Washington, D.C. (January 31, 2025)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s baseless and abhorrent scapegoating of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies following the tragic fatal plane crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) earlier this week:
“As families, friends and sympathetic Americans were gradually notified of the loss of loved ones following the horrific plane crash at DCA, and as authorities continued to pull remains from the Potomac River, the President used his tiresome bully pulpit not to comfort grieving families but to bully Americans by launching an outrageous fact-free diatribe against DEI policies at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“With no regard for the truth and even less for grieving families, Trump distorted the tragedy to further divide Americans and broadcast one of his trademark race-inflected idiocies, not even 24 hours after the crash and before any agency investigations had even begun. This nonsensical tirade, covering up for his own well-known incompetence and refusal to take responsibility for his own Administration, was appalling even on this president’s dismal standards.
“Donald Trump should recall that on the day of this tragic accident—the first commercial airline crash since 2009—the United States had no FAA Administrator. In fact, the FAA was left rudderless for 10 days leading up to the deadly crash because apparent co-president Elon Musk aggressively demanded the ouster of the FAA chief, who previously had the temerity to hold SpaceX to account for safety violations. Trump and the first broligarch billionaire drove the FAA director out of his job on inauguration day.
“This gross mismanagement comes as Trump and Musk wage a relentless attacks on federal workers. Days before the crash, air traffic controllers in our federal government received the ‘Fork in the Road’ memo from Trump effectively trying to force them into a mass exodus of expert, non-political, career civil servants so the Administration can replace them with mindless loyalists and fawning sycophants.
“The real fork in the road is between the democratic rule of law and the reign of terror and error of these blundering autocrats. Hang tough, America.”
