Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries
At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019
....
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
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/30/faa-dei-trump-fact-checker/
Do something positive.
| 