, 2023, when a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed and burst into flames near the small Ohio town. Among the wreckage were five railcars filled with vinyl chloride—a highly flammable, cancer-causing chemical. Fearing an explosion, authorities ordered evacuations and carried out a so-called “controlled release,” sending a toxic plume into the air and blanketing the area in chemicals the Biden administration knew would pose serious long-term health risks, but the Biden White House nevertheless assured residents they were safe, downplaying the risks and stonewalling concerns in what now looks like a blatant cover-up.
“The occurrence of a cancer-cluster in EP [East Palestine] is not zero,” FEMA recovery leader James McPherson wrote in a March 29, 2024 email to other public health officials—more than a year after the toxic train derailment rocked the community. “As you all are aware, the first 48 hours of the fire created a really toxic plume.”
NewsNation has more:
After officials burned five tankers containing 115,000 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride over East Palestine, residents were sick and crying out for help.
In September 2023, seven months later, President Biden issued an executive order, sending FEMA executive Jim McPherson to East Palestine to assess the community’s unmet needs.
But new documents from FEMA obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show extensive coordination between FEMA, the White House, the National Security Council, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice, voicing serious concerns about health, toxins and the unmet needs of East Palestine following the train derailment.
But publicly, their message was that there was nothing to those concerns.
“It showed that FEMA knew health care was the No. 1 issue,” Lesley Pacey, an investigator with the Government Accountability Project, told NewsNation. “They also knew that they called this plume a really toxic plume. They knew that there would be the potential for cancer clusters.”
The Biden administration infamously refused to provide federal assistance for the environmental disaster… until after President Trump announced his plan to visit East Palestine. A week after the disaster, FEMA’s website did not list it as a disaster and Joe Biden had made no declaration either. In fact, a local TikToker accused the Biden administration of coving up the horrors of the train derailment.
“It is so much worse than what the media is telling any of us,” she said. “I’m getting reports from people that are down there right now, that they’re literally seeing schools of fish floating down streams, rivers, f—ing dead.”
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The TikToker then described a video she got from a friend showing fish floating on top of a river, and said that the water had a “pretty chemical rainbow sheen,” even though the public was being told the water had not been contaminated. “The soil’s been contaminated, the f—ing air is contaminated. You literally are about to see some of the worst f—ing health side effects coming out of people in that town.”
The Biden administration knew.
“A lot of us emailed and called that person and never got through. Eventually, there was something said that he didn’t need our anecdotal reports,” resident Christa Graves told NewsNation.
Pacey said McPherson was “nicknamed by residents as the ghost of October, because they were expecting him to be there in October but never could get a hold of him.”
This email reveals that the FEMA coordinator was told not to engage with residents.
Residents in East Palestine say it is criminal negligence.
“We’re supposed to believe that’s not how our country runs,” Graves said. “And I’m starting to see that’s how our country is always run.”
“Emails of FEMA ignoring a potential cancer cluster breakout in East Palestine, Ohio, under the Biden administration is yet another outrageous example of the gross mismanagement and poor treatment of Americans under the prior administration,” a DHS spokesperson told NewsNation. “Add this debacle to the long list of FEMA failures under Biden, ignoring sexual assault claims in Hawaii, a complete inadequate response to Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to house illegal aliens, including Laken Riley’s killer. This will never happen again under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem.”
The Biden administration may have hoped the people of East Palestine would quietly suffer and eventually forget—but they won’t, and neither will the Trump administration. This scandal, like so many others from the Biden years, is not going to be buried under a pile of bureaucratic emails and government spin. The truth will come out. From the toxic chemical plume to the deliberate public deception, every bit of it will be exposed. The American people deserve answers, and under Trump’s leadership, they’re going to get them. Accountability is coming.
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