Trump, DEI, And The FAA

Questions continue to abound in this horrifying tragedy outside Reagan National Airport, where an American Airlines flight coming from Wichita, Kansas, was struck by a Black Hawk helicopter.

Was this an air traffic control problem? Was this a pilot error issue? All of that is still very much up in the air. There have been near-misses in the past.

A lot of people are now asking why Black Hawk helicopters are operating at night in an area where passenger jets are taking off and landing.

Apparently, near-misses of this sort tend to happen a lot more often than expected. According to Reuters, “U.S. commercial pilot Rick Redfern was preparing to land at Reagan Washington National Airport about a decade ago when he spotted a bright red Coast Guard helicopter hovering about 50 feet (15 m) above the Potomac River. Air traffic control promptly warned the helicopter pilot to stay clear, and Redfern said he used evasive maneuvers to avoid it and avert a potential disaster – and that was in daytime, when visibility was clearer.”

It’s almost unthinkable that this even happened, considering how sophisticated our machinery is now and how sophisticated our ability is to see planes in the air — even at night.

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But to attribute it to anything other than an accident at this point would be to move beyond the available evidence; it’s unclear what caused the crash. Apparently, the black boxes have been recovered, so we’ll have a better window into what was going on aboard the two aircraft before they collided. Army secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll said during a Senate hearing that the crash may prompt the military to reconsider conducting training operations near the Washington, DC airspace.

Yesterday, when President Trump spoke to the press, he brought up the DEI policies of the Obama and Biden administrations that he felt had weakened the air traffic control systems. 

That suggestion made Democrats insane. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, slammed Trump for speculating about DEI issues.

You could make the case that President Trump shouldn’t be talking about DEI and the FAA until we have more details, but I think what Schumer really objected to was the idea that DEI is bad at all. Like all Democrats, he tends to think DEI is good. And it pervaded every aspect of the Biden administration.

As The Washington Times noted:

Years before Wednesday’s fatal collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, critics warned that the Obama and Biden administrations had jeopardized safety by prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion at the Federal Aviation Administration. …

Critics warned that the FAA’s focus on DEI diverted time and resources from air travel safety. It hobbled the agency as it grappled with air traffic controller shortages, antiquated monitoring equipment and an increase in near misses on crowded airport runways, they said. An unidentified source told The Associated Press on Thursday that the air traffic controller in charge of monitoring the airspace at the time of the fatal collision was performing the work of two people.

In other words, because they couldn’t get enough “diverse members” in the FAA, they were simply under-hiring. That meant that they were short-staffed during critical times.

The Times continued:

Air safety concerns prompted 11 Republican attorneys general to write to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker last year to question the administration’s hiring practices and priorities. “Unfortunately, the Biden FAA, under your administration, appears to prioritize virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise. And this calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety,”

That is not wrong. It is true that the Obama and Biden administrations prioritized DEI over safety. The Times added:

The Biden-era FAA website, now scrubbed, said, “The FAA’s mission involves securing the skies of a diverse nation. It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation.” In 2022, the FAA pledged to “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices,” and administration officials assigned long-term goals to amplify diversity, accessibility and LGBTQ issues. A 2022 performance target required that the agency “host a national symposium with internal and external stakeholders to socialize efforts on the use of gender-neutral language at FAA.” …

In 2013, the FAA started using a “biographical assessment” to increase the hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers. The assessment asked applicants about their participation in school sports …

One of the questionnaires circulated by the FAA reportedly awarded points for factors such as having the lowest grade in high school in science — which is psychotic.

There is a lot of heartburn on the Left because Trump is suggesting DEI had something to do with this accident. I can’t name the number of times that Joe Biden came forth right after some sort of school shooting — before any of the evidence was available — to discuss how gun control was obviously the solution.

Here’s the salient point: It is very clear that the FAA has been operating along these lines for a very long time. Regardless of whether this crash was a result of DEI or not, there is a reason why the blowback is coming in that form.

We’ll have to wait and see what the cause of this particular plane crash was, but it is certainly the case that procedures have to change. This is why President Trump took executive action yesterday, signing a memorandum to end DEI practices in the aviation sector and to assess aviation safety, as well as issuing an Executive Order to appoint a new head of the FAA.

Regardless of what led to this crash, DEI procedures must change.

Trump is correct about that.