bret: breaking tonight the effort to avoid a disaster involving commercial airlines. there have been several very close calls lately we told you about them yesterday. today the held a safety summit to come up with solutions. mark meredith leads us off from reagan national airport. good evening, mark. bret, good evening to you. the top aviation the skies are safe. after a number of near misses and close calls, including one at this airport just last week, the government is also examining if more can be to avoid potential disasters. we have seen an uptick in serious close calls that we must address. transportation secretary pete buttigieg kicked off today s aviation safety summit with a warning. more mistakes than usual are happening across the system, on runways, at gates when planes are pushing back, in control towers and on flight decks. the government says it s investigating six runway incursions this year alone, including one at washington s reagan airport 8
take it somewhere. and what the federal e.p.a. has made hard to do is to actually get the toxic dirt out of east palestine in the first place. i hate to say it, bret, i think this is all about politics. i think when a blue state doesn t want to take the stuff, they get approval from the biden administration, when a red state doesn t want to take stuff they find a much less willing ear. bret: is there something legislatively can be done railway safety act of 2023. you have got advanced notice of hazardous cargo, mechanical defect detectors, higher violation fines, minimum two person crews goes on and on as a proposal. is that something? yeah, this is a piece of legislation i have co-authored got senators rubio and holly from the republican side and democrats as well. i think it s a very good piece of legislation. two big things we have to do better on rail safety, bret. first of all, when you have firefighters going in to fight a toxic fire caused by a train derailment, they have