The recent train derailment and hazardous chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, may be due partly to a mistake in federal Department of Transportation guidelines.

According to officials, the train's cargo was mislabeled and lacked the "high hazardous waste" warning toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride are supposed to carry.

Unfortunately, neither people living near the crash who have been getting sick and seeing their animals die nor the wider public has been given much information by the DOT or its leader. The reason is that Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been elsewhere mouthing woke "equity" claptrap and thus is too busy to pay any attention to actual transportation problems since he first took office.

At a forum this week, Buttigieg spoke not a single word about the toxic disaster in Ohio. But he had lots to say about the need to throw white construction workers out of their jobs.

"We have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you've got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them, but everyone in the hard hats on that project, doing the good paying jobs, don't look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood," Buttigieg said.