Even as divers were struggling to bring the victims’ corpses to the surface of the icy Potomac on January 30, Donald Trump plodded into the White House briefing room to cast blame. Rather than wait for the results of an investigation of the midair collision between a commercial jet and a military helicopter that killed 67, he chose to share his own “very strong opinions and ideas” of its cause.
Trump did not cite the chronic underfunding and short staffing of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the mandatory overtime and six-day work weeks that many air traffic controllers endure to maintain safety amid the world’s highest volume of flights above the United States, or the recent addition of more flights to the already packed airspace of Reagan National Airport (DCA) at the insistence of powerful politicians and airlines. Instead, he focused blame on federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Under Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the recently departed transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, he alleged, incompetent controllers were accepted if they filled diversity goals. Trump assured the press that his administration would hire only those possessing “the highest level of genius,” no matter “what they look like.” He was unable to defend that accusation, of course. When pressed for evidence, he cited only his “common sense.” And, when pressed further on whether DEI played a role in the crash, he admitted, “It may have, I don’t know,” before shifting some blame to the helicopter crew. After the press conference he signed another directive mandating that the FAA end all DEI efforts, including one he initiated in his first term.
It would be difficult to imagine a scene more thoroughly illustrative of the advanced moral decay of today’s Republican Party than what transpired this week, especially when one measures Trump’s actions against those of the president after whom DCA is named.
Forty-three years ago, Ronald Reagan reckoned with an air disaster of his own, involving another crash into the Potomac. On January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90, its fuselage encrusted with ice, failed to gain altitude after taking off from DCA during a snowstorm, clipped vehicles on Washington’s 14th Street Bridge, and crashed into the river, killing 74. That was a dicey event for Reagan, for the DCA control tower was understaffed that day due to his recent firing of more than 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) for staging an illegal strike—a walkout waged in part over safety and long workdays. The banning of those strikers led to a fatal 50-minute wait between Flight 90’s deicing and its takeoff, as a skeleton crew of controllers struggled to move traffic in a storm.
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Had Reagan blamed the strikers for that crash, he would have reinforced growing public unease about his decision to ban even those who renounced PATCO and begged for a second chance from returning to work. So, rather than cast blame, Reagan elevated a hero. At his State of the Union address that year, he praised federal worker Lenny Skutnik, who sat next to the first lady in the visitors’ gallery, for bravely jumping into the icy Potomac to rescue one of Flight 90’s five survivors. By citing Skutnik’s heroism, Reagan effectively shielded himself from any blame. That shrewd move inaugurated a political tradition: Every president since then has basked in the reflected glow of everyday American heroes strategically placed in the gallery for that purpose.
If Reagan avoided accountability in part by lifting up Skutnik, Trump’s graceless blamecasting seems less likely to divert attention from his own culpability. By raising his obviously baseless DEI contention, which he was unable to defend to the press, Trump has invited increased scrutiny of the significant role that he and his allies have played in bringing our air traffic control system into its current state of growing precarity.
The number of air traffic controllers declined in each year of Trump’s first presidency. Then Trump plunged air traffic controllers (and other federal workers) into uncertainty during the 2018-19 government shutdown, which forced controllers to work without pay—a major blow to their already battered morale. That shutdown only ended, it should be remembered, when enough New York area controllers called in sick to ground flights on the east coast.
The Biden years saw a slow rebuild of controller ranks. But warning signs of a systemic crisis were growing. Training of new controllers was disrupted by the Covid pandemic, and staffing shortages continued. A spate of near-misses led the FAA to convene a unusual “safety summit” on March 23, 2023, to discuss solutions, and the office of Department of Transportation Inspector General Eric J. Soskin completed a 2023 audit that found that 20 of the FAA most critical facilities 26 (77 percent) were below the 85 percent minimum staffing levels and supervisors were mandating overtime and six-day work weeks to cover staff shortages. Biden’s FAA hired 1,811 controllers in 2024, and his 2025 budget sought funding to hire 2000 more.
Trump’s return to the presidency has already been a setback for air safety. He fired DOT inspector general Soskin, who illuminated the extent of the FAA’s staffing problems. Trump’s White House alter ego Elon Musk succeeded in driving Biden’s FAA administrator, Mike Whitaker, from office even before Trump was sworn in because Whitaker’s FAA had the temerity to fine SpaceX for safety violations. Musk even went so far as to claim that “humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” That Trump’s FAA intends radical changes seems clear. Astonishingly, his letter encouraging federal workers to resign their positions and find private sector jobs went to air traffic controllers despite the continued staffing crisis at the nation’s airports.
Reagan’s belief that “government is the problem” initiated a long, tragic deterioration of respect for government workers, including those who keep our skies safe. But Trump’s “deep state” conspiracy theories and obsession with DEI are doing far graver harm, reducing the right’s antigovernment discourse to authoritarian theater and farce. Make no mistake, these recent events are a harbinger of what is to come. Trump’s effort to deflect attention to DEI should not avert our eyes from the larger collision that threatens the very functioning of our government unless we make a course correction.
