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'Trump Was Right: FAA Turned Away Qualified Controllers Over Race'
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https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/01/31/trump-was-right-faa-turned-away-qualified-controllers-over-race-n4936558>
'On Thursday, while addressing Thursday’s plane crash near Washington,
D.C., President Donald Trump blasted both the Obama and Biden
administrations for prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the Federal Aviation Administration and the
Department of Transportation.
"I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first,
and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen," Trump told
reporters in the White House briefing room.
Democrats and the mainstream media were outraged.
“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “It’s another for
the president of the United States of America to throw out idle
speculation even as victims are still being recovered and families are
still being notified. It turns your stomach.”
But Trump was not wrong.
In fact, concerns about the FAA's DEI policies are not new. Critics have
long argued that these policies have distracted from essential safety
measures, particularly during a period marked by air traffic controller shortages, outdated equipment, and an increase in near misses. Reports
indicate that the air traffic controller on duty during the incident was effectively managing the responsibilities of two people.
Last year, 11 Republican attorneys general voiced their concerns in a
letter to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker, questioning the agency's commitment to safety in light of its emphasis on diversity over
expertise. They expressed disappointment that the FAA appeared to
prioritize “virtue-signaling” over securing the nation's airways.
Related: Biden’s First Pick to Lead FAA Was a Total DEI Hire Who Knew
Nothing About Aviation
The origins of these DEI efforts can be traced back to the Obama administration, which initiated a focused approach to increase diversity
within the FAA. This focus was somewhat relaxed during Trump's
presidency but has since been rejuvenated under Biden. Most strikingly,
the FAA had established goals to diversify its workforce by revising
hiring practices, often sidelining qualified candidates for those
meeting certain demographic criteria.
The Washington Times reported last year that the FAA turned away
thousands of qualified air traffic controllers for being the wrong race.
There hasn’t been a fatal airline crash in the United States since 2009,
but it’s only a matter of time before the streak ends. The FAA recorded
two serious, near-miss runway incursions at Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International last year [2023].
Vigilance is waning because the nation’s air traffic control towers are woefully understaffed. The people responsible for keeping planes from
smashing into one another are tired after working long, mandatory
overtime shifts to make up for the lack of controllers.
Contributing to the shortage, the FAA temporarily put the brakes on
hiring in 2012 so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem designed to hire more minorities.
This quiz served as further screening of applicants who had already
graduated from a 200-hour training program and achieved high scores on
AT-SAT, a grueling, eight-hour cognitive test that measures each of the specific skills needed to do the job properly.
[…]
More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because
they weren’t members of this ethnic club. After Congress forced the FAA
to drop the quiz in 2018, many former applicants reapplied and have
since become controllers. Their careers were set back several years for
no good reason.
Could colorblind hiring policies have prevented Wednesday's tragedy? The evidence is growing that they may have'
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