FAA Leader Quit Before D.C. Plane Crash—Thanks to Elon Musk

The administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Michael Whitaker, resigned from his position on January 20 after repeated demands from Elon Musk that he quit, leaving the agency without a Senate-confirmed leader during a major crisis in the wake of the D.C. plane crash.

Musk called for Whitaker’s resignation in September after the FAA chief proposed fining Musk’s company SpaceX over $600,000 in civil penalties for failing to follow license requirements during two launches in 2023. Whitaker told a congressional panel at the time that fines were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”

The tech CEO and fascism enthusiast repeatedly attacked Whitaker from his X account, claiming in one post that the FAA was “harassing SpaceX.” Musk also replied to an X poster who said the FAA “should not exist” and attacked Whitaker for preventing his goal of colonizing Mars.

“The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” Musk posted in a reply to Australian YouTuber Marcus House.

FAA administrators typically serve for a five-year term, but Whitaker only served for one year, replacing Trump appointee Stephen Dickson in 2022. Whitaker had been confirmed by a bipartisan 98–0 Senate vote in October 2023.

On Wednesday, a commercial American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter above Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., killing everyone on board both aircraft.

Since January 20, the head of the FAA has been deputy FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau, who was only sworn in last week, giving him a stiff learning curve early on the job.

When Whitaker announced in December that he would resign, he told FAA staff in an email, “The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public.” Wednesday’s disaster will certainly raise questions as to whether something went wrong in air safety protocols and whether disruption at the agency contributed to the crash.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) sparked a terse discussion of vaccine safety, pushing at least one Republican to set the record straight on the genuine science behind the jab.

Opting to lecture rather than question Kennedy over the course of several minutes, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—an ophthalmologist—claimed that it’s unclear what the root of conditions such as autism or schizophrenia are, and that they, by all means, could be caused by vaccines.

“There isn’t proof that the vaccines cause it, that’s true,” Paul said. “But we don’t know what causes it yet. So shouldn’t we be at least open-minded? We take 72 vaccines. Could it be?”

He also went on to point his finger at the hepatitis B vaccine, claiming that a jab to prevent the sexually transmitted illness shouldn’t be required for infants.

“I waited on the hepatitis B vaccine until my kids went to school. Does that make me a horrible person?” Paul said. “Is there science to say you shouldn’t do it? Probably not but it’s my kid.”

But that prompted Senator Bill Cassidy, the committee chair, to jump in with the facts on the deadly and incurable disease.

“For the record, if a child is born to a hepatitis B mother, that child may have a 95 percent chance of becoming a chronic carrier,” the Louisiana Republican, a physician, said.

“And we vaccinate those people, nobody is against that,” interjected Paul. “That’s a very small percentage—95 percent of children don’t have a hepatitis B mom, and could they wait a while?”

“Again, for the record, if a mother’s hepatitis B status is known, then that can be delayed. But the problem is that a significant percentage of the time, the mother’s status is not known. If she’s positive, a vaccine on day one of life prevents chronic hepatitis B 95 percent of the time,” Cassidy retorted.

“So it really depends on the knowledge of the mother’s hepatitis B status, and when they used to just ‘okay we know the mother’s status,’ there were mothers who snuck through whose status was unknown,” Cassidy continued. “For the record, there is an absolute rationale for that.”

A crash between a U.S. Military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane late Wednesday elicited the first rift between official White House messaging and Donald Trump’s personal tirades.

Shortly after the accident occurred, the White House issued an official statement from Trump, projecting a restrained and presidential image of the MAGA leader, shaped with authority and sincerity of tone. It was, by all accounts, remarkably similar to an official release by any other executive branch leader.

“I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport,” Trump’s statement on official White House letterhead read. “May God Bless their souls. Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.”

But just a couple of hours later, a more familiar and uncensored version of Trump was back online with a flurry of questions that only stoked the confusing situation.

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” the forty-seventh president wrote on Truth Social overnight. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”

That was, obviously, not kosher with the White House. Shortly afterward, Trump shared the White House version of the post on his page as well.

The pair of aircraft collided just outside of Reagan National Airport just outside of Washington. The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet operated by a subsidiary of American Airlines, was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members at the time of the crash, according to American Airlines CEO Robert Isom.

Critics have pointed to an executive order–initiated federal hiring freeze as a potential tension point for the Federal Aviation Administration, at a time when the vast majority of the country’s air traffic control sites are understaffed.

It is currently not clear whether the FAA was directly affected by the order, which provided allowances for roles described as “public safety professionals.”

After marketing himself as the peacemaker president, Donald Trump sure seems set on starting some new wars. 

During an interview on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime Wednesday night, Trump’s unqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke about the president’s outlandish designs to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal—leaving the door open for military intervention in both cases.  

“Is the Defense Department ready for Panama, because it seems like Panama is not really playing ball?” Watters asked. “Do you have a message for the Panamanians?”

“We’ll see,” Hegseth replied. “The president has been clear about the fact that there’s a neutrality treaty as it pertains to the Panama Canal, and if they don’t allow for free and unfettered access that can’t be shut down by other countries, then we have the right—we retain the right—to do what is necessary to make sure there is free navigation in the Panama Canal.

“President Trump has said that will be the case. The Defense Department is prepared—so I don’t want to get ahead of what we may or may not do. Strategic uncertainty is an important thing,” Hegseth said. “But we will have freedom of navigation in the Panama Canal, whether that involves the Defense Department or not.”

As Hegseth spoke, the Fox News chyron read, “‘All Options on the Table’ to Take Panama Canal.”

Hegseth had a similarly vague answer when asked about Trump’s plans for Greenland, but this one was so effusive about the president that it ended up just sounding like nonsense.

“We’re hearing rumors that Denmark’s now spending $2 billion on additional defense and France is considering sending troops,” Watters said. “Are our allies really going to do that?”

“I don’t think so, Jesse,” Hegseth said. “The president recognizes how strategically significant Greenland is, even if other people didn’t for a very long time! So now, those countries who were supposed to be charged with protecting it, making sure Chinese interests aren’t there, are suddenly flocking of interest because President Trump, as he has across the globe, has reshaped the game. 

“So, we’ll end up seeing what happens there. We understand how critical it is to the Arctic, how much the Chinese would love access to the minerals. So, stand by to stand by. We’re watching it, and we’ll see what happens.”

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, when asked whether he would follow Trump’s outlandish orders to invade Greenland or Panama, Hegseth replied, “I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander,” and declined to give details on “what orders the president would give to me in any context.”

“That sounds to me that you would contemplate such an order to basically invade Greenland, and take over the Panama Canal,” replied Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii. 

Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that would defund schools that teach kids about “critical race theory” or gender.

The executive order “prohibits federal funding of the indoctrination of children which includes radical gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom.” 

“On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” Trump said on the campaign trail.  

Critical race theory is a basic historical analysis of the social dynamics of this country, and has been part of educational curriculums for years. Republicans have recently latched on to it as a touchstone in their culture war, alleging that it only serves to make white students feel sad and uncomfortable when presented with facts.

It is unclear how the Education Department will go about determining which public schools are CRT schools and which aren’t. 

Trump also goes after gender in his order, stating that local and federal officials should “file actions against teachers and school officials who sexually exploit minors or practice medicine without a license through ‘social transition’ practices.” 

The president has ordered all this before his education secretary and former WWE executive, Linda McMahon, has even had a confirmation hearing.

Last week, just days after his inauguration, Donald Trump eliminated the membership of a key committee that handles aviation security. And on Wednesday night,  a passenger plane collided with a military helicopter in the Washington, D.C., area. 

On Tuesday, January 22, the Aviation Security Advisory Committee’s members received a memo from the Trump administration saying that the Department of Homeland Security was getting rid of the membership of all advisory committees in a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.” At the same time, Trump also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

Congress mandated the aviation committee in 1988, after the PanAm Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. After Trump’s move, the committee technically continues to exist but has no members to examine safety issues in airlines and airports. Its membership consisted of key groups in the aviation industry, from major unions to representatives from major airlines, as well as a group associated with victims of the PanAm bombing. 

Throughout its existence, the committee’s recommendations were adopted into air travel procedure. It was out of commission for more than a week until Wednesday’s disaster. No survivors were reported in the crash between American Eagle Flight 5342 heading to D.C. from Wichita, Kansas, and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. 

The D.C. fire chief has said that recovery is now underway, as bodies are pulled out of the Potomac River. With many of Trump’s executive orders and policy memos disrupting the normal function of government, could this disaster have been prevented by a competent administration? 

House Republicans are fielding threats from their party whip: Bend to Donald Trump’s agenda, or risk losing your seat.

In an interview with NOTUS on Tuesday, Majority Whip Tom Emmer candidly shared his strategy for getting legislative outliers to fall into place.

“Do you really want the president going to your district and telling your voters that you are the one that is preventing him from doing what he was elected to do? I don’t think so,” Emmer told NOTUS.

Trump has a tough path ahead of him when it comes to advancing his agenda through the 119th Congress. Republicans have just enough lawmakers in the House to constitute a simple majority—but they won’t be able to lose any votes on items that Democrats rally against. Meanwhile, Republicans have a slightly more comfortable lead in the Senate, where the conservative party holds 53 seats compared to Democrats’ 45.

But should GOP lawmakers find problems in any legislation advanced by Trump’s MAGA acolytes in the House, Emmer believes that they’ll come to discover that the sacrifice of compromising on their ideals in order to aid Trump will all be worth it.

“Are they all going to be happy with everything? I seriously doubt it,” Emmer told NOTUS. “But at the end of the day, when that final product is ready, they’re all going to vote for it.”

Emmer’s statement is a signal that Trump’s expectation of total loyalty has crept from the White House and seeped into another branch of government.

That common denominator carried more weight than practically any other quality as the forty-seventh president selected dozens of nominees to lead different agencies, nearly all of whom had previously lent a hand to Trump in his criminal trials, donated money to his political campaign, or helped build out one of his presidential transition playbooks, such as Project 2025.

They have, in turn, consistently yielded to the president’s demands and expectations throughout their confirmation hearings over the last two weeks. When asked if he would obey the Impoundment Control Act, Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget (and Project 2025 architect) Russell Vought claimed that the law was unconstitutional and that he would defer to the Trump administration as to whether his office would act in accordance with the law.

U.S. attorney general nominee (and former Trump attorney) Pam Bondi weaseled her way out of answering whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Trump’s confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wouldn’t commit to not cutting Medicaid. (Project 2025, the fiscal year 2025 Republican Study Committee budget plan, and the fiscal year 2025 House budget all propose sweeping cuts to the wildly popular program that provides comprehensive health insurance to some 72 million Americans.)

In October, transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick promised that a government equipped with total allegiance to the chief Republican was on its way.

While explaining how Trump’s last administration buckled under the weight of staff turnover due to disagreements in “vision,” Lutnick said that the new agenda was to eradicate any internal hostility to the Republican’s plans.

“They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity—and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man,” the Wall Street billionaire said at the time.

Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday that goes after the specter of antisemitism, giving the federal agencies powers to identify, punish, and deport foreign nationals allegedly prejudiced against Judaism and Jewish people.

The order’s language places an emphasis on “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals,” as well as “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” The Forward reports. The order calls for the deportation of foreign nationals who are “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses,” a clear threat to international students who have participated in pro-Palestine protests.

The order additionally calls for the United States to “ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States” do not “support designated foreign terrorists,” which is vague enough to justify severe action from the Trump administration. The order places particular emphasis on what it calls “the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and streets” since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which sparked the more than year-long brutal war on Gaza.

In October, Republicans in Congress floated punishing universities and colleges allowing pro-Palestine protests by revoking their accreditation and jeopardizing their federal funding. Trump has already taken aim at higher education institutions in his deluge of executive orders with one provision that would investigate diversity, equity, and inclusion “discrimination” at “institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion,” which could be used against racial and religious groups on campuses that support Palestinian rights and protest against Israel.

Many of Trump’s executive orders directly align with goals outlined in the conservative Project 2025 manifesto, and some of the same right-wing minds behind the manifesto at the Heritage Foundation have also crafted “Project Esther” to target pro-Palestine activists.

Project Esther specifically calls for deporting foreign students if they take part in pro-Palestinian activism, and during his campaign, Trump pledged to “deport pro-Hamas radicals” to end protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Most protesters, however, are U.S. citizens. This latest executive order is straight from the Project Esther playbook, and could be the first of many to blatantly violate First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze has somehow become even more of a fiasco—and he has his press secretary to thank.

Twenty-three state attorneys general appeared in federal court in Rhode Island Wednesday to oppose the Office of Management and Budget’s memo freezing federal funding for grants and loans that Congress had already approved and passed.

Ahead of the hearing, the OMB issued a memo rescinding its original memo about the freeze. White House aides said that the decision to rescind the memorandum was not intended as a way to back off the funding freeze, but rather to sidestep another court’s injunction that was issued Tuesday night, according to CBS News’s Jennifer Jacobs.

Unfortunately for the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt seems to have undermined their gambit by giving up the game in a statement posted to X.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo,” Leavitt wrote Wednesday. “Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

Hours later, the states were able to introduce Leavitt’s confused and confusing statement during the hearing as evidence that their lawsuit should continue despite the fact that the memo had been rescinded.

Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell agreed to grant a restraining order on the freeze, saying that “based on comments by the president’s secretary,” the rescission of the “hugely ambiguous” OMB memo was merely a linguistic distinction and hadn’t actually blocked the freeze at all, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

While the Trump administration insisted that certain programs, such as Medicaid and Head Start, would not be affected by the directive, every single state experienced issues accessing these programs on Tuesday, leading to a national outcry from citizens and Democratic lawmakers.

In a separate case brought forward by nonprofits, a district judge issued a brief administrative stay before the memo was expected to go into effect Tuesday evening.

Trump wants to send 30,000 undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay.

The president announced Wednesday that he will sign an executive order to transform the former detention camp for military prisoners into another detention camp for immigrants.

“I’m signing an executive order to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay, most people don’t even know about it,” Trump told reporters, while signing into law the Laken Riley Act, which would allow federal authorities to detain any immigrant accused of a crime.

“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people, some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back. So we’re gonna send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately, and tough, that’s a tough place to get out of. Today’s signing brings us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all.”

Guantánamo is infamous for the rampant torture and abuse that U.S. interrogators inflicted on prisoners since the camp opened in 2002. There are currently 15 people still being detained there.