On Wednesday, Jan. 29, the deadliest commercial airplane crash in decades occurred over the Potomac River, according to The New York Times.
The crash involved an American Airlines plane, Flight 5342, colliding with an army Black Hawk helicopter. The American Airlines plane carrying 60 passengers and four crew members was cleared to land at the Ronald Reagan Washington Airport. The Black Hawk, carrying three military service members on a training mission, was flying too high in the airspace, which was most likely the leading reason for the crash. Unfortunately, there were no survivors.
Almost exactly 24 hours after the collision occurred, amid one of the most challenging days of their careers, hundreds to thousands of air traffic controllers received an email from President Donald Trump’s Office of Personnel Management, motivating employees to leave their occupation and explore elsewhere.
Included in the email was the statement, “We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so,” reported by The New York Times.
The email continued, “The way of greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” It comes as no surprise that this email was not taken well.
Many of the recipients at the FAA viewed this email as incredibly tone-deaf to the tragedy, along with the already increasingly high demand for air traffic controllers. The email suggested taking buyouts, offering the immediate hire of a second job or “your dream vacation” on the government’s dollar.
Not only is the email insensitive to the tragedy that occurred, but it also directly contradicts regulations set in place that stop federal employees from getting second sources of income. Trump’s response to the collision is creating an increase in concern about the legitimacy and humanity of his administration.
When the president was giving a news conference the morning after the accident on January 30, he started with a moment of silence, but one can’t ignore the fact that he looked ever so eager to start the blame.
Soon after, he criticized Obama and Biden, continuing to imply that DEI policies are to blame. The investigation of the crash has barely begun. The correlation between an aviation accident and diversity has yet to be identified, along with Obama who has not been president for almost ten years.
In the rest of the news conference, he continued to criticize the FAA by falsely claiming that the FAA website lists people with “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism” as qualified individuals for those looking to become air traffic controllers.
Discrediting the FAA furthermore and giving himself praise, he stated, “I signed something last week, that was an executive order … restoring the highest possible standards of air traffic controllers. Then my administration will set the highest bar for aviation safety.”
Sadly, this was not the only email that federal employees received within the past week. An earlier email sent by the Trump administration offered two million federal employees eight months of pay if they resigned by February 6.
With the sweeping wave of federal employees either being laid off or fired, one can’t ignore the growing concern for this administration, one that has “government efficiency” in mind while simultaneously making sweeping cuts to vital government agencies with no clear heads up or plan.
While we mourn this tragedy, Trump continues his agenda of getting civil servants to quit altogether.
As the general public, we can only share our condolences to the friends and family of those lost and anxiously wait until the next news headline to see what else he has in store for America.
Alice Whittemore can be contacted at
awhittemore@kscequinox.com
