Trump faults DEI hiring in plane crash and falsely describes FAA policies under Obama, Biden

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President Barack Obama in 2010 ordered federal agencies to prioritize hiring more people with disabilities. The Federal Aviation Administration incorporated such efforts into its diversity hiring program.

These efforts remained in place throughout President Donald Trump’s first administration. The FAA under Trump expanded its effort to hire people with disabilities, announcing in 2019 a program to hire 20 people with disabilities to be air traffic controllers.

Trump in 2018 eliminated an Obama-era assessment used in hiring air traffic controllers that scored applicants based on their work and education history and personality traits. Biden did not revive it.

By Caleb McCullough & Maria Ramirez Uribe

Hours after a plane crashed over the Potomac River a few miles from the White House, President Donald Trump held a press briefing in which he blamed his predecessors’ diversity hiring policies as a possible reason for the accident.

Sixty-seven people were presumed dead after an American Airlines passenger jet collided in midair with an Army helicopter near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29. The victims included three U.S. service members aboard the helicopter and everyone aboard the plane, including several young figure skaters, a civil rights lawyer, a newlywed, a pilot and several flight attendants.

Trump started his Jan. 30 press conference with a moment of silence but pivoted to blame Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who Trump said led Federal Aviation Administration diversity programs that inspired the agency to hire unqualified air traffic control employees. Trump said he ended those initiatives in 2017 when he was first elected, but Biden reinstated them.


Trump faults DEI hiring in plane crash and falsely describes FAA policies under Obama, Biden
If Your Time is short

President Barack Obama in 2010 ordered federal agencies to prioritize hiring more people with disabilities. The Federal Aviation Administration incorporated such efforts into its diversity hiring program.

These efforts remained in place throughout President Donald Trump’s first administration. The FAA under Trump expanded its effort to hire people with disabilities, announcing in 2019 a program to hire 20 people with disabilities to be air traffic controllers.

Trump in 2018 eliminated an Obama-era assessment used in hiring air traffic controllers that scored applicants based on their work and education history and personality traits. Biden did not revive it.

See the sources for this fact-check

Hours after a plane crashed over the Potomac River a few miles from the White House, President Donald Trump held a press briefing in which he blamed his predecessors’ diversity hiring policies as a possible reason for the accident.

Sixty-seven people were presumed dead after an American Airlines passenger jet collided in midair with an Army helicopter near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29. The victims included three U.S. service members aboard the helicopter and everyone aboard the plane, including several young figure skaters, a civil rights lawyer, a newlywed, a pilot and several flight attendants.

Trump started his Jan. 30 press conference with a moment of silence but pivoted to blame Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who Trump said led Federal Aviation Administration diversity programs that inspired the agency to hire unqualified air traffic control employees. Trump said he ended those initiatives in 2017 when he was first elected, but Biden reinstated them.

"I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy," Trump said. "And then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I signed a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence."

Trump read from a Fox News headline that said the Federal Aviation Administration diversity hiring initiative "includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities." Trump said it came out a week before he took office, but it was published Jan. 14, 2024. After the press conference, the White House also pointed to an Obama-era biographical assessment for air traffic controllers that critics said prioritized diversity over skills.

A close look at the FAA’s hiring policies under Obama, Biden and Trump shows that Trump mischaracterized the policies and misled about his actions and the actions of his White House predecessors. He also provided no evidence these policies had any connection to the fatal crash.

The crash has generated renewed concerns about air traffic controller staffing, and the cause remains under investigation. Experts warned against singling out any specific cause of the crash, including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, less than 24 hours after it occurred.

Trump expanded — not withdrew — a hiring initiative aimed at people with disabilities

In 2010, Obama’s administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to hire more people with disabilities, noting that although 54 million people in the U.S. have disabilities, they were underrepresented in the federal workforce. The FAA incorporated the directive into its hiring practices.

That didn’t stop when Trump took office in 2017. Archives of the FAA’s website show the agency continually highlighted its diversity hiring initiatives, including its aims to hire people with disabilities, from 2013 up until Trump reclaimed office in 2025, including throughout Trump’s first term, 2017 to 2021. The page was taken down after Trump was inaugurated Jan. 20.

During his Jan. 30 press conference, Trump maligned a list of "targeted disabilities," including severe intellectual disabilities, saying their emphasis in hiring was unique to his predecessors.

The term "targeted disabilities" is legally defined across the federal government to include "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."

Yet in 2019, also under Trump’s first term, the FAA launched a program that aimed to hire 20 people with disabilities to be air traffic controllers, including people who have these "targeted disabilities."

In its April 11, 2019, press release, the agency said the program’s key focus was to "identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce."

After being sworn in for his second term, Trump on Jan. 20 and Jan. 22 signed executive orders aimed at shutting down diversity programs in the federal government, including the FAA.

The White House confirmed Jan. 30 that Trump’s executive orders did away with those goals.

Trump ended a controversial Obama-era hiring protocol, but Biden did not reinstate it

In 2014, the Obama administration launched a hiring assessment for air traffic controllers that weighed biographical information such as work and education experience and personality traits as part of a person’s application. The training standards for those who were hired didn’t change.

The assessment did not ask specifically about race, but critics said it was designed to create a more diverse hiring pool at the expense of people who were more qualified or performed better on skills tests. People who failed were not allowed to continue with their application. The FAA introduced the assessment into its hiring protocol in 2014 after it commissioned a study of the barriers racial minorities and women face in becoming air traffic controllers.

Throughout his first term, the Trump administration defended the Transportation Department in a lawsuit over the assessment, which plaintiffs said was discriminatory. Trump’s administration and Biden’s administration both denied in court that the process favored nonwhite applicants. Nevertheless, in 2018, Trump jettisoned its use of the air control biographical assessment, the White House said.

Biden’s administration did not reinstate the assessment, and it has not been a part of the application process since 2018.

All air traffic controllers undergo rigorous tests regardless of disability

All air traffic controllers need to pass skills and medical tests to be hired, air traffic management experts told PolitiFact. That didn’t change under either hiring initiative.

Some disabilities could be disqualifying, Margaret Wallace, an aviation management professor at Florida Institute of Technology, said. Some examples could include heart conditions or neurological issues that might unexpectedly incapacitate a person, or "poor or no vision, color blindness, poor or no hearing, speech issues that could affect the ability to communicate as needed," Wallace said.

Michael McCormick retired from the FAA in 2015 after working under Republican and Democrat administrations, and his work included hiring controllers. He said most of the conditions Trump listed would not meet the agency’s medical standards.

"The decision to hire a controller is solely based upon aptitude testing, medical certification and security investigation," McCormick said.

Our ruling

As he speculated about the Jan. 29 air crash’s cause, Trump said "I changed the Obama policy (on hiring air traffic controllers) ... And then Biden came in and he changed it."

The White House said he was referring to two separate policies.

The first was a push to hire more people with disabilities that started under Obama. Trump didn’t end the initiative — he expanded the effort by announcing a program aimed at hiring 20 people with disabilities to be air traffic controllers. All air traffic controllers had to pass medical, security and skills tests, regardless of any disability.

The second involved an Obama-era hiring assessment that critics said prioritized diversity over qualifications. Trump was wrong to say that Biden reinstated it — he did not. The assessment has not been in place since 2018, when Trump ended it. But even under that practice, training standards did not change.

Trump conflated policies, obfuscated about his role in them and misled about what they did.

Investigators are still piecing together what led to the crash, a process that could take months. Trump’s leap to connect these policies to what unfolded over the Potomac has no basis.

We rate the claim False.


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