A Tragic Test

A calamitous accident over the skies of D.C., killing 67, underscores the need for competent leadership with safety, not politics, as a priority.

Newly confirmed Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy. Photo courtesy of Newsweek

Sixty passengers and four crew members were aboard an American Airlines flight above D.C. late last night when a Black Hawk army helicopter carrying three crashed into it. The passenger flight plummeted into the Potomac River, and tragically there are no known survivors. It is the worst U.S. aviation disaster in recent memory.

Among the deceased were a group of young figure skaters, coaches and their families, who were traveling back from a development camp following the National Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. The loss for their families and communities is unfathomable.

It’s too early to know the cause of the accident in clear skies over D.C. in one of the most tightly controlled air corridors in the world. It does appear from footage and from comments from officials that the helicopter crashed into the plane while the latter was making its descent.

But it is not too early to ask important policy questions. Indeed, it is vital we do, given that other lives may be at risk if systemic safety issues persist.

This is not to assign early blame, either on the operators or on government officials. Though tragic, accidents do happen, and the problem of airspace congestion and lack of adequate staffing of air traffic controllers has existed and grown worse over time.

What matters at this moment is our government’s basic competency, and whether its priorities are aligned to best prevent accidents like this going forward. With respect to these questions, the answers are troubling.

New leaders, little relevant experience

This accident involved the collision of a military aircraft into a commercial one, the rescue operation involves the Coast Guard, and the post-crash investigations will loop in multiple departments. The leadership across these departments—Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation—will come under intense scrutiny in the coming days. Nothing focuses the attention of the country like a mass civilian casualty event, particularly where our own military may have caused it.

We all know that Trump picked newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth despite his lack of relevant experience and every indication that he is manifestly unfit for the job. I won’t spend further time on him today. Similarly, former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who is the new head of Homeland Security, is well-known as a hardline acolyte of Trump and someone who is more interested in showy moments for the camera than actually keeping our country safe and secure.

But I suspect that few Americans could even name the new Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. As a prior, long-serving Congressmember from Wisconsin, elected five times to represent Wisconsin’s 7th District, Duffy was easily confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday. After resigning from Congress, Duffy briefly became a lobbyist and then a Fox Business host on the show Bottom Line.

As with Hegseth, who was a Fox & Friends weekend television host, Trump’s interest in Duffy likely grew out of his television persona and ability to communicate MAGA talking points effectively. Duffy also shares Trump’s background in reality television, having starred in MTV’s The Real World: Boston in 1997 and competed the following year in Road Rules: All Stars. These aren’t typical resume builders for the job of Transportation Secretary, but we are in a new reality TV world.

While Duffy has ample experience on TV, he doesn’t possess much experience in matters of transportation policy. This isn’t to say he can’t succeed despite this shortcoming. After all, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who previously served as Mayor of South Bend, did amazing work and learned quickly on the job. Still, Republicans blasted Buttigieg for his supposed lack of experience, especially following accidents such as the derailment of train cars in East Palestine, Ohio. Today, these same Republicans readily accept the idea that Secretary Duffy, who has even less on-the-job executive experience than Buttigieg, will do just fine.

Politics as priority

The difference between Buttigieg and Duffy, of course, is that the former was hired because of his ideas on how to keep our planes, trains and highways safe and operational, and our transportation systems developing and thriving, while the latter was hired in to be a loyal culture warrior within the Transportation Department.

Secretary Duffy has been on the job just one day. One of his first acts was to rescind “woke” DEI policies.

On that same day, Duffy also issued a memorandum directing staff to begin resetting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to eliminate the electric vehicle mandate.

Neither of these actions does anything, of course, to address the current shortage of air traffic controllers, even though Duffy claimed recently that this shortfall was among the department’s top mandates from Trump. Perhaps in time that will prove true. And in light of this accident, there likely will be new support among lawmakers to push for the gap in staffing to be rectified. Whether Duffy seizes this moment to fix the problem remains to be seen. But it certainly did not appear among his Day One priorities.

Trump is moving things backwards and providing poor leadership

Standing in the way of beefing up the number of air traffic controllers is a Trump-ordered federal hiring freeze, effective across nearly the entire government. In recent days, Democrats have criticized the Trump administration for the freeze, noting in particular that it is impacting the hiring of new air traffic controllers. The hiring of such personnel is required by law under the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which specifically mandates hiring the maximum number of air traffic controllers.

The ranking Democratic member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rick Larsen (D-WA), recently blasted Trump for the hold up and the politicization of a safety issue.

Hiring air traffic controllers is the number one safety issue according to the entire aviation industry. Instead of working to improve aviation safety and lower costs for hardworking American families, the Administration is choosing to spread bogus DEI claims to justify this decision. I’m not surprised by the President’s dangerous and divisive actions, but the Administration must reverse course. Let’s get back to aviation safety and allow the FAA to do its job protecting the flying public.”

Those words would prove tragically prophetic just a week later.

Meanwhile, eight days ago Trump fired the heads of the TSA and Coast Guard, who were forced to leave their positions before their terms had expired. He also eliminated a key aviation security advisory group—the very kind of expert organization that could independently assess a horrific accident like the one that occurred last night and provide recommendations. As AP reported,

The aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.

To make matters worse, on social media Trump irresponsibly began assigning blame for the crash on the helicopter operators and the air traffic controllers—the very group he has understaffed—before inspectors could determine a cause.

While it’s unfair to pin this terrible accident wholly on the new administration, given that congestion in our skies and around our airports is a deeply entrenched problem, it’s certainly fair to ask if the administration knows what it’s doing and where its priorities truly are.

So far, the new administration hasn’t provided the public any reason to be confident in the answers to either question. And this morning, Trump gave a press conference where he blamed the Biden administration, Pete Buttigieg and DEI for the crash, while rambling about the many ways the helicopter could have avoided the plane.