The U.S. has experienced four serious aviation disasters since Donald Trump took office just last month—but his administration doesn’t want you to believe that the unprecedented uptick has anything to do with their government-wide staffing cuts.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Newsmax on Tuesday that “it’s rich” for people to blame the Trump administration for the plane crashes, even though they’re the ones in charge.
“To cast blame on this administration for the policy failures of the last four years and say it’s our fault is outrageous, but it’s rich,” Duffy said.
Duffy then went on to confirm that “less than 400 employees” had been laid off at the Federal Aviation Administration since last week, though he attempted to minimize the cuts by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which Duffy claimed sits at around 45,000 employees.
Duffy: “To cast blame on this administration for the policy failures of the last four years and say it’s our fault is outrageous, but it’s rich. So I want to talk quickly about the FAA. It’s true that less than 400 people were laid off at the FAA.” pic.twitter.com/qoMuXCK4mx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2025
Still, the union representing FAA employees slammed the mass firing as a “hastily made decision” that would exhaust a burnt-out workforce “already stretched thin.”
“This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing,” David Spero, national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, said in a statement. “Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
Before 2025, the last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner was in 2009—but despite the disturbing trend, Trump has opted to vaguely scapegoat minorities.
After a mid-air crash in January between a passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over Reagan International Airport killed 67 people, Trump pointed a finger at diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, blaming inclusive work initiatives for the deadly lapse.
“You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain—a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen,” Trump said at the time.
Former National Transportation Safety Board investigators and safety advisers have pointed to the decades-long air traffic controller shortage as the underlying cause of the crashes, and told Newsweek that the FAA should re-prioritize “aeronautical decision-making.”
Under former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s stewardship, the FAA increased hiring, placing 2,000 new employees in the system. But their numbers will just barely replace some 1,100 staff who are either retiring or exiting the high-stress field.
“That’s because nearly half of those hired in any given year will wash out of the program before they get to actually control aircraft after about three years from their initial start date,” CNN reported.
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