Senate confirms Bryan Bedford as FAA administrator
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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Bryan Bedford as FAA administrator, putting a former airline executive in charge of the agency responsible for ensuring the safety and efficiency of the nation’s air travel.
The final vote was 53-43.
Bedford, who previously served as CEO of Republic Airways, retired from the position last week after leading the airline for more than 25 years. During his tenure, Republic became one of the largest regional carriers in the nation.
His nomination narrowly cleared the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation vote by 15-13, with all Republican senators voting in favor and all Democrats against.
While Bedford’s nomination has received widespread support from across the aviation industry, he has faced criticism over his position on the FAA’s 1,500-hour flight training rule.
The FAA rule requires pilots have 1,500 hours experience in the cockpit before they can fly for a commercial airline.
The rule was implemented in 2013, in response to the 2009 Colgan Air crash, after an NTSB investigation cited the flight crews’s inadequate training and qualifications as a key safety issue.
In 2022, the FAA rejected a petition from Republic Airways seeking an exemption for its pilots from the 1500-hour rule — calling for it to be brought down to 750 flying hours if the pilots met certain other requirements.
The FAA denied the request, saying “if a reduction in hours was appropriate, an exemption is not the appropriate vehicle with which to make such a determination.”
During his nomination hearing, senators questioned Bedford about his position on the 1,500-hour rule and whether he’d try to change it once becoming FAA administrator.
Illinois Democratic Sen. Duckworth pressed Bedford multiple times over his commitment to the 1500-hour rule. Bedford never answered the question, saying he does not “believe safety is static” since pilot training has changed over time, but reiterated that safety is a priority.
“I will not roll back safety,” Bedford told the committee. “There won’t be safety loopholes. I commit to you. We will never do anything to reduce the safety and competency of our pilots.”
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the panel’s top Democrat, notably voted against advancing Bedford’s nomination out of committee.
Prior to the committee vote, Cantwell released a statement opposing his confirmation, saying Bedford “repeatedly refused to commit to upholding the 1500-hour rule and refused to recuse himself for his full term from granting his own company an exemption from this critical safety requirement.”
Scrutiny over Bedford’s position on the rule comes at a pivotal moment for aviation safety which has been in the spotlight since January’s mid-air collision between an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed everyone onboard both aircraft.
Following Bedford’s confirmation, the pilots union released a statement congratulating Bedford and expressing a commitment to working with him, while also reiterating concerns over his position on the pilot training requirements.
“We have concerns about his past efforts to lower pilot training requirements, and we will continue to bring the line pilot’s perspective to any discussions about changing these life-saving measures and hold him to his word that safety is his top priority,” Capt. Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association said in a statement. “Maintaining rigorous training requirements and keeping two pilots on the flight deck at all times remain top priorities for ALPA.”
Airlines for America and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association also released statements congratulating Bedford and reiterating their commitment to working with him to ensure aviation safety and to overhaul and modernize the nation’s air traffic control systems and facilities.
(WASHINGTON) — In a speech to a joint session of Congress in March, President Donald Trump took direct aim at diversity, equity and inclusion policies, saying hiring and promotion practices should be based on merit, not race and gender.
“We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be ‘woke’ no longer,” said Trump, using the term some conservatives have adopted to negatively describe progressive values.
In the first 100 days of his new administration, Trump has wielded the power of the Oval Office in an attempt to root out DEI programs beyond the federal government, threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding and grants from universities, including Harvard University, unless they fall in line.
A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday indicated that the country is almost evenly split on the issue. While 51% of respondents said they believe DEI efforts help level the playing field, 47% said such policies create unfair discrimination.
Despite the president’s claim that DEI in America is history, supporters say Trump’s war against what they refer to as “wokeism” is far from over.
“It’s definitely not over. And those of us who want to see corporate America get back to neutral and focusing on uniting Americans around creating value rather than dividing us on the basis of race and sex, we have a long, long way to go,” said Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project, which is part of National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-partisan conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Padfield said one of his primary focuses is on “reversing what we might refer to as the woke capture of corporate America” by filing shareholder proposals, engaging in litigation and conducting educational research across the nation.”
“One of the things that I and others on our side are concerned about is this idea and this notion that somehow we’ve won,” Padfield told ABC News.
Using the analogy of the Allied troops storming the beach at Normandy during the 1944 D-Day invasion, Padfield said, “Could you imagine if the Allied forces just packed up and left and claimed to have won World War II after they took Normandy beach? It would be a very different world.”
“So, we’ve got a very long march to go and certainly the proponents of DEI and related ESG [environmental, social and governance] agendas, they’re making very clear that they’re not going to go quietly, certainly,” Padfield said.
Target boycott
In a letter dated Feb. 12, 2025, a coalition of the nation’s largest civil and human rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League, asked for an urgent meeting with congressional leadership “to discuss actionable steps to protect diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans.”
The letter was addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. “We are deeply concerned about the recent executive actions by the Trump Administration that seek to undo decades of bipartisan support for civil and human rights,” the coalition wrote.
“Diversity is and will always be one of America’s greatest strengths because a diverse America is an innovative and prosperous America,” the letter said. “Diversifying our institutions, providing opportunities, and working to ensure that everyone is included are not partisan values. These values strengthen our nation and are rooted in our country’s history of advancing equal opportunity and ‘liberty and justice for all.'”
The letter goes on to characterize the actions taken by the Trump administration as “misguided” and, according to the coalition, “seek to erode progress and stifle opportunity for all.”
The letter emphasizes that America’s strength and leadership “in an increasingly diverse and competitive world depends on our ability to be an inclusive society.” It goes on to say that history has shown that without clear-cut guidelines that encourage diversity, equity and inclusion, institutions will “continue discriminatory and exclusionary patterns that hold us all back.”
Some corporations have taken Trump’s cue and have started to eliminate or roll back DEI programs. After Minnesota-based retailer Target announced in January that it would phase out some of its DEI initiatives, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest, Georgia, organized a 40-day “fast” of Target.
Bryant said he encouraged followers of his movement to fight back with their pocketbooks and not shop at the chain’s stores from the first day of Lent, March 5, until Easter Sunday.
In an interview with ABC News, Bryant said he announced at his church on Easter that the “fast” is now a full-fledged boycott of Target.
“We began the boycott against Target because the Black community felt betrayed,” Bryant said.
Among the programs Target said it is phasing out is one established in the wake of the 2020 police-involved killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man. The program assists Black employees in building meaningful careers and promoting Black-owned businesses.
“For them to roll back DEI, it was felt as a slap in the face,” Bryant said.
Bryant noted that the Montgomery bus boycott led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1955 and 1956 lasted 381 days.
“We have just been boycotting Target for 10 weeks and I think that the African American community is resolved that we’re not going back into the store until we see a market change,” Bryant said.
In response to the boycott, Target, which has 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said in a April 23 statement, “We have an ongoing commitment to creating a welcoming environment for all team members, guests, and suppliers.”
“It’s core to how we support and grow our business,” Target said. “We remain focused on supporting organizations and creating opportunities for people in the 2,000 communities where we live and operate.”
But Target isn’t the only major U.S. company scaling back on DEI programs. McDonald’s, Meta, Walmart, Ford, John Deere and Harley-Davidson have all announced they are eliminating some DEI programs.
Some of the companies changed their DEI programs after coming under pressure from conservative groups.
Conservative political commentator and anti-woke activist Robby Starbuck publicly attacked Walmart’s DEI programs. This prompted the big-box retail giant to announce it was rolling back diversity policies and pivoting from the term DEI in internal communications.
After Walmart said it was eliminating the use of the phrase “DEI” altogether, Starbuck said in a social media post, “This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America.”
In a statement to ABC News, Walmart said, “Our purpose, to help people save money and live better, has been at our core since our founding 62 years ago and continues to guide us today. We can deliver on it because we are willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.”
Universities under fire
The Trump administration has also threatened to withhold federal funding and grants from universities nationwide that decline to roll back DEI programs or curb protests on campuses, including pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the administration deems antisemitic.
Some universities have fought back against the administration.
The Trump administration threatened to withhold from Harvard University $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value after demanding that the school end its DEI programs, adopt what the administration deems merit-based admissions, and cooperate with immigration authorities.
But Harvard President Alan Garber has refused to give in to the White House’s demands, writing in an April 14 letter addressed to members of the Harvard community, that the school “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” by agreeing to the terms proposed by the Trump administration.
On April 21, Harvard sued the Trump administration, asking a Massachusetts federal judge to block Trump’s funding freeze, arguing that it is “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.” Harvard also argued that by withholding funds, the Trump administration is violating the First Amendment, flouting federal law, and threatening life-saving research.
“All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” Harvard’s lawyers wrote.
Trump’s Department of Education has also attempted to pressure public schools K-12 to do away with DEI programs or risk losing federal funding. Education groups sued the administration over the move.
Federal judges in both Maryland and New Hampshire issued rulings this month siding with the education groups.
“This Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue here are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” wrote U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of Maryland, a Trump appointee, on Thursday. “But this Court is constitutionally required to closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. The government did not.”
New Hampshire U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty also issued an order Thursday partially blocking the Department of Education from withholding funding to public schools that did not end DEI programs.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to the rulings on Thursday.
Two sides, similar arguments
Supporters of doing away with DEI programs claim the policies are racist, discriminatory and further divide the nation, while advocates for keeping the programs argue it is racist, discriminatory and divisive to end them.
Rev. Bryant told ABC News that he believes Trump is pursuing his “war on woke” to appeal to his base.
“I think he’s playing to his base of uneducated white males, who for some reason feel threatened,” Bryant said. “They’re getting ready to see that America is better when we’re together, not when we are segregated.”
Bryant said Trump’s fight against wokeism has been an attack on civil rights that demonstrators have shed blood and died for going back to the 1950s and 1960s.
“It looks like we’re going back to yesteryear and it’s a very disturbing probability,” Bryant said.
On the other hand, Padfield described most DEI programs in corporate America as “overt racial discrimination.”
“It’s problematic because it sets the corporation up for legal liability and it’s problematic on a moral basis because that’s not the country that we want to live in, where some of our most powerful institutions have decided that the way to get what they want in terms of demographic outcomes is just start brazenly and, in fact, proudly, discriminating on the basis of race and sex,” Padfield said.
Padfield added, “The problem is that the pro-DEI solution actually makes things worse and divides us further. And what I’m hoping for is that ultimately corporate America wakes up and starts addressing these inequalities on a colorblind basis.”
(STERLING, VA.) — Calling them “pioneers,” President Donald Trump praised the top investors in his cryptocurrency meme coin at an exclusive black-tie dinner Thursday as protesters outside the event chanted and displayed signs blasting the gala as a pay-for-play event.
Two hundred and twenty cryptocurrency traders, including many from overseas, pumped tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s meme coin to gain admission to the gala through a contest that awarded invitations to the top investors — with at least some of the funds flowing directly into the Trump family’s coffers.
Among those spotted arriving for the event at Trump’s private golf club outside Washington were Lamar Odom of the NBA and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” fame, controversial cryptocurrency mogul Justin Sun, and Kendall Davis, an Austin-based cryptocurrency investor, who told ABC News that he “came here to advocate for things to be done right in the crypto space.”
The top 220 holders of Trump’s meme coin — a type of digital currency that’s often based on an internet meme — collectively spent upwards of $140 million for a seat at the table on Thursday, according to an analysis by the data analytics firm Nansen. According to CNBC’s reporting of blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis’ data, 58 crypto wallets had made millions from their Trump coin investments as of May 6 — while roughly 764,000 crypto wallets had lost money.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the gala was not a White House event and that the president was attending in a personal capacity. The White House did not release a list of the event’s attendees.
Protesters outside the event — which included Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. — chanted slogans and displayed signs reading “Stop Trump’s Crypto Corruption” and “America is not for sale” as attendees made their way into the venue.
Trump, addressing attendees at the dinner, said that he always puts the country “way ahead of the business” and added, “You can’t say that about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” according to social media posts.
On the topic of cryptocurrency, Trump attacked the previous administration and touted his own administration’s support of crypto.
“The Biden administration persecuted crypto innovators, and we’re bringing them back into the USA where they belong. They were fleeing. They were leaving our country,” Trump was seen saying in a social media video posted by an attendee.
Many of the dinner guests were overseas investors, and several of them told ABC News they had flown into the country just for a chance to see the president of the United States.
One attendee, who asked that he not be identified, told ABC News he flew in from Taiwan for the dinner.
“The second day Trump made the announcement about the dinner, I bought a bunch of tokens,” he said. The attendee said he didn’t have anything specific he wanted to hear from Trump, but that he wanted to attend the dinner because “I just think to have opportunity to come to an event like this is very rare.”
Another attendee, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Alex, told ABC News he is an investment banker from Moscow, Russia, who currently resides in Cancun.
He said he didn’t understand much of what Trump spoke about at the dinner because of the language barrier, but that he’s a supporter of Trump and that he was happy to see him.
Attendee Bryce Paul, in a video he posted to social media, likened Trump’s meme coin gala to crypto’s “Iwo Jima” moment — where attendees would be “raising the flags, behind the enemy lines, right here in the swamp of D.C.”
“I’m just one of 220 people that are invited,” Paul said. “There’s no media, there’s no recording, there are no plus-ones. It’s just truly some of the most influential figures in crypto, in policy, and of course, the man himself.”
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Joni Ernst faced a number of agitated constituents at a town hall on Friday who expressed concerns that the Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid under their major legislative effort to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda would cause people to die.
Her response: “Well, we all are going to die.”
Audience members at the Butler County, Iowa, event raised concerns that proposed cuts to Medicaid under the Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” being mulled in the Senate could threaten the lives of individuals who lose access to health care of food benefits, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). As Ernst explained her position on removing those who should not qualify for Medicaid under the current law from eligibility, an audience member could be heard shouting back at her, “People are going to die.”
Ernst quipped back, “Well we all are going to die,” she said.
Ernst pushed back as the audience reacted, explaining her position.
“Well, what you don’t want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those who are most vulnerable. Those who meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid we will protect. We will protect them,” Ernst continued. “Medicaid is extremely important here in the state of Iowa. If you don’t want to listen, that is fine, but what I am doing is going through and telling you that those that are not eligible, those that are working and have the opportunity for benefits elsewhere, then they should receive those benefits elsewhere and leave those dollars for those that are eligible for Medicaid.”
Medicaid benefits have become a key focus of negotiations on a massive spending package that Republicans, under the direction of Trump, are working to move through Congress.
House Republicans passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” last week. The House version of the bill implements Medicaid reforms and changes to other programs while extending the Trump 2017 tax cuts and plussing up spending in areas such as border security and defense spending.
The Senate has promised modifications to the bill, a fact that Ernst pointed to repeatedly during her town hall. Still, in her home state, concerns about Medicaid ruled the discussion. Concerns over the bill have led to raucous town halls recently, with crowds booing Republican Reps. Mike Flood and Ashley Hinson at town hall events earlier this week.
On Friday, Ernst addressed a constituent who identified as a health care worker about her concerns that the bill would affect health care in Iowa.
“We know the House has their provisions for Medicaid, and I actually agree with most of their provisions. Everyone says that Medicaid is being cut, people are going to see their benefits cut, that is not true,” Ernst said — eliciting boos from the crowd.
As she continued to explain that she believes the bill will strengthen Medicaid by removing those who have options for other forms of health care off of the program, audience members could be heard shouting “Tax the 1 percenters; they don’t pay for it.”
Ernst’s assertion that the bill would not cut Medicaid was met by blowback from a constituent.
One such constituent said that while many people on Medicaid have jobs, they do not earn a living wage. The audience cheered as she spoke.
“That is why they are on Medicaid and that is why they deserve Medicaid and the fact that you want to take that money and route it to people that make billions of dollars who have more money than anybody in this room together,” the constituent named Jen said.
Ernst said children will continue to get the coverage they need.
“Well I would say, Jen, we are not going to cut those benefits for those children,” Ernst said as the audience audibly grumbled. “What we are doing is making sure that those that are not Medicaid eligible are not receiving benefits.”
Ernst, who is a member of the Senate DOGE caucus, also gave a defense of the work that the Department of Government Efficiency has done and continues to do.
“What we are seeing in federal government is the right sizing of the federal governments and allowing the states to take up the role that our forefathers intended,” she said.
In response to this, a member of the audience shouted “chaos” at Ernst.
“It may be chaos to you, but we do have to get back to a semblance of what our country was founded for,” Ernst said. “We are $36 trillion in debt. Both sides have contributed to this. But when does it end. When does it end?”
