Years before Wednesday’s fatal collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet approaching Reagan National Airport, critics warned the Obama and Biden administrations had jeopardized safety by prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion at the Federal Aviation Administration.
President Trump faced withering criticism Thursday after suggesting the FAA’s DEI-focused hiring practices “could have” contributed to the accident, even while the cause remains entirely under investigation.
“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories. 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,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said.
Mr. Trump’s untimely claim comes after critics have long warned the FAA’s focus on DEI diverted time and resources away 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 warmed. An unnamed source told the New York Times on Thursday that at the time of the fatal collision, the air traffic controller in charge of monitoring the airspace was performing the work of two people.
Air safety concerns prompted a group of 11 Republican attorneys general to write FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker last year, questioning 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,” they wrote.
Diversity goals at the FAA ramped up during the Obama administration, were largely dropped under Mr. Trump’s first term, and resumed under President Biden.
During both the Obama and Biden administrations, the FAA prioritized hiring more minorities and those with disabilities for key positions, including those in air traffic control.
The Biden-era FAA website that is now scrubbed stated, “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,”
The FAA in 2022 pledged to “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices,” and administration officials assigned long-term goals aimed at amplifying 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.”
The FAA declared a “Year of Inclusion” in 2023 and held a three-day symposium that trained FAA employees to understand the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and to overcome and unmask “unconscious bias.”
The FAA’s focus on diversity began years earlier, under the Obama administration. The FAA in 2013 began using a “biographical assessment” to increase hiring of preferred minority racial groups at air traffic control centers. The assessment asked applicants such questions as the number of school sports they participated in and the age they first started earning money.
The assessment disqualified more experienced, qualified applicants, many of them graduates of Air Traffic Collegiate Training or who had other critical experience, such as a pilot’s license.
More than 3,000 rejected applicants filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination. The FAA dropped the biographical assessment in 2018 after Congress passed a law banning its use.
As late as last year, the FAA was recruiting those with targeted disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.” The recruitment began during the Obama administration and appears to have continued through Mr. Trump’s first term and into Mr. Biden’s presidency.
There’s no evidence that DEI hiring played any role in Wednesday’s accident. But it followed Mr. Trump’s Jan. 22 memorandum “terminating a Biden Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hiring policy that prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over safety and efficiency.”
Just hours after the accident, Mr. Trump took aim at Pete Buttigieg, who headed the Transportation Department under President Biden.
“He has run FAA right into the ground with his diversity,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Buttigieg fired back and noted not a single commercial passenger plane crashed during his watch. Wednesday’s accident broke a 15-year safety streak for the U.S. airline industry.
“We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Mr. Trump, in a late afternoon press conference, doubled down on his pledge to rid the FAA of DEI.
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We want the most competent people, especially in those positions. And you’re talking about extremely complex things. And if they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do, and bad things will happen.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.