Federal: HR7748

The Railway Safety Act of 2026 (HR 7748) is bipartisan legislation introduced in response to the 2023 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where a train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed and responders burned off the toxic cargo on site, exposing an entire community to known carcinogens in the air, soil, and water. Three years later, families are still sick and local creeks remain contaminated.

The bill addresses the specific failures that produced the East Palestine catastrophe. It establishes new safety standards for trains carrying high-hazard materials, including explosives, flammable gases and liquids, materials toxic by inhalation, and radioactive waste. It creates the first federal standards for wayside defect detectors, the trackside sensors that failed to flag the overheated wheel bearing that caused the derailment. It requires advance notice to states and emergency responders about hazardous shipments moving through their communities. It tightens inspection requirements and increases penalties for safety violations.

Until freight railroads are held to meaningful safety standards, every community along a rail corridor carrying toxic cargo is one overheated bearing away from the same nightmare. Protecting the air American families breathe and the water their children drink from preventable industrial accidents is core to the MAHA mission.

President Trump has called on Congress to include the Railway Safety Act in the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill. Vice President Vance, who represented Ohio in the Senate when East Palestine happened, introduced the original bill. Secretary Kennedy has publicly backed it on public health grounds.