AOC Rips Trump a New One Over Lies About D.C. Plane Crash

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday slammed Trump’s claims that diversity, equity, and inclusion caused the deadly plane crash that killed 67 people near Washington, D.C.—and is drawing attention to the fact that Trump eliminated members of a key aviation safety committee just days before this disaster.

“The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website,” Trump said earlier in the day, alluding to this program as the reason for the crash. “Can you imagine?”

AOC responded on X. “I represent LaGuardia Airport as well as workers for JFK. Trump gutted the Aviation Safety committee last week,” she wrote. “Air traffic controllers—already understaffed—got Trump’s ‘buyout’ this week with a 1 week ultimatum to decide. It’s not DEI—it’s him. And Elon too.”

Trump is pointing the finger at aviation workers of color or people with disabilities, while ignoring the fact that he fired the directors of the TSA and the coast guard, and killed the Aviation Security Advisory Committee—all last week. The FAA chief resigned on Trump’s first day in office, thanks to pressure from Elon Musk, leaving the federal aviation agency without a leader during this crisis. It’s also being reported that Trump’s hiring freeze led to the FAA being seriously understaffed when it comes to air traffic controllers.

Trump has since doubled down on his absurd claims that DEI somehow did this.

Elon Musk’s next target in the federal government is its buildings.

The tech CEO and fascism enthusiast reportedly spent Thursday afternoon in the General Services Administration’s headquarters and met with the agency’s acting administrator, The New York Times reports. The GSA manages federal offices and acts as the government’s procurement arm.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has focused on terminating the leases of “mostly empty offices,” and this week touted its termination of three leases in a post on X.

“These are the first steps to right size the Federal real estate portfolio of more than 7,500 leases,” the pseudo-agency posted. And buildings may only be Musk and DOGE’s first target at the GSA: It also provides tech and contracting services for the federal government.

DOGE has already put the screws to federal employees in a takeover of the Office of Personnel Management, installing some of his own people at the agency that manages the entire civil service. The same is taking place at the GSA. The agency’s engineers were told to submit a recent “technical win” to Thomas Shedd, a Tesla engineer who was named the GSA’s director of “Technology Transformation Services,” according to the Times.

A Musk executive from his Boring Company start-up, Steve Davis, has a leading role in DOGE and has focused on the GSA. Previously, Davis assisted with Musk’s cost-cutting at X (formerly Twitter) and oversaw layoffs at the social media company, as his wife Nicole Hollander managed cuts to X’s real estate assets. Now, the pair have GSA email addresses, the Times reports.

Musk’s efforts to slash the federal workforce by copying a plan he used at X and forcing government employees to work in-person is already backfiring, with government employees trashing the plan and vowing to stay at their jobs. If most federal employees stay at their jobs and comply with the return-to-office order, DOGE’s quest to reduce federal office leases would undoubtedly create a space concern.

Musk and Trump’s DOGE efforts have run into issues as well, as efforts to collect federal employee data have been hit with a lawsuit over privacy concerns. Since the tech mogul’s track record involves taking action first and then worrying about laws and regulations, his real estate efforts will probably cause government headaches pretty soon.

Donald Trump is officially waging war on publicly funded journalism.

In a letter to PBS and NPR, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that he was launching an investigation into the news organizations’ member stations, The New York Times reported Thursday.

“I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing Commercials,” Carr wrote in the letter. “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.

“To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars,” Carr wrote.

Both NPR and PBS seem game for review.

“We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR’s adherence to these rules,” said NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher in a statement Thursday. “We have worked for decades with the F.C.C. in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States.”

In its own statement, PBS stood by its “noncommercial educational programming” and said it had worked “diligently to comply with the F.C.C.’s underwriting regulations.”

But attacking publicly funded media is all part of Trump’s master plan.

Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for Trump’s second administration, called for the government to strip noncommercial education stations of their federal funding and licenses. Carr actually wrote the manifesto’s chapter on overhauling the FCC. After Trump announced Carr’s nomination, Carr pledged that the FCC under Trump “will enforce” laws that ensure media organizations act “in the public interest.”

Trump himself has repeatedly called to strip major broadcasters of their licenses whenever they fact-check him on his easily disproven lies. Publicly funded media, such as NPR, is no exception to Trump’s wrath.

In April, Trump declared in a Truth Social post that there would be “NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!

“THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!” he wrote.

Earlier this month, MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to drag PBS before Congress so they could testify on their accurate reporting on Elon Musk’s apparent Sieg Heil.

RFK Jr. had no good explanation during his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday for his past peddling of dangerous, anti-Black misinformation about how white people and Black people process vaccines.

Senator Angela Alsobrooks, Maryland’s first Black senator, asked Kennedy about his previous comments, made in a 2021 interview. “You said the following, and I quote: ‘We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites because their immune system is better than ours.’ Can you please explain what you meant?”

Kennedy immediately began to flail. “There’s a series of studies, most of them by Poland, that show that there are particular antigens that … Blacks have a much stronger reaction. There’s differences in reactions to different products by different race …”

‘I have 17 seconds left, so let me just ask you, so what different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received?” Alsobrooks asked, removing her glasses. “What different vaccine schedule should I have received?”

“I mean … the Poland article suggests that Blacks need fewer antigens …”

“Mr. Kennedy with all due respect, that is so dangerous,” said Alsobrooks. “Your voice would be a voice that parents would listen to, that is so dangerous. I will be voting against your nomination because your views are dangerous to our state and to our country.”

Alsobrooks is right. Experts say there is no validity to the study RFK Jr references. And furthermore, racial bias in pain diagnosis, or the assumption that Black people are inherently stronger or more tolerable to pain, has been hurting Black Americans for decades.

A preliminary report on Wednesday night’s plane and helicopter collision near Washington, D.C. contradicts Donald Trump’s favorite DEI scapegoat.

An internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration found that in reality, the tower’s staffing at Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to The New York Times. There was only one air traffic controller to handle both helicopters and planes in the airport’s vicinity, a job usually assigned to two people.

Having to handle both types of air traffic can be complicated, the Times report states, because air traffic controllers can use different radio frequencies for helicopter and airplane pilots. In such cases, while the controller is communicating with pilots of both kinds of aircraft, the pilots may not be able to talk to one another.

Staffing levels at the airport’s control tower have been below adequate levels for years, like many of the U.S.’s other airports. DCA’s tower only had 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, according to congressional reports. This is well below the FAA and air traffic controller union’s preferred number of 30, and is due to employee turnover and budget cuts, according to the Times.

As a result, many air controllers at the airport work up to 10 hours a day and six days a week. Those levels probably have not been helped by Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze, his gutting of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and the FAA chief’s resignation at Elon Musk’s behest. As much as Trump and the right might try to blame DEI or something else ludicrous, perhaps they should look in the mirror.