WASHINGTON (TND) — There has been some new fallout from the toxic train crash in Ohio. Some Republican lawmakers are now demanding the resignation of the nation’s top transportation official: Pete Buttigieg.
The calls come on the heels of another Ohio train accident — this one near Springfield — where federal safety officials once again had to rush to the site to assess what happened.
“There was no release of any chemical or any hazardous material to the soil, to the air to the water," Anne Vogel, an official with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, told the public on Sunday.
It's supposedly unlike the East Palestine crash where toxic materials endangered residents and sparked hefty amounts of criticism levied against Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for being slow to visit the site personally.
"There's always going to be a lot of politics in this town, and I’m used to that but this is a ‘put up or shut up’ moment where anyone who wants to throw stones for political reasons, especially if they're a lawmaker with actual congressional power to help solve the problem, ought to work with us on that," Buttigieg told Sinclair’s chief political correspondent Scott Thuman.
Republicans have been piling on as of late. Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced legislation to condemn Buttigieg, calling for his resignation over his reaction to the "supply chain crisis, commercial flight crisis, rail worker strike and so much more."
And in the U.S. Senate, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has also asked President Joe Biden to replace Buttigieg in a letter he sent to the White House.
When asked if he had any intention of resigning, Buttigieg said "no, I serve at the pleasure of the president and I'm proud to be doing this work. I'm proud of the work we’ve done already to make railroads safer and the work that we’re going to do to raise the bar even further.”
The popular target and other members of the Biden administration have questioned where these same critics were during President Donald Trump’s tenure.
“There were train derailments in the Trump administration that actually had fatalities that didn't have a visit by train Secretary Elaine Chao,” Fox News anchors pointed out during a recent broadcast.
“Nobody was calling for her to be fired and nobody was calling for what they're calling on Mayor, uh, Secretary Pete. It is pure politics. It is pure political stunts," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last month.
There’s speculation that because Buttigieg surged onto the political scene in 2020 and could once again be a presidential candidate, it has and will continue to make him even more of a target.