There is a lot of talk in politics concerning the “Overton window,” the range of discourse that is acceptable to the mainstream population at a given point in time.
While a window defines a space, another key and related metaphor defines an object. A framework provides a central point or idea from which other concepts can hang (or, more importantly, collect). While a friend of mine said that the better metaphor would be a magnet, given that it “attracts,” the framework is better conceptually because it defines something that one consciously constructs.
Trump has shown himself to be a master at constructing new political frameworks that redefine the political landscape. He has been called crazy, but sometimes it’s crazy like a fox. His comments, often outrageous, shock the existing political system and allow new political movements to form and ideas to be injected into the political discourse. His promise to build a “big, beautiful wall” was not only to be both a deliverable and a symbol of his commitment to securing the southern border, but provided a new framework for how to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. Trump was reframing illegal immigration as something to be decisively stopped at the border rather than managed. The same with his “Remain in Mexico” policy which functioned as a virtual wall, enlisting Mexicans into stopping immigrants from approaching their aside of the border
Last night in DC, a commercial passenger jet crashed into an Army helicopter, killing 67 people. Earlier today, Trump stated at a press conference:
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Mr. Trump said. And then: “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.”
Of course the Left and its media adjuncts quickly descended into high dudgeon. They criticized Trump for both casting blame and delving into politics at a time when they were still collecting bodies. Score a big win for the Left as they could point to the return of Trump 1.0, right? Never mind that if they could have, they would have immediately cast blame for the crash itself on Trump.
There is a method to Trump’s seeming madness.
From a story filed early this morning:
“Just 14 months before Wednesday night’s fatal mishap near Ronald Reagan National Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration received a safety expert report that warned America’s air traffic control system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that put safety at risk…
“…The November 2023 report also warned that personnel shortages among air traffic controllers were forcing people to work longer hours and make sudden last-minute changes to flight plans that increased risks. ‘Overtime is at a historically high level and increasing,’ the report warned. ‘High rates of overtime for extended periods introduces risk into the NAS. Several associated issues include absenteeism, lower productivity and fatigue.’”
And before the day had even ended there was a certain change in tune by the media.
“Washington Crash Renews Concerns About Air Safety Lapses”
“Control Tower at National Airport Understaffed before Deadly Collision”
This is what’s called a limited hang-out by the media. Admit there is a problem, but depict it as a condition and not a cause. Yes the control tower at DC’s Reagan National was understaffed and, well now, that shouldn’t have happened and who knows what it might mean, but what about Trump’s comments regarding DEI?
So let’s fast forward into the future by a day or so and ask the next question. Why was there a shortage of air traffic controllers at Reagan National, given that it operates in an important area with extremely congested air space? Why are there similar shortages nationwide? Now take it even further, why were there problems in hiring more air traffic controllers under the previous administration?
What Trump has done is not only set the frame for the debate around the issue of the air traffic controllers, but more importantly on the hiring practices for those controllers.
You may have heard that in the first 10 days of his administration, Trump has had a lot of things to say about the human resources aspect of the federal workforce, what with DEI and all of that. You might think that perhaps Trump could have waited a few days to start scoring political points regarding the crash that killed 67 people. However, that’s not the man’s style, and he is forcing an issue into the spotlight — the impact of federal personnel practices — that a lot of people on the Left would like to go away.
You can tell by the way the media is treating this that the Left is trapped and they know it. The media reporting in less than 24-hours that the air traffic control tower at Reagan National was understaffed is an acknowledgment that there is a problem with having enough air traffic controllers, which then raises questions regarding hiring, which then raises questions regarding personnel policies, which then… uh, oh.
The media has fallen into the trap of once again underestimating Trump, of taking him literally but not seriously. Trump is at heart a negotiator, which means his actions are about accumulating future leverage so that he can reframe the terms of the deal to his favor. However, he now is not negotiating with people so much as he is negotiating with the public space, and he is linking the previous fantasy policies of the federal government, and business as usual, with real-world consequences of life and death.
The media made the mistake of seeing where the ball is and not where the ball is going.
A Republican president is in his first year and the issue is air traffic controllers? History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure rhymes.
An excellent article in yesterday’s WSJ regarding the problems with DC airspace
”Washington’s Jam-Packed Airspace Has Prompted Warnings for Years”
DC airspace is a mess with Reagan National smack in the middle of town and all the various VIP air traffic, and all the various bases around town. As the article points out, the Black Hawk involved in the accident was from a unit at Ft. Belvoir whose job is to facilitate VIP shuttling. The times I’m in DC I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more carnage.
So that’s the terrain, it’s a given. Decision to have a busy air space was made. You find a way to deal with it. Given all of that it makes the lack of personnel in the traffic control tower even more unforgivable. I wouldn’t run a Home Depot infested with sloth-ridden Zoomer employees on such a safety culture, let alone a cluttered air space above the American political heartland with supposedly everyone well-trained. Expertise indeed.
One thing the article intimated was why the Black Hawk so high. Watch possibly for the media to start dispensing chaff to deflect blame from the traffic controllers and place it on the Army pilots
There will be several causes for this.
First and foremost: who decided that it was “safe” for uncontrolled helicopters to fly directly under the approach path of that runway with 50 feet of separation? Show one other place in the country that allows anything like that. That’s 50 feet assuming the helicopter is abiding by the 200 foot maximum and the landing plane is permissibly low on what is a visual approach.
Second: Why was the helicopter at 400 feet?
Third: Why was the helicopter pilot flying with night vision goggles? This has filled its own extensive cemetery over the years. There are military judgements that the risk is justified under certain circumstances.
Fourth: SOP when the pilot is limited by night vision equipment is for two flight engineers to serve as extra eyes, unencumbered. Since this was a training flight, one engineer was supposed to be enough.
What we’ll find is that someone found it intolerable to wait for controller clearance to cross the flight path so a work around was imposed. We see that just Tuesday a plane had to abort a landing for a helicopter in the area.
https://justthenews.com/government/local/different-plane-almost-crashed-helicopter-near-
reagan-airport-day-collision
I was on X in the minutes after the collision. Let me tell you, leftists like Aaron Rupar and Heath Mayo (whoever that is) were blaming Trump while first responders were still attempting to save the people in the river.
But beyond that, the legacy media has been reporting, quite favorably, on every attempt by the left to push the Overton Window further and further. Drag queen story hours, pride parades featuring dudes essentially wearing leather belts and nothing else, Sam Smith’s ridiculous spectacles at the Grammys, et cetera, et cetera…
And the press have also shoved microphones into the faces of leftist politicians after school shootings so they can opine about the need to take guns away, even before the smell of powder has dissipated.
With that voluminous evidence piling up over the past few years, I will not listen to the legacy media carp about decorum and injecting politics into national tragedies anymore.
Not after what I’ve seen.
Thanks for the info MCS
A couple of things I noticed today (so far) touring the media
1) The Left’s tantrum regarding Trump’s DEI comments have largely disappeared as a matter of crash coverage.
I think the media understands that given both that the developing facts of the case are pointing toward incompetence and that Trump has already geared up his chainsaw to take apart government they needed to smother this.
2) The shock and awe campaign has moved on. The big story next to the crash is Trump imposing tariffs tomorrow. He also banned federal workers from using pronouns on electronic communications. The Left’s fire-control radar cannot lock on so many targets in sequence so while Trump has put a framework down which will allow future incidents to adhere to it and be given a specific meaning and political shape, the Left cannot land a punch
Trump’s first trips outside of DC were North Carolina and California, which were ground zero for stunning displays of incompetence. He displayed a level of compassion by intervening directly and getting things like the Army Corps of Engineers into the western Carolinas and Palisades residents able to get back to their homes and spur Newsom to push rebuilding.
The ICE raids over the past week show a similar problem. They not only involved the worst criminals but they were both launched day one and achieved results.
With California, North Carolina, and ICE you have stories of government incompetence that have a framework (or if you like a pattern) to attach to.
Thinking about MCS’s comments, one of the big shoes to drop is over at the Pentagon which we all know is rife with DEi problems. The whole episode as MCS describes it is going to add fuel.
Stephen Bryan has more general thoughts but also wonders what the heck that chopper was doing.there.
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-reagan-airport-tragedy
The unit to which the Black Hawk was attached, “12th Aviation Battalion”, looks to be basically a VIP transport unit with some emergency support functions for the DC area. What sort of mission requirements did have to ne conducting such reckless training in this manner?
Here’s a reasonably informed, non hysterical take on the information available so far from a pilot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0
It doesn’t look like the overworked controller was a factor but here’s something on the DEI angle:
https://nypost.com/2025/01/31/us-news/faa-embroiled-in-lawsuit-alleging-it-turned-away-1000-applicants-based-on-race/
It’s curious and a bit unsettling that the identity of the co-pilot casualty hasn’t been released. From the reports I see this evening, it’s being embargoed, per request of the next of her kin. I can’t remember that ever happening before, or that if it did, it wasn’t so high-profile and intensely newsworthy.
Sgt. Mom, I’m guessing it’s because there is some member of her family that’s hard to reach, but then my guesser often lacks sufficient paranoia.
Here’s a story about how Obama changed the hieing qualifications for ATC:
https://mslegal.org/2019/11/biographical-questions-forced-top-atc-candidates-out-of-faa-hiring-pool/
Via an Althouse commenter.
I’ve also read that they prioritized recruiting of persons with sever psychiatric and intellectual handicaps. What could go wrong?
A former white house aide, with under 500 flight hours, why was she on the mission
“A former white house aide, with under 500 flight hours”
It seems like she was, as Captain, the highest-ranking military personnel on that flight — although probably the least experienced. Well, we all have to learn.
It seems that Unit was/is essentially a free air-taxi service for those that claim to rule over us. Where is DOGE when we need them?
“I’ve also read that they prioritized recruiting of persons with sever psychiatric and intellectual handicaps. What could go wrong?”
There are lot of jobs in the FAA other than ATC, the controllers have to meet medical standards.
They were, according to reports, conducting a “Continuity of Government” exercise. So now I and presumably everyone else now knows, that in the event it is decided that there’s a reason for the President, etc. to bug out to an undisclosed location, anyone standing on the east bank of the Potomac could wave goodby as he passes less than 200 feet overhead. Fishes and barrels come to mind. Someone may want to rethink this.
I’m pretty sure anyone that frequented some of the sites dedicated to tracking flight paths probably knew this already. The nature of this flight explains why the helicopter transponder was turned off which meant that ATC didn’t have any way to know what their altitude was. The “good” news is that there seems to have been a flight recorder on the helicopter.
From what I have read, and anyone with experience is more than welcome to correct me, operating with night vision is like looking through a deep hole, no peripheral vision with depth perception compromised. There have been numerous incidents and fatalities over the years, often while landing, others while maneuvering near terrain, that have been laid to some extent on use of night vision. It’s a definite skill that requires careful training. Outside the military, use during flight is very limited. There have been many proposals over the years for using night vision more widely in civil aviation but so far, all have petered out for one reason or another.
The NTSB has a very good track record of finding root causes for air crashes. We’ll know eventually but not immediately.
David, your point is valid. In this case there is direct testimony that it was applied specifically to ATC positions.
From what I’ve read, the helicopter did have a transponder that was operating…what it didn’t have was ADS-B. The assertion in this New York Post article:
Without an ADS-B, the ATC operator could see where the helicopter was — but not how high it was flying. That’s because the helicopter was only equipped with a transponder, which can only provide locational data, according to Federal Aviation Administration guidance”
is incorrect. Transponders in congested airspace are required to operate in Mode C or Mode S, what this means is that every time the radar beam sweeps the aircraft, the transponder responds with a packet of information which includes the current altitude as well as identity information. This is displayed on the ATC screen.
ADS-B works differently, it pro-actively transmits the GPS-derived position and the altitude once per second. These transmissions can be received directly by properly equipped aircraft as well as by ATC.
One advantage of ADS-B is that it can be received when an aircraft is at an altitude low enough to block the direct radar line of sight. This isn’t likely to have been a factor in this case since there is a radar on the field at DCA and there was only water in between.
So there are stories coming out regarding both numerous near misses between military and civilian airspace at Reagan National over the years and the fact that the tower was undermanned at the the of the accident.
Even before 9/11 and draconian air space restrictions, DC Reagan was a difficult airport. Since then with the restrictions and spike in usage. Add in its short size, location next to critical national infrastructure, and military bases and it’s really bad.
When we would train people on design of safety systems, we used the metaphor of a slot machine but in this case we tried to prevent it coming up jackpoit. Theoretically you pull the lever enough times, it will eventually come up triple-6. Somethings are outside of control, you can minimize human error though not eliminate it, but you can do things to minimize the risk. Given all of the factors involved with Reagan National, it is incumbent that the various parties including the FAA do everything in their power.
An undermanned tower is a systems problem, even though it might have been in that condition at that time due to a particular management decision (letting someone go home early) Given everything in that airspace, there are requirements that need to be met, if you want to keep that airport open. If you buy the ticket, you have to take the ride. A system needs to be designed to deal with circumstances such as pilot error and a helicopter too high.
With his seeming off-the cuff remark on DEI Trump is pointing to a larger system problem and creating a framework for it.
Transponder issues and pilot qualifications/errors are going to happen given enough time, the point is to prevent that third-6 coming up on the slot machine
The scenario doesnt make sense commercial traffic would be suspended in that circumstance,