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The Reason Trump is Blaming DEI: He Tried to Cut Air Traffic Control Funding Day Before the Crash [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-30
The day before a plane crashed in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump tried to unilaterally freeze all domestic funding. Politico obtained a list of the impacted programs. Included in that list was a program that goes by the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number 12.401, among other things it pays for "Air National Guard Air Traffic Control Activities," and can be found here. The grant programs gives monies to State national guards (as well as the District's Guard) to safely operate their air national guards. It funds maintenance of runways and equipment, fire protection aircraft, combat readiness training and security at Air National Guard facilities. But the Trump administration proposed suspending its funding because it funds planning activities required to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act as well:
ANG Natural and Cultural Resources Management - for Natural and Cultural resource Management projects to comply with environmental laws, conserve and restore the environment.
It's unlikely that the there is a direct linkage between that cut and yesterday's accident. But it's very possible that the proposed changes caused stress in people's lives. It's also possible that the non-buyout buyout offer caused stress amongst air traffic controllers and made the situation of DCA being understaffed in the air traffic control tower worse.
What I do know is that fewer and fewer people are likely to want to work for the federal government with this nonsense going on. Of course, that's what Trump and Musk want. They can then contract out the governments work to for-profit firms (which they may or may not own shares in) or better yet not even have the services provided. I mean, who needs air traffic controllers?
An airport near the very busy San Francisco International Airport is losing all of its controllers next week because it can't find qualified controllers willing to work for low pay.
And this is the reality of the Trump Administration: its whole sale attack on government because of a few high profile incidents that irritated voters will cause the mundane services government provides to be hollowed out. That could lead to longer times to access medical care, inabilities to obtain prescription medications, tainted food, and yes midair collisions.
President Trump doesn't want us to talk about how disasterous his proposed policies and actions are, especially when there's an incident that shows the problems with his haphazard and incompetent approach to governing. So he holds an outrageous press conference attacking DEI and politicizing a tragedy. And instead of pushing back with facts about how Trump's actions in office have harmed our government and made incidents like this more likely, Democrats are talking about DEI again.
With Donald Trump, when he says something outrageous, it should be cause to look and see what more outrageous thing he did.
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