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James Fallows: “Defund the Air Traffic Controllers”

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2025 //
13

James Fallows is a veteran journalist, one of the best. He predicts disaster ahead because of the ignorance of the DOGE team slashing the federal workforce.

Screenshot from CNN, credited to John Nelson, of Delta regional jet flight 4819 upside-down after landing at Pearson Airport in Toronto, after crash landing today.

He writes:

This post is about today’s crash-landing of a commuter jet, en route from Minneapolis to Toronto, which for still-unexplained reasons flipped over and landed on its back without killing any passengers.

Good news for all those aboard.

It coincides with cautionary news about anyone flying on US-based airlines. Let’s go through the de-brief:

The big questions.

Was today’s crash-landing in Toronto directly traceable to this past weekend’s Musk-Trump mass layoffs of FAA officials in the US? 

—Almost certainly not.

Will future crashes be directly traceable to this move?

—Almost certainly so. 

Any future-history of US airline disasters in 2026 or beyond will probably start its narrative in this past holiday weekend of 2025. That is when the Musk tech-bro team known as DOGE, instructed by Russel Vought and empowered by Trump, began its mass layoffs of air-safety officials whose employment status showed “probationary.” (Even if they had been on the job for decades, and were classified as “probationary” only because they had recently received a promotion.)

After any aviation disaster, the careful investigators of the NTSB try to reconstruct the “accident chain.” We’re beginning the accident chain for future disaster, right now. 

Let’s take this step-by-step.

What happened in Toronto.

As with almost any aviation accident, it will take time to be sure. What is known as the time I write is this:

  • The airplane was a Bombardier regional jet. By coincidence, this was the the same make, though a slightly different model, as the regional jet involved in the large-casualty collision near National Airport in DC this month. 
  • Many of the passengers have been taken to the hospital. But as of the time I write, all appear to have survived.
  • The weather was challenging, and the winds were very strong and gusty, when the plane touched down at Toronto/Pearson and then apparently flipped over onto its back. Did the gusty crosswinds cause the plane to lose its balance and flip? At this moment no one can be sure. The weather and winds appear to have been bad but not unmanageable.¹ We’ll see what further data might reveal.
  • Was this in any way related to the large-scale layoffs of air traffic control professionals by the new Musk-Trump-Doge regime? There’s no reason yet to think so. The recording of Air Traffic Control guidance from the Toronto tower, which you can listen to here², seems entirely routine until the moment the regional jet has a bad touch down.³

But will it be related to crashes in the future? That seems to me inevitable. 

—You lay off much of the fire-fighting force, you’re inviting a destructive fire. 

—You lay off teachers, you’re inviting ignorance. 

—And if you lay off the people who have made air-travel safe, you are inviting unsafe air travel. 

Which is Trump, Musk, and their ninjas seem to be doing now. 

But don’t ask me. Ask someone who has devoted his life to air-traffic safety. 

What will happen in our skies.

Someone I have been in touch with for many years, and whose airspace I once flew through during his time as a controller and mine as a pilot in that part of the country, sends a message today that I thought worth quoting in full. This correspondent writes:

They fired a bunch of probationery employees last night. Basically everyone other than controllers or safety inspectors, apparently.

It’s one of those things that has a slow but corrosive effect on safety. For example: Our team is bracing for cuts. One of the biggest things we do is environmental review and community engagement for proposed actions in airspace or procedures.

So if someone needs a new or amended approach [JF note: like those over the Potomac, in light of recent problems], the flight procedure team—currently staffed at 13, should be 17—designs it and gives it to us.

Our environmental specialists do the NEPA [environmental policy] review; myself and other ATC subject matter experts assist them by checking the procedures, explaining what’s going on, and checking it for any variety of things in how it fits in with everything else in the area. We also do community engagement stuff if it is called for. 

[On our team] all the ‘probationary’ people got fired.

Will it lead to disaster? Not immediately. But fewer people trying to do the same amount of work will lead to stuff getting missed….

We prioritize and do the most safety-critical stuff first. But a lot will fall aside.

‘Boys throw stones at frogs in fun…’

Let’s return to the theme of a preceding dispatch: Elon Musk and his acolytes are having fun, and perhaps preparing for a privatization of the FAA, but in the process they are putting all of the rest of us in danger.

—I submit that I know more about air safety, and about FAA procedures, than Elon Musk does, or any of the members of his zealot/ignoramus team.

—And I know at least a thousand people who are vastly more experienced and knowledgeable than I am.

The Musk/Trump people are empowering the know-nothings. Who tear things down because they have no idea of who built them up.

Conceivably this will be the barrier—the risk that constituents might die in airplane crahses—that stops them? When GOP politicians flying out of DCA think that Musk-ite shortcuts might kill them? When even Musk’s private jets have to deal with over-stressed air traffic controllers?

We don’t know. But the powers that be are pushing the limits.

—As a pilot, I trust air traffic controllers. As a passenger, I trust the multi-layer safety network that decades’ worth of relentless self-examination has built up.

—As a citizen, I do not trust the standards that the clown-corrupt Trump/Musk regime has introduced. 

‘Defund the police’ became a right-wing campaign slogan. ‘Defund Air Traffic Control’ will get us killed.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Ignorance, Musk, Elon, Stupid, Trump

Trump Is Breaking the Law By Banning Teaching About DEI

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2025 //
10

Haley Bull of Scripps News reported yesterday that Trump sent out an order to all 50 states warning that the federal government would cut off funding to any school that teaches about “diversity, equity or inclusion.”

She wrote:

The Department of Education is warning state education agencies they may lose federal funding if they do not remove DEI policies and programs to comply with the department’s interpretation of federal law.

A letter from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights was sent to the departments of education in all 50 states, according to the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor writes in the letter. The message warns that “the department will vigorously enforce the law” to schools and state educational agencies receiving funding and that it will start taking measures “to assess compliance” in no more than 14 days.

The letter argues that a Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found that affirmative action in the university’s admission process violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, should apply more broadly. 

“The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent,” the letter states.

This letter fails to mention that since 1970, the U.S. Department of Education has been subject to a law that states clearly that no officer of the federal government may interfere with what schools teaching.

The law states: “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, employee, of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration…of any educational institution…or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials.“

The law is P.L. 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, section 432.

These zealots are trying to turn teaching about civil rights, about Black history, and about LGBT people into a criminal act.

They are wrong. Reality exists no matter what they ban and censor.

They are violating the law, and they must be stopped.

They must be sued by the ACLU, the NAACP, and every other legal organization that defends the rule of law.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Disruption, Equity, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Racism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Orlando Sentinel on Trump’s Gaza Fantasy: Is He Unhinged or Has He Gone Mad?”

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2025 //
10

The Orlando Sentinel editorial board published a scathing editorial about Trump’s ridiculous idea of evicting the people of Gaza and turning their land into a luxury resort.

It said:

No president ever proposed anything so unhinged as Donald Trump’s brutal fantasy of evicting some 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and turning it into a massive real estate deal.
Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” is so drastic, wrong and delusional as to make people wonder whether he was serious or had just gone mad. It was obvious he hadn’t thought it through.

His apologists scrambled unconvincingly to make sense of it. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the former Florida congressman, suggested that it was a negotiating gambit.

Trump, he said, was simply challenging Arab nations “to come with their own solutions” if they don’t like his. We appreciate that Waltz — a generally rational man with deep experience in Middle East politics — has to shoulder the burden of trying to make Trump’s erratic proclamations seem rational. (He was also the person shoved out front after Trump made the outlandish claim that a deadly plane crash was somehow caused by DEI.)

But to fulfill his role as a trusted vizier to the Oval Office, Waltz should give Trump the unvarnished truth: This kind of bizarre behavior — sincere or not — is not helping.

It’s more likely to encourage Israel to make life in Gaza even more hellish and desperate, further destabilizing Israel’s own security at a time when the current administration is likely to see U.S. equivocation as a go-ahead for more aggression.

Vintage Trump

Trump surprised Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who ventured that the displacement would be only temporary. But that’s not what Trump said.
It was, of course, vintage Trump in one respect. His entire life has been transactional, so it would be in character for him to see the tragedy, fear and hopelessness in Gaza as just another opportunity for Trump-branded hotels and casinos.

Even if it ends up as just a pipe dream, however, it’s hardly harmless.

It has subverted the already distant prospect of a Mideast peace. It caters to the current Israeli government’s worst instincts. It repudiates decades of U.S. policy and world opinion favoring a two-state solution with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. There is no other road to peace.

It has put the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza at greater risk by giving Hamas a potential pretext to renounce the ceasefire.

Stoking antisemitism

And it is certain to further inflame antisemitism in the United States and elsewhere.

Trump has mortified the nation and our government by exposing his gross ignorance of what a president should know about international law and the tangled history of the Middle East.

He should have known that it would be unthinkable for Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia ever to agree to it.

He should have known that it would be regarded everywhere as ethnic cleansing, a form of genocide comparable to what happened to the Armenians during World War I.

He should have known, but didn’t care, that Gaza’s civilians, as one said, “would rather live in tents next to their destroyed homes rather than relocate to another place.”
Worldwide condemnation

Criticism was swift and worldwide. Even Russia, right for once, called it “out of the question.”
In the U.S. Congress, most reaction ranged from speechlessness to consternation, especially over the inevitable involvement of U.S. troops.

Trump’s plan delighted the Israeli right wing at the cost of additionally compromising the Jewish state. He validated the suspicion that ethnic cleansing was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intent from the outset.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners, such as the racist Knesset member Itmar Ben-Gvir, have been open about purging Gaza of Palestinians.

“The only solution to Gaza is to encourage the migration of Gazans,” Ben-Gvir said.

White House optics


It was no coincidence that Trump sprung the scheme at the White House with Netanyahu by his side, or that the Israeli wore a red tie — Trump’s signature color — while Trump wore blue, which is symbolic of Israel.


Many believe that what Ben-Gvir said has been the strategy all along behind the excessive bombing that took thousands of civilian lives and damaged or destroyed some 60% of Gaza’s buildings, waterworks and other essential infrastructure, along with more than two-thirds of its farmland.

But Israel would never be able to deport more than 2 million people without U.S. support. That’s what makes Trump’s remarks so reckless.
The head of the Zionist Organization of America endorsed Trump’s repugnant scheme. Jewish groups that are more broad-minded and sensible reacted with concern over the fate of the hostages and revulsion at the entire idea.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal lobby J Street, said “there aren’t adequate words to express our disgust at the forcible displacement of Palestinians with the assistance of the United States of America. … We call on leaders around the world, political leaders in this country, and, of course, Jewish communal leaders in this country to express in no uncertain terms that these proposals are absolutely unacceptable — legally and morally.”

It took less than three weeks back in the Oval Office for Trump to commit a monumental foreign policy blunder. He probably won’t admit it, but he desperately needs the advice that cooler heads like Rubio, and wiser, more grounded experts like Waltz, can impart. It’s their duty, by the very nature of their roles and their duty to the American people as well as the cause of global peace, to figure out a way to get him to listen.

And if that fails, it’s past time for Congress to do something about him, starting with a resolution of disapproval. It bears remembering: Silence is consent.


The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive  Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
© 2025 Orlando Sentinel

Categories Ignorance, Insane, International, Shame, Stupid, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Budget Cuts Will Stifle Cancer Research

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2025 //
25

Heather Cox Richardson points out that Trump’s desire to cut the federal budgets threatens to undermine cancer research. Cutting cancer research? Yes. Is cancer research a “Marxist radical lunatic” or DEI activity?

Cancer research is important for all of us, regardless of our political views, or lack thereof. Why in the world would Trump want to cut its funding?

Yesterday the National Institutes of Health under the Trump administration announced a new policy that will dramatically change the way the United States funds medical research. Now, when a researcher working at a university receives a federal grant for research, that money includes funds to maintain equipment and facilities and to pay support staff that keep labs functioning. That indirect funding is built into university budgets for funding expensive research labs, and last year reached about 26% of the grant money distributed. Going forward, the administration says it will cap the permitted amount of indirect funding at 15%.

NIH is the nation’s primary agency for research in medicine, health, and behavior. NIH grants are fiercely competitive; only about 20% of applications succeed. When a researcher applies for one, their proposal is evaluated first by a panel of their scholarly peers and then, if it passes that level, an advisory council, which might ask for more information before awarding a grant. Once awarded and accepted, an NIH grant carries strict requirements for reporting and auditing, as well as record retention.

In 2023, NIH distributed about $35 billion through about 50,000 grants to over 300,000 researchers at universities, medical schools, and other research institutions. Every dollar of NIH funding generated about $2.46 in economic activity. For every $100 million of funding, research supported by NIH generates 76 patents, which produce 20% more economic value than other U.S. patents and create opportunities for about $600 million in future research and development.

As Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times explained, the authors of Project 2025 called for the cuts outlined in the new policy, claiming those cuts would “reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.” Dr. David A. Baltrus of the University of Arizona told Jewett and Stolberg that the new policy is “going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that. They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”

Although Baltrus works in agricultural research, focusing on keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce, cancer research is the top area in which NIH grants are awarded.

Anthropologist Erin Kane figured out what the new NIH policy would mean for states by looking at institutions that received more than $10 million in grants in 2024 and figuring out what percentage of their indirect costs would not be eligible for grant money under the new formula. Six schools in New York won $2.4 billion, including $953 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would allow only $220 million for overhead, a loss of $723 million.

States across the country will experience significant losses. Eight Florida schools received about $673 million, $231 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would limit that funding to $66 million, a loss of $165 million. Six schools in Ohio received a total of about $700 million; they would lose $194 million. Four schools in Missouri received a total of about $830 million; they would lose $212 million.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Research, Science, Trump

MMA Fighter Praises Hitler, Denies Holocaust as Mass Stupidity Epidemic Spreads

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2025 //
28

Here is what Trump has wrought: He has made it acceptable for people to be as bigoted and stupid in public as they want, with no sense of shame attached to their bigotry or their stupidity. When Trump attacks DEI, he is openly avowing his racism and misogny. When he rants about immigrants, he doesn’t mean white immigrants, he means nonwhite immigrants.

Thanks to Trump’s malign influence, we get a story like the following, which appeared in the New York Daily News. Bryce Mitchell is a mixed martial arts “star” who flaunts his bigotry and ignorance and belittles the schools that tried to educate him and inculcate a sense of human decency.

MMA star Bryce Mitchell praised Adolf Hitler as a “good guy” and denied the Holocaust happened in a rant on his new podcast, “ArkanSanity.”

“I honestly think Hitler was a good guy, based upon my own research, not my public education and indoctrination,” the 30-year-old fighter said in the first episode.

“He fought for his country, he wanted to purify it by kicking the greedy Jews out who were destroying his country and turning them all into gays,” he added. “Was Hitler perfect? No, but he was fighting for his people. He wanted a pure nation.”

After co-host Roli Delgado countered that genocide was bad, Mitchell then denied the Holocaust.

“That’s what your public education will tell you Roli, because you believe your public education because you haven’t done your own research. When you realize there’s no possible way they could’ve burned and cremated 6 million bodies, you’re gonna realize the Holocaust ain’t real,” he said.

Mitchell, who competes in UFC’s featherweight division, was roundly denounced by others in the fighting community following his comments.

“Each and every day MMA finds a way to reach a new low,” broadcaster Ariel Helwani wrote on social mediaThursday. “A new way of embarrassing itself and those who are fans of it.”

“It just continues to baffle me at how unbelievably stupid — not to mention bigoted — some of the people in the sport or associated with the sport can be,” Helwani concluded.

Mitchell is no stranger to saying divisive things aloud. Last year, he said he planned to home school his children to prevent them from “turning gay.”

“That’s the reason I’m going to home-school Tucker, because I don’t want him to be a communist,” he said in an Instagram video while holding up his son. “I don’t want him to worship Satan. I don’t want him to be gay.”

Categories Bigotry, Evil, Fascism, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

California: Trump’s Water Release Didn’t Help Los Angeles or Farmers: A Stunt

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2025 //
19

The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump used the devastating Los Angeles fires to stage a pointless stunt: He sent the Army Corps of Engineers to release water from two Northern California reservoirs. He claimed that he released the water to help put the fires out, but by the time he did it, the fires were almost completely extinguished, and it would not have flowed to Los Angeles anyway.

Now the farmers who rely on the water in the reservoirs are worried if they will have enough water this summer.

Days after President Trump startled some of his most ardent supporters in California’s San Joaquin Valley by having the Army Corps of Engineers suddenly release water from two dams, many in the region and beyond were still perplexed.

Acting on an order from Washington, the corps allowed irrigation water to flow down river channels for three days, into the network of engineered waterways that fan out among farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley. Coursing from rivers to canals to irrigation ditches, much of the water eventually made its way to retention basins, where it soaked into the ground, replenishing groundwater.

“It’s been recharged to the ground,” said Tom Barcellos, president of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District and a dairyman and farmer. That sounds good, except farmers in parts of the San Joaquin Valley typically depend on water from the two dams to irrigate crops in the summer. In other words, the release of water this time of year, when agriculture usually doesn’t require it, means that growers are likely to have less water stored in the reservoirs this summer, during a year that so far is among the area’s driest on record….

The sudden, unplanned release of water from the dams has led to criticism from some residents, water managers and members of Congress, who say the unusual discharge of water seems to have been intended to make a political statement — to demonstrate that Trump has the authority to order federal dams or pumps to send more water flowing as he directs.

“These kinds of shenanigans, they hurt smaller farmers,” said Dezaraye Bagalayos, a local water activist. Small growers have already been struggling, and the release of water from the dams means they will have less when they need it, Bagalayos said.

“The last thing in the world California water management needs is somebody like Trump calling shots when he doesn’t know how anything works,” Bagalayos said. “It’s making an already hard situation very, very difficult. We don’t have a lot of wiggle room in the state of California to be messing around with our water supply like this….”

The action occurred after Trump’s visit to fire-devastated Los Angeles, when he pledged to “open up the valves” to bring the region more water — even though reservoirs that supply Southern California’s cities were at record levels (and remain so).

As the water poured from the dams, Trumpposted a photo of one of them, saying it was “beautiful water flow that I just opened in California.” The Army Corps of Engineers said the action was “consistent with the direction” in Trump’s recent executive order, which calls for maximizing water deliveries.

Neither Trump nor the Army Corps of Engineers provided details about where the water was intended to go. But water released from the two dams serves agriculture in the eastern San Joaquin Valley. It typically does not reach the Los Angeles area, which depends instead on supplies delivered from the aqueducts of the State Water Project on the other side of the valley.

The water releases lowered the levels of the two reservoirs: Lake Success, near Porterville, had been about 20% full. It fell to 18%. Lake Kaweah, near Visalia, was roughly 21% full and similarly dropped to 19% of capacity over the weekend.

Federal records show that more than 2 billion gallons were released from the reservoirs over three days.

If anyone knows of a cure for “stupid,” please contact the White House.

Categories Accountability, California, Disruption, Environment, Ignorance, Los Angeles, Stupid, Trump

Today is the Last Day for Federal Employees to Accept Musk’s “Buyout” Offer

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2025 //
7

As part of the radical overhaul of the federal government, some 2 million employees were asked to resign and accept a leave with pay if they did. But there is no money appropriated to pay for the offer, and there are multiple lawsuits opposing it. Nor was there any consideration of the value of the employee’s work.

When Elon Musk took charge of Twitter, he made a similar offer and fired 80% of the workforce. He got rid of content moderation teams and opened the platform to Nazis and misinformation. The downside was that he lost every major advertiser, and he’s now suing them for conspiring to hurt Twitter.

The New York Times reported on the final day of the offer:

Some federal employees have a new symbol for their resistance to President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s radical overhaul of the U.S. government: a spoon.

Last week, in an email with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” the administration urged federal workers to consider resigning from their posts and said they would be paid through September — a bid to rapidly shrink the size of the work force.

Union leaders have urged employees not to accept the offer, questioning its legality and legitimacy. And on Wednesday, workers at the Technology Transformation Services, the tech-focused arm of the General Services Administration, made their displeasure with the offer known during an organization-wide meeting with their new leader, a former employee at Mr. Musk’s automaker Tesla, by sharing spoon emojis in an online chat, according to people familiar with the response.

In the meeting, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who was appointed to lead technology efforts at the G.S.A., attempted to assuage worries about the deferred resignation plan and told workers to “read as much as you can” about the offer, according to an audio recording provided to The New York Times. He also urged federal workers to review information posted on the website of the Office of Personnel Management.

“Have that context in mind as you think through the decision you have to make in the next 24 to 30 hours,” Mr. Shedd added. “The deferred resignation is the first step in streamlining the federal work force. In-person work will be the next step.”

His assurances did not appear to work. Employees in the tech division rained down spoon emojis in the chat that accompanied the video meeting, which was watched by more than 600 people, according to photos of the chat screen provided to The Times and three people familiar with the reaction. Some employees also added spoon emojis to their statuses on Slack, a workplace communication app.

“Thomas: Whether you mean to or not, you’re playing a role in destroying TTS,” one worker wrote in the chat.

“The culture is the people,” another employee wrote. “Without the people, TTS is NOTHING.”

After Mr. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022, he sent an email with the same subject line — “Fork in the Road” — to the company’s employees, offering them a buyout to leave the company if they didn’t want to participate in his “extremely hardcore” vision.

During the Twitter takeover, employees used the salute emoji as a sign of solidarity with their co-workers and as a goodbye during mass layoffs.

After renaming the social media service as X, Mr. Musk has pushed for severe cuts to the federal government. He shared a post that estimated 5 to 10 percent of the federal work force would take the deferred resignation offer, potentially saving the government $100 billion.

The last date to accept the offer is Feb. 6, according to the email to government workers.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Ignorance, Musk, Elon, Propaganda, Trump

Trump’s Shameless DEI Hoax

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2025 //
20

Trump would have us believe that the hiring of anyone other than white Christian men is the reason for everything that goes wrong. He has signed executive orders that ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the government and in schools and higher education institutions, as well as any institution that receives federal funding, such as scientific research.

When Trump heard about the horrific airplane-helicopter crash on the Potomac River last week, his reaction was to blame DEI, as well as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. To him, diversity equals incompetence. That is, women, Blacks, Hispanics, and people with disabilities are incompetent.

Two points are clear:

First, DEI programs were funded and strengthened during Trump’s first term in office. How did it suddenly become the cause of all that is evil? Why must it be rooted out if every part of American life?

Second, let’s be clear about what DEI IS. It is a knowing effort to seek out and include women and nonwhite minorities and persons with disabilities in the workforce, on faculties, in student bodies.

In other words, those who oppose DEI are using the term to smear the beneficiaries of these policies as undeserving and unqualified, regardless of their experience and qualifications.

Plain English translation: Trump’s anti-DEI policy is RACISM, MISOGYNY, and XENOPHOBIA, and whatever the term is to discriminate against people with disabilities.

When he said the cause of the DC crash was DEI, it was immediately understood that he meant that a woman or a person of color was either the air traffic controller or a pilot. He knew this to be true, he said, not because he had evidence, but because (he said) he had “common sense.”

His instincts told him that a DEI hire did it. Someone, he guessed, was hired to direct the air traffic or to pilot one or both of the aircraft who was not a white Christian man. His “common sense” told him so.

But now we know more about the DEI policy in place. It started under Barack Obama. It was expanded under Trump.

Trump did not know who the air traffic controller was. Nor did he know who was piloting the airplane or the helicopter.

Glenn Kessler, the Fact-Checker for The Washington Post, wrote that Trump ridiculed the diversity policy that his administration put in place:

Reading from a 2024 Fox News report — which he incorrectly identified as being two weeks old — Trump listed conditions that he suggested disqualify people from being air traffic controllers: “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress.” He suggested that it was wrong for anyone with those conditions to qualify “for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”

But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried.

The facts

In the news conference, Trump said Obama weakened standards and “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best, to extraordinary. … Then they changed it back — that was Biden.”

Trump’s claim was repeated in an executive order Trump signed Thursday that ordered a review of aviation safety: “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence.”
That’s false. In his first term, Trump left the standards unchanged.

For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.

But Trump, in his first term, left the policy in place, leading to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was due to go to trial this year.

Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference.
“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

The link under “targeted disabilities” is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included:

• Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
• Vision (Blind)
• Missing Extremities
• Partial Paralysis
• Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
• Severe intellectual disability
• Psychiatric disability
• Dwarfism

The June 2019 webpage for the Aviation Development Program (ADP) — also now removed but still visible on the Wayback Machine — said the program “provides an opportunity for Persons with Targeted Disabilities (PWTD) to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.” Participants would get up to one year of experience in an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), with a possibility of getting a temporary appointment at the FAA Academy.
In August 2021, the FAA announced that one of the first three ADP candidates graduated from the FAA Academy and became an official air traffic control trainee. “Twelve candidates are in the pipeline for the ADP, pending completion of the clearance process,” the agency said. “Candidates must first pass the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA), followed by the security and medical clearance process.”

The announcement said the program was conceived when an air traffic manager met a quadriplegic student who had assumed he would never qualify to be a controller because of his condition. The FAA stressed that participants must meet the same qualifications as any other air traffic controller student.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump claimed that he had changed Obama’s criteria for hiring air traffic controllers with greater diversity — when in fact he left it unchanged. Moreover, he decried the fact that FAA hired controllers with a range of disabilities that he listed at the news conference. But that program was launched during his first term.

Four Pinocchios [The biggest possible lie.]

Trump likes to say that “merit” is the only possible reason to hire someone. The person hired should be the best qualified for the job.

Is conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best qualified person to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services? No.

Is Pete Hegseth, with his record as a drunk, a sexual predator, and failed management experience, the best qualified person to be Secretary of Defense? No.

Is Tulsi Gabbard–apologist for Putin and Assad, member of a weird cult–the best qualified person to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies? No.

Is Kash Patel, sycophant, FBI-hater, and election denier, the best qualified person to lead the FBI, especially after Trump’s sweeping purge of all agents who investigated him? No.

Other Trump choices are equally unqualified. The only one I consider qualified are Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. I was going to add Scott Bradenton, the new Secretary of the Teasury, but then I learned on Saturday that he gave Elon Musk permission to bring his team into the inner sanctum of the Department to copy the personal information of millions of Americans. As in the ransacking of Twitter, Musk’s team brought sofa beds so they could work long hours duplicating data that was supposed to be closely guarded.

Pete Hegseth stated the alleged credo of the Trump administration in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday:

“Color blind and merit based, the best leaders possible, whether it is flying Black Hawks, flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government, the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and the brightest, whether it is in our air-traffic control, or whether it is in our generals, or whether it is throughout our government,” Hegseth said. 

Hegseth is living proof that Trump has not chosen “the best and the brightest” (nor does he know the origin of the term, which was the title of a book by David Halberstam about the “best and the brightest” whose arrogance ensnared us into the war in Vietnam).

If merit mattered to Trump, most of his cabinet would not have been chosen. If merit mattered in the election, Trump would not be president.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Lies, Racism, Shame, Trump

The Most Terrifying Article You Will Read This Week or Month

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2025 //
31

This is the story of the takeover of a city and a political party and a state by the farthest right fringe of the Idaho Republican Party. These extremists want to defund education. They want to control everything, not just education.

The article focuses on one community college that they targeted, North Idaho College, which may lose its accreditation, not because of academic or financial problems but because its board is in chaos.

The extremists target all public education. They think education is indoctrination. They think it’s dangerous, even vocational and technical education.

Here are a few illustrative paragraphs:

The charter violations that kicked off this accreditation scandal four years ago never had anything to do with academics. The two-year community college offers a solid education and features the top nursing program in the state. Their finances are stable too. No, NIC might go under because the Board of Trustees has existed in a state of toxicity, chaos, and dysfunction ever since the far right gained a board majority four years ago.

It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic disaccreditation would be for the people of North Idaho. With a price tag 65 percent lower on average than four-year state institutions, community colleges place higher education within reach of the least advantaged Americans; over a third of their students make less than $20,000 per year. At NIC, 57 percent of students
receive financial aid. Local businesses depend on the college for employee training on everything from office software to forklift operation. High school students can enroll in dual credit programs, which let students get a head start on their first year of college and allow homeschoolers to obtain official transcripts….

How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit….

The consequences of that agenda go far beyond NIC’s accreditation crisis. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country; citing difficulty recruiting doctors given the risk of criminalization, two hospitals have already closed their labor and delivery departments, leaving many rural Idahoans hours from maternal care. Armed militia members have shown up in the children’s section of libraries looking for pornography, and libraries are limiting service due to legislation that holds librarians criminally liable for books deemed inappropriate. Idaho’s primary and secondary schools are literally falling apart; it spends less per student than any other state and ranks 43rd in education quality.

This “parasitic wasp” is at work in other red states.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Higher Education, Idaho, Ignorance

Jeff Tiedrich: This Week in Stupid

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2025 //
28

I’m posting this latest missive from Jeff Tiedrich because it made me laugh out loud. I once again apologize for his generous use of words I don’t allow on this site. But he uses the F word to make you laugh and to emphasize his point. The next four years will give him plenty to work with. I subscribe to his blog. You should consider doing so.

He writes:

as another stupid week comes to a close here in America, let’s look back at some of the highlights.

monday: who would Jesus infect 

it’s been a hot minute, so let’s check in on America’s new christofascist overlords. here’s newly-elected Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. 

“with your help, together, we will make Indiana a truly free state … where we can raise our children as God intended, without interference by woke schools, doctors or courts … where we are no longer vaxxed or masked.”

sure, absolutely. it’s a well-known fact that Jesus was all about spreading preventable diseases. it’s right there in the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the science-deniers, for they will choke to death on their own infectious mucus.

I’m no scholar, but I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing in the Bible about vaccinations — but as long as we’re going to adhere to “God’s intentions,” here’s one he’s pretty specific about.

if you wear linen and wool at the same time, you should be fucking slaughtered.

Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

that’s good old Leviticus 19:19. now here’s Leviticus 19:27.

Ye shall not round off the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

what do you have to say for yourself, Todd, you infidel? because it looks to me like you’re definitely marring the corners of thy beard.

that’s what I love about these cristofascist hypocrites. they cherry-pick the Bible to prove whatever oppressive notion they want to inflict on the rest of us — but when it comes to actually adhering to the laws that are right there in the Bible, it’s fucking crickets.

tuesday: hly fcking sht, lern hw to fcking spel

Tuesday was Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, and Senate Republicans brought all the props out in support of his candidacy — because nothing says I’m a serious legislator whose issues should be taken seriously more thanmisspelling the word military.

in their own defense, Senate Republicans had been out all night getting hammered with Piss-Drunk Pete, and were too hung over the next morning to notice. 

wednesday: I download Supreme Court decisions for the idiocy

during oral arguments regarding a Texas law requiring age verification in order to access porn sites, Fishin’ Trip Sammy Alito raised a cogent question.

“Justice Alito is asking if websites like Pornhub have ‘essays, modern day Gore Vidal, stuff like that’ like the old Playboy.”

um, who wants to tell him?

I suppose on the one hand, it’s admirable that Steal Stoppin’ Sammy should be so ignorant of the online porn experience that he’d ask such a ludicrous question — but on the other hand: why the fuck are ancient white men allowed to rule on technologies they’re too out-of-touch to understand?

remember the old “the internet is a series of tubes” meme? here’s where it came from: an old white man who had no clue what he was gibbering about.

back in 2006, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was railing against streaming services. he wanted to shut them down. he was convinced they were going to break the internet — because, as he explained it, the internet is “a series of tubes.” here is exactly what Senator Stevens said.

“And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

these people should not be setting policy affecting millions of Americans. they should be enjoying a nice, hot cup of shut the fuck up in a managed care facility.

oh, and for the record, “I download porn for the articles” is a joke I made twelve years ago. 

you’re welcome.

thursday: mirth of an abomination 

oh frabjous day, the toxic incels are at it again.

pro tip: posting shit like this is proof you’ve failed as a human being.

also, can you fucking idiots get your stories straight?

just two weeks ago, the Space Nazi was extolling the virtues of c-sections — promising that if women would opt out of giving birth the old-fashioned way, all of us could have brains as big as his.

“There are certainly other factors at play, but heavy use of c-sections allows for a larger brain, as brain size has historically been limited by birth canal diameter.”

so which is it, incels?

friday: stand back, Rand Paul’s about to say something stupid 

while writing these daily posts, there’s a line find myself I using over and over: “it’s so easy to solve all the world’s problems when you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” the reason I keep repeating it, is because Republicans keep proving it’s true.

here’s failed wig model Rand Paul, explaining how he knows more about water management than all the water managers. 

“I see these homes burning and I’m like wow, if they just had a generator and a hose, you start sucking the water out of the The Pacific Ocean. but you can do more than that. you can pump it and put it in cisterns up in the hills a mile or two in. why don’t they take the ocean water and put it in cisterns have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? once again, bad local government.”

hey everybody, Rand Paul just invented reservoirs. that’s some Nobel Prizewinning stuff right there.

this fucking arrogant asshole, lecturing Los Angeles on why don’t you just have reservoirs? 

you nincompoop, Los Angeles has reservoirs. plenty of them. and they were all full when the fires started. that’s not the issue. Rand Paul is conveniently forgetting about the part where LA was dealing with literal hurricanes made out of fire that were too massive and fast-moving to control or contain — by any fire department, anywhere.

talking out of your ass from the floor of the Senate is easy. actually dealing with problems is hard — and Republicans are proving it every day.

saturday: ?

hey, it’s still morning as I sit here writing this. but give it time, I guarantee you that some dipshit wingnut is going to do something stupid before the day is over. you can set your watch to it.

everyone is entitled to my own opinion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

do you have a nomination for This Week in Stupid? email me at jefftiedrich@gmail.com. thanks!

Categories Extremism, Humor, Ignorance, Stupid
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