Vance and Duffy Echo Trump in Blaming D.E.I. for Crash Near Washington
The vice president and transportation secretary claimed that diversity hiring efforts had affected staffing levels among air traffic controllers, but there is no evidence that such efforts played a role in the crash.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Vice President JD Vance joined President Trump on Sunday in blaming diversity hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration for the midair collision of a commercial jet and a military helicopter near Washington last week.
“The person at the controls didn’t have enough staffing around him or her because we were turning people away because of D.E.I. reasons,” Mr. Vance said on Fox News, using the abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. “D.E.I. policies have led our air traffic controllers to be short staffed — that is a scandal.”
On Thursday, Mr. Trump, without evidence, linked his long-running complaints about diversity hiring practices to the crash near Ronald Reagan National Airport. The president quoted from the F.A.A. website, which he said had indicated that the agency was looking to hire people with disabilities.
No evidence suggests that diversity hiring programs contributed to the crash on Wednesday night. Those programs — some of which started or continued under Mr. Trump’s first term — followed the same aptitude, medical and security standards used for hiring candidates without disabilities.
In 2019, for example, a pilot program that the F.A.A. began for hiring 20 people with disabilities emphasized that those candidates would “receive the same rigorous consideration” as those considered for “a standard public opening for air traffic controller jobs.”
But on Sunday, Mr. Duffy suggested without offering evidence that efforts to diversify hiring had affected the quality of the work force at air traffic control towers.