(WASHINGTON) — Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, her office confirmed to ABC News.
“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama said in a statement.
This is the second presidential event in two weeks that the former first lady will have missed. She was noticeably absent from former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday, Jan. 9, at Washington National Cathedral, where she would have been assigned to sit next to Trump.
Michelle Obama’s planned absence was first reported by the Associated Press.
Michelle Obama has attended every inauguration since 2009, including Trump’s first swearing-in ceremony in 2017.
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will attend the inauguration, as will former first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. They all also attended Carter’s funeral service.
(WASHINGTON) — The number of apprehensions along the southwestern U.S. border plummeted by a third during January, according to statistics obtained by ABC News on Tuesday.
There were 61,465 apprehensions along the southwest border in January, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, down from 96,048 in December 2024.
The numbers fell even more after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, according to the data.
In the three weeks before the inauguration, there was a daily average of more than 2,000 apprehensions, which fell to a daily average of 786 migrant apprehensions after the inauguration.
There were 176,195 migrant apprehensions along the southwest border in January 2024.
From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85% from the same period in 2024, according to data obtained by ABC News. In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93%.
Trump signed executive orders shortly after taking office that declared a national emergency at the border and authorized active duty military and National Guard troops to support CPB’s law enforcement activities. The government has been using military planes to return migrants to their home countries. In addition, the administration has said it is targeting gang members and violent offenders in its crackdown. It also rescinded a policy that barred law enforcement activities at schools and churches and at courthouses.
“The men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection are aggressively implementing the President’s Executive Orders to secure our borders. These actions have already resulted in dramatic improvements in border security,” said Pete Flores, acting CBP commissioner. “The reduction in illegal aliens attempting to make entry into the U.S., compounded by a significant increase in repatriations, means that more officers and agents are now able to conduct the enforcement duties that make our border more secure and our country safer.”
CBP and military troops have “dramatically increased” patrolling the southern border, according to CBP.
Numbers of monthly border apprehensions fell below 100,000 for the first time in years in November 2024, according to CBP data.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without 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 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.
“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.”
But when a reporter pressed him, 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.”
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.”
Trump called Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “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.”
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.
