(WASHINGTON) — After a bruising round of confirmation hearings this week that left Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation in doubt, the nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services declared in a written statement to senators on Friday that, if confirmed, he will divest his financial stake in an ongoing civil lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer.
Kennedy’s commitment to walk away from the potential windfall is a major reversal for the nominee, who in his ethics plan submitted to federal officials earlier this month told lawmakers he was entitled to those proceeds so long as the U.S. government wasn’t involved.
Democrats had seized on Kennedy’s financial stake in the lawsuit, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warning that he could use his perch in government to make it easier for lawyers – including himself – to sue vaccine manufacturers and drug makers in court.
The lawsuit alleges marketing fraud against pharmaceutical company Merck for its HPV vaccine, Gardasil, which Merck denies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains that the vaccine has been proven safe, with more than 160 studies finding no concerns.
“Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it,” Warren said at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
“Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy will keep cashing in,” she added.
Kennedy struggled to lock-up conservative support for his nomination after testifying this week. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s right-leaning editorial board praised Warren, writing that her questioning “expose[d]” Kennedy.
The next day, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he was “struggling” with Kennedy’s nomination, noting at one point that Kennedy was “financially vested in finding fault with vaccines.”
Kennedy told senators in his testimony Thursday that he was giving away his rights to the fees in the lawsuit against Merck. However, it was unclear whether he misspoke because his ethics agreement still maintained that he was entitled to the fees.
In written answers provided to the Senate Finance Committee on Friday, Kennedy clarified that an amendment was forthcoming.
“An amendment to my Ethics Agreement is in process, and it provides that I will divest my interest in this litigation,” he said.
Kennedy has earned millions of dollars in referral fees from law firms in the past for lawsuits unrelated to vaccines, including one involving a pesticide. He had not earned money yet from the Merck case, which only recently was taken up in civil courts.
In his testimony, Kennedy said he wanted to retain the right to sue drug companies even if confirmed.
“You’re asking me to not sue drug companies, and I am not going to agree to that,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is compiling a list of agents and other FBI officials from around the country who they believe should be fired or forced to resign in the coming days, several sources told ABC News.
Trump administration officials are especially looking at whether anyone tied in any way to former special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 and classified documents investigations of President Donald Trump should be included in the firings, according to the sources. They are also looking for anyone who may be resistant to carrying out some of the administration’s new initiatives, sources said.
Firings could begin as early as Friday, but a list is expected to be finalized on Monday, sources said.
The list of those who could be fired includes the heads of dozens of field offices across the country and could include scores of agents in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office alone, sources said.
An FBI spokesperson said in a statement to ABC: “The FBI is declining to comment on any questions regarding FBI personnel matters. We have also instructed the public affairs officers in our field offices to decline to comment as well.”
Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, was pressed Thursday during his confirmation hearing as to whether FBI agents who worked on Smith’s investigations would be protected from “retribution,” should he be confirmed.
“Every FBI employee will be held to the absolute same standard, and no one will be terminated for cases,” Patel said. “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”
The FBI Agents Association said the actions “contradict the commitments” Patel made to the association ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing, saying Patel said FBI agents “would be afforded appropriate process and review and not face retribution based solely on the cases to which they were assigned.”
“If true, these outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents,” the FBI Agents Association added in a statement. “Dismissing potentially hundreds of Agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure.”
In the Oval Office later Friday, Trump was asked by reporters about Justice Department employees who may be fired or forced out in the coming days and he appeared to indicate it could be a “good thing.”
“If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing because they were very bad,” Trump said. “They used the Justice Department to correct their political opponents, which in itself is illegal.”
Asked if he specifically requested any action, Trump denied, “No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody’s ever seen before”
ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Rhode Island has formally blocked the Trump administration’s spending freeze, saying in an order this afternoon that the funding freeze is likely a violation of the Constitution.
“During the pendency of the Temporary Restraining Order, Defendants shall not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate Defendants’ compliance with awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the States, and Defendants shall not impede the States’ access to such awards and obligations, except on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms,” Judge John McConnell Jr. wrote.
“The Court finds that the record now before it substantiates the likelihood of a successful claim that the Executive’s actions violate the Constitution and statutes of the United States,” he added in the 13-page decision in the lawsuit filed by 22 state attorneys general.
Earlier this week, McConnell signaled he would issue a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from freezing federal loans and grants, raising concerns the White House would try to enact the same policy described in the now-rescinded Office of Management and Budget.
The administration issued the memo Monday night and gave agencies a 5 p.m. deadline on Wednesday, however, a Washington, D.C., federal judge temporarily blocked it from going through following a lawsuit.
Even after the OMB rescinded the memo on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, claiming, “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. 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.”
The post by Leavitt, and possible attempt to sidestep an injunction, drew mention in McConnell’s order, with him writing, “Defendants shall also be restrained and prohibited from reissuing, adopting, implementing, or otherwise giving effect to the OMB Directive under any other name or title or through any other Defendants (or agency supervised, administered, or controlled by any Defendant), such as the continued implementation identified by the White House Press Secretary’s statement of January 29, 2025.”
McConnell had harsh words for the Trump administration and justified his order — despite the OMB’s change of policy — based on Leavitt’s post.
“The evidence shows that the alleged rescission of the OMB Directive was in name-only and may have been issued simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts,” he wrote.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — In what appears to be part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against sanctuary cities, the Justice Department is investigating a sheriff in upstate New York who released an undocumented man later taken into custody by federal agents.
The US Attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York “is looking into the circumstances” surrounding the release by Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne of Jesus Romero-Hernandez, a 27-year-old Mexican citizen.
Romero-Hernandez pleaded guilty to a state assault charge and was sentenced to time served, necessitating his release. He left local custody in Ithaca before Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived to pick him up on a federal complaint charging him with illegally re-entering the United States after a prior removal.
Ithaca adopted a sanctuary law in 2017.
ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security Investigations later apprehended Romero-Hernandez.
“The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office in Ithaca, NY, a self-described sanctuary city, appears to have failed to honor a valid federal arrest warrant for a criminal alien with an assault conviction,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said. “I applaud the U.S. Attorney’s commitment to investigate these circumstances for potential prosecution.”
Tompkins County and the Tompkins County Sheriff’s office issued a joint statement refuting the DOJ’s claims.
The officials said ICE was “notified of when the individual in question was going to be released and had every opportunity to come to the jail to obtain the individual in question without any need for a pursuit or other incident.”
“There was no interference with federal immigration enforcement efforts. DOJ’s assertion that the Tompkins County Sheriff did anything to put federal law enforcement officers in danger is false and offensive,” the offices said.
Bove convened all 93 US attorney’s offices on a phone call on Thursday to convey that they should focus on surging resources toward immigration enforcement. He likened the threat posed by undocumented immigrants to the threat posed by terrorists.
It represents a significant shift for the Justice Department redirecting law enforcement resources away from previous national security priorities and toward immigration enforcement.
(WASHINGTON) — Federal workers across the government on Friday received emails from top officials at their agencies informing them that the resignation offers they received earlier this week are “valid, lawful, and will be honored.”
The White House’s Office of Personnel Management had told government workers in an email Tuesday that if they quit by Feb. 6, they would still get paid through Sept. 30.
Employment lawyers questioned whether such an offer was lawful because Congress, not the White House, is responsible for authorizing workers’ paychecks. Many agencies are expected to run out of money this spring, with the federal government only funded through March, raising questions about how the Trump administration can promise those who take the buyouts would still get paid if the executive branch doesn’t control spending.
Many federal workers also wondered whether the memo, titled “A Fork in the Road,” was a phishing scam, prompting OPM to release a new memo assuring workers they are “most welcome [to] stay at home and relax or to travel to your dream destination. Whatever you would like.”
On Friday morning, senior officials at the various agencies sent memos to staffers assuring them the offers were indeed real.
“On behalf of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), I am informing you that the offer is valid, lawful, and will be honored by USDA,” said one such memo signed by Kailee Tkacz Buller, chief of staff at the Department of Agriculture.
“If you accept the deferred resignation offer, you will receive pay and benefits through September 30, 2025, and will not be subject to a reduction-in-force or other premature separation,” she wrote.
However, Max Alonzo, the national secretary-treasurer for the National Federation of Federal Employees, a labor union that represents 110,000 federal workers, said his union is advising federal workers not to respond to the email.
In part, he said, the union is worried about the lack of clarity and specifics in the offer email. He pointed to the lack of a contract and the fact that Congress has not allocated funds for large-scale federal buyouts, and he worried people might offer to resign but not actually be paid in the end or may have their benefits stripped.
“Absolutely do not resign. There is nothing that says that the day that you resign, that they can’t just let you go,” he said. “They don’t have to pay you — there’s nothing that says they have to pay you till Sept. 30. This is nothing that has been done before. This is not in our regulations. There’s no regs about it. We’re not even sure if it’s actually legal. So, yeah, absolutely do not resign.”
The buyout offers come as President Donald Trump has pushed for federal employees to return to working in person, signing an executive order on his first day in office calling for an end to teleworking.
Kent Nishimura for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — An investigation is just beginning into the fatal plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington, with no cause determined yet by the National Transportation Safety Board.
President Donald Trump, though, was quick to try to assign blame on Thursday as he gave a press conference at the White House while recovery crews navigated the icy waters searching for victims.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions,” he said.
Trump first claimed, without evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives under Democratic presidents could be a factor. He later doubled down on the unsubstantiated claim while he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.
Trump also suggested the helicopter pilots navigating the U.S. Army Black Hawk should have moved out of the way but at one point said warnings to the crew were given “very late.”
On Friday, he continued to question the chopper’s movement as it appeared to be flying above the mandated 200 feet. “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Leading the investigation into the crash is the NTSB, with a preliminary report due in 30 days but a final report on probable cause not likely for at least a year.
NTSB member Todd Inman, during an appearance on “Good Morning America” on Friday, said it is far too early to make a determination.
“The only conclusion I know is last night we met with several hundred family members who lost their loved ones in the Potomac,” he said. “We don’t need that to happen anymore. … We’re going to find out what happened, and we’re going to try to stop it from happening again.”
Trump accused former President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama of hiring air traffic controllers based on diversity goals.
“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 claimed at Thursday’s news conference.
When pressed by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce what proof he had that the crash was caused by DEI efforts, Trump responded: “It just could have been.”
DEI or any similar program does not apply to hiring for air traffic control, which requires rigorous health examinations and a multiyear training process. Applicants must pass a medical exam, an aptitude test and a psychological test that is more stringent than that required of a pilot, said Chris Wilbanks, FAA deputy vice president of safety and technical training.
Trump pointed to a New York Post article as he accused Democrats of pushing to hire people with severe mental disabilities at the Federal Aviation Administration. But the diversity language referenced in the article was on the FAA website during the entirety of Trump’s first term and has been on the site for more than a decade, according to Snopes.
Trump’s attacks, though, are in line with his agenda to dismantle DEI from the federal government. In his first week in office, he signed multiple orders to place federal employees working on DEI on administrative leave and to remove DEI efforts from the Pentagon.
Democrats pushed back on Trump’s claims about the crash.
“Listen, it’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories. It’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Thursday. “It just turns your stomach.”
Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary and another target of Trump’s criticism in the wake of the crash, called Trump’s comments “despicable.”
“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA,” Buttigieg wrote in a social media post. “One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Benjamin Siegel, Sam Sweeney, Fritz Farrow and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.
“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, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.
This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”
Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order “aimed at undoing all of that damage” caused by the “Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the president said. “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.”
When asked in the earlier briefing by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.
When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
DEI and any similar programs do not apply to air traffic control hiring, though — no one is given preferential treatment for race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, a former FAA official told ABC News.
Applicants must pass a medical exam, an aptitude test and a psychological test that is more stringent than that required of a pilot, said Chris Wilbanks, FAA deputy vice president of safety and technical training.
In 2022, 57,000 people applied for an ATC position, Wilbanks said, and 2,400 qualified to attend the academy. Of that 2,400, only 1,000 made it to the first day of training.
Wilbanks said 72% make it through the academy and roughly 60% of those will finish training.
According to the FAA, the training process lasts about three to four years from the hire date. Applicants must be younger than 31 and must retire by age 55.
Anyone who has taken Ritalin or Adderall in the last three years doesn’t qualify, the former FAA official said.
No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.
However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation.”
In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, “What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened.”
“And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination,” he added. “That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a “mistake was made” in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be “colorblind and merit-based … whether it’s flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, “We want the best people at air traffic control.”
“If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vance said. “That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”
Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “just got a good line of bulls—” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “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. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump’s comments “dangerous, racist, and ignorant.”
“President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy — while families are mourning their loved ones — to insert his own political agenda and sow division,” Kelly said in a statement. “This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.
“Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security,” she added. “The issue with our country is not its diversity. It’s the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump’s actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American.”
Handout/Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The three soldiers of the Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a jetliner on Wednesday night just off of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were all very experienced and not only had thousands of hours of flight time between them but were very familiar with the flight patterns above the Potomac River.
The Army has confirmed that all three soldiers were from Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C. The unit primarily transports senior U.S. military officials around the Washington area and beyond.
Recovery efforts for two of the soldiers in the Black Hawk in the frigid waters of the Potomac River continued Thursday, as did the search for the missing among the 64 aboard American Airlines Flight 5342. Also being sought are the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorder and the helicopter’s integrated data and voice recorder.
The helicopter flight along the Potomac was a routine nighttime qualification flight in which an instructor pilot tests a pilot’s skills at navigating the various routes through the Washington area that are key parts of his or her mission.
“It was a very experienced group,” said Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chief warrant officer with more than 30 years experience in flying Army helicopters. Koziol has been attached to the Unified Command Post created at Reagan National Airport to coordinate efforts following the deadly collision.
Koziol confirmed to reporters on a conference call that the male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours of flight time, the female pilot who was commanding the flight at the time had more than 500 hours of flight time, and the crew chief was also said to have hundreds of hours of flight time.
Koziol said that given the short duration of most helicopter flights, the number of hours they had flown showed how experienced they were.
As part of their annual qualifications, all Army aviators are tested on their skills during daylight and nighttime, as well as instrument flying.
An Army flight safety investigative team from the Army’s Combat Readiness Center at Fort Novosel in Alabama has arrived in Washington to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.
The evaluated pilot was in command of the flight, but if an emergency was to occur, the instructor would have taken control of the helicopter.
“Both pilots had flown this specific route before at night — this wasn’t something new to either one of them,” he said. “These are our top pilots doing this National Capital Region.”
The airspace around the nation’s capital is one of the busiest in the nation, but Koziol described the helicopter flight corridor above the Potomac as “a relatively easy corridor to fly because you’re flying down the center of the river, and it’s very easily identifiable, especially at night” because there aren’t a lot of lights.
Night vision goggles are available for Army aviators during nighttime missions, but they are not always necessary, said Koziol, who noted that he did not know if the pilots were wearing the goggles during Wednesday night’s flight.
“They are helpful at night, obviously, and in an urban environment, they’re still useful,” but he discounted the notion that the Washington’s bright lights may have affected the pilots, saying they were flying over the Potomac River, where “there are no lights, so that wouldn’t impact them.”
“They would have the peripheral vision of the lights on both sides of the shore, which actually helps them align and know which direction they’re going,” he added. “And it would help them see other aircraft.”
Furthermore, Army aviators are required to test their ability to fly “night unaided” without night vision goggles.
Koziol said the pilots’ situational awareness would have been aided by a moving tracking screen in the cockpit pinpointing their exact location, along with visual aids within their lines of sight.
“You have the lights on either side of you and, obviously, the rotating beacon on Reagan National to point out the airfield and all the traffic on it for them to know exactly where they’re at,” he said.
Army statistics show that last year saw the biggest spike in aviation mishaps in more than a decade following years of a downward trend.
There were 15 Class A mishaps in the Army in fiscal year 2024, the highest number since fiscal year 2014, when there were 16 mishaps. Last year’s increase came after a period of time when the number of mishaps had trended downward. For example, there were seven mishaps in fiscal year 2021, four in fiscal year 2022, nine in fiscal year 2023 and then the 15 in fiscal year 2024.
Last April, the Army held what’s called a “stand-up” where it reinforced safety training but continued flight operations — this followed a series of Apache helicopter incidents the previous month.
There had previously been a stand-down of Army aviation that followed the March 2023 collision of two Black Hawk helicopters at Fort Campbell that killed nine soldiers.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.
“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, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.
This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”
Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order “aimed at undoing all of that damage” caused by the “Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the president said. “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.”
When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he then said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.
When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.
However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation.”
In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, “What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened.”
“And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination,” he added. “That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a “mistake was made” in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be “colorblind and merit-based … whether it’s flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government,” he said.
Vice President J.D. Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, “We want the best people at air traffic control.”
“If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vance said.
“That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”
Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “just got a good line of bulls—” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “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. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump’s comments “dangerous, racist, and ignorant.”
“President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy — while families are mourning their loved ones — to insert his own political agenda and sow division,” Kelly said in a statement. “This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.
“Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security,” she added. “The issue with our country is not its diversity. It’s the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump’s actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee peppered director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard with questions about her controversial rhetoric on Russian aggression, Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and government surveillance programs at her high-stakes confirmation hearing on Thursday.
But it was her statements about Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of national secrets, that generated the most colorful moments of her three hours of public testimony.
Senators from both sides offered Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, countless opportunities to withdraw her past support of Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records.
And while she acknowledged on multiple occasions that Snowden broke the law, she stood firm in ways that seemed at times to frustrate even some Republicans on the panel.
Gabbard has in the past called Snowden a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.
On Thursday, she repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”
“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.
She declined to say. Instead, Gabbard repeated that she felt his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. “I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.”
But, she added, he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”
Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee, and at least two members of the panel, Susan Collins and Todd Young, declined to offer their support after the open portion of the hearing concluded.
While she stood firm on Snowden, Gabbard backtracked on other matters, including her suggestion in 2022 that U.S. and NATO forces had provoked Russia into its war with Ukraine. Asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who bore responsibility for Moscow’s aggression, Gabbard was unequivocal: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war in Ukraine.”
She also said that she “shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime,” referring to Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator who fled Damascus late last year. Gabbard was chastised in 2017 for meeting with Assad in person and later casting doubt on intelligence tying his regime to the use of chemical weapons.
Several senators also raised Gabbard’s past criticism of government surveillance programs, including the FISA 702 authority, which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant.
Gabbard expressed support for FISA 702 and explained her vote as a congresswoman against its reauthorization as a reflection of her stance on defending civil liberties.
“I will just note that my actions in legislation in Congress were done to draw attention to the egregious civil liberties violations that were occurring at that time,” Gabbard said.
But on Snowden, Gabbard refused to back down. Republican Sens. James Lankford and Todd Young presented her with several opportunities to clarify her views on the government leaker. Each time, she equivocated.
“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
Gabbard did at one point back off her support of a presidential pardon for Snowden, who now resides in Moscow, where he is not subject to extradition treaties. In an exchange with Collins, she said the DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.
“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”
Collins said after the hearing that she has not made up her mind on whether she will support Gabbard’s nomination and was still reviewing portions of her testimony that she missed while attending a concurrent hearing.
But when asked if the jury was still out on her support, she said, “that’s correct, I want to make a careful decision.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, the committee chairman, said he would move to a vote on Gabbard’s nomination soon. The closed-door portion of the hearing continued on Thursday afternoon.
-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
