After Trump's DEI remarks on DC crash, here are the facts about air traffic control hires
President Trump rallied against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in air traffic control as having contributed to the deadly plane crash outside of D.C. Wednesday, but the data paints a different picture.
The big picture: Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS show air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists are predominately male and white.
By the numbers: 78% are men, while 22% are women, per data from the U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS.
- 71% identify as non-Hispanic white.
- The data includes air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists working in air transportation or services incidental to transportation.
Driving the news: Trump on Thursday repeatedly cited DEI policies at the Federal Aviation Administration as having played a role in the crash, and blamed Democrats including Presidents Biden and Obama, for advancing inclusive workplace policies.
- Trump implicitly equated racial, gender and other forms of diversity with a lower-quality federal workforce.
Reality check: In addition to the statistics showing the opposite is true, the cause of the crash has not been determined and there's no evidence that FAA hiring policies led to a decline in aviation safety.
Zoom in: Trump signed a memo Thursday alleging that Biden's administration "egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all agencies to implement dangerous 'diversity equity and inclusion' tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with 'severe intellectual' disabilities in the FAA," according to a person familiar with the matter.
- The "disabilities" language that Trump is opposing was in FAA regulations during the entirety of his first term and first appeared around 2013, per fact-checking website Snopes.
- The American Association of People with Disabilities said on X that FAA employees with disabilities did not cause the crash.
- "It is extremely inappropriate for the President to use this tragedy to push an anti-diversity hiring agenda," the AAPD said. "Doing so makes all Americans less safe."
Go deeper: D.C. plane crash is among country's deadliest in decades