D.C. air traffic controller was 'working 2 different tower positions' before crash: report

Carl Gibson,

 AlterNet
January 30, 2025 

A plane flies next to an air traffic control near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River, in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., January 30, 2025. 

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

One of the air traffic controllers at the Washington D.C. National Airport was reportedly doing the work of two employees before the deadly mid-air collision that killed dozens of people Wednesday night.

According to the New York Times, staffing at the airport's control tower on Wednesday was "not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic." The paper cited an internal preliminary safety report from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), which apparently mentioned that one unnamed air traffic controller who was communicating with helicopters was also "instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways." Typically, those jobs are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez corroborated that reporting on Thursday. He tweeted that an unnamed "air traffic control source" confided to the network's transportation reporter Pete Muntean: "there was one air traffic controller working two different tower positions at the time of the collision Wednesday night."

READ MORE: 'Sickening': Senator says Trump's DEI 'blame game' means he's 'afraid to answer questions'

The Times reported that the reason there are usually two air traffic controllers handling communication between planes and helicopters is that pilots of those aircraft can sometimes use different radio frequencies. This means that sometimes helicopter and airline pilots may not be able to hear each other, which adds layers of complication if just one lone controller is handling that job.

As of September 2023, the D.C. National Airport had just 19 fully certified air traffic controllers on staff, whereas both the F.A.A. and the air traffic controllers' union have said there should be a target number of 30. Years of employee turnover and low federal spending levels have left both the D.C. airport tower and other airport control towers across the country chronically understaffed, with the Times reporting that many air traffic controllers work 10 hours a day, six days a week.

During a Thursday press conference, President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that diversity, equity and inclusion-based hiring practices (also known as "D.E.I.") by the administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were to blame for the crash. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) called Trump's comments "sickening" and suggested that they were a diversion from his January 22 decision to fire every member of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which had been out of commission for more than a week at the time of the crash.

Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).

Human factors aviation psychologist identifies 'biggest red flag' in DC plane crash

Former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Alan Diehl on January 30, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)

Carl Gibson

January 30, 2025
ALTERNET

67 people are feared dead after a fatal mid-air collision between a regional jet and a helicopter at the Washington D.C. National Airport on Wednesday night. Now, one former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is offering one likely scenario that could have caused the crash.

On Thursday, Alan Diehl — a human factors aviation psychologist — joined CNN to discuss the fatal collision between an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas and a Black Hawk U.S. Army helicopter. Diehl suggested that the fact that the Black Hawk pilots may have been wearing night vision goggles could have been a factor due to those goggles limiting their field of vision. However, he theorized that the helicopter pilots may have been distracted by something else entirely at the time of the crash.

"The biggest red flag that I've noticed so far is there was a third aircraft up there that night," Diehl told CNN's Brianna Keilar. "And when you look at that very painful video of the collision, you can see the lights of another aircraft. And the thing that the NTSB will have to sort out, is it possible that the Black Hawk crew — whether or not they had night vision goggles on — saw the other target, the other airplane, and thought it was the American jet.

READ MORE: 'Mass casualty incident': Video emerges of mid-air explosion that shut down DC airport

"And of course they were going well behind the other aircraft, but they may not have seen the American jet. It could have been hidden by part of the cockpit structure of the Black Hawk, whether or not they had the goggles on," he continued. "So that's the kind of thing that the NTSB will have to address."

Diehl, who worked on the NTSB's investigation into the 1982 Air Florida crash at the D.C. airport, went on to explain that in Black Hawk helicopters, there is a piece of metal that runs down the middle of the aircraft's windshield that is called the "A-pillar" in cars. He likened it to a driver's "blind spot" preventing them from seeing other vehicles on the road.

"If the American jet was behind that structure, it is possible ... by the time they realize that, 'oh my gosh, there's there's the American jet right in front of us,'" Diehl said. "'m a human factors aviation psychologist. So it takes several seconds for the human to respond. Plus the helicopter has got to respond. So it may well be that by the time they saw the American jet, they didn't have time to avoid it."

"Of course, the controllers are very busy, the pilots are busy. And normally this doesn't happen," he added. "But this night, things just went bad. Very, very badly. And that's what the the safety board will have to address. Now, what they'll do is they'll look at the eye position of the two pilots and the Black Hawk to see what structures might have been blocking their view of the American jet."

READ MORE: Trump's claim diversity and Democrats 'could have' caused deadly collision causes backlash

Watch the video of Diehl's segment below, or by clicking this link.

Trump reportedly drove out key aviation safety officials before crash — because of Musk

Musk had complained that Whitaker was blocking his goal of sending humans to Mars.

Travis Gettys
January 30, 2025
RAW STORY

Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024.

 Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo


President Donald Trump fired or pushed out some of the relevant officials who would otherwise be responsible for looking into a collision between a passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter near Washington, D.C.

The Federal Aviation Administration currently has no Senate-confirmed leader after top administrator Michael Whitaker was forced out under pressure from Elon Musk, who had demanded his resignation in September for proposing fines of more than $600,000 for SpaceX over safety concerns, reported The Daily Beast.

“The FAA space division is harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts," Musk posted Sept. 17 on his X platform.

Aviation industry veteran Chris Rocheleau was sworn as deputy FAA administrator on Jan. 21, the day after Donald Trump was sworn in, and Whitaker resigned one year into his five-year term, so Rocheleau is currently in charge of responding to the worst air disaster since at least 2009.

“The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public,” Whitaker wrote in an email to FAA employees when he announced his resignation in December.

Musk has complained that Whitaker was blocking his goal of sending humans to Mars.

“The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” the tech mogul tweeted at an Australian YouTuber who says the FAA “should not exist."

Trump also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee the day after taking office, saying that the Department of Homeland Security was eliminating the membership of all advisory committees to eliminate the purported misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

The aviation security committee was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, so it technically still exists but won't have any members to carry out its responsibilities to oversee safety issues at airlines and airports.

Before the newly inaugurated president reportedly fired them, the panel included representatives from airlines, major unions and members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing, and the vast majority of their recommendations for safety measures have been adopted over the years.

“I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk,’ but I’m not so sure,” said Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee, eight days before the collision that killed 67 people in both aircraft.

The Trump administration also sent an email this week to 2.3 million federal employees from the Office of Personnel Management, which is now packed with Musk allies and loyalists, asking them to commit to the MAGA mission or accept a buyout.

Air traffic controllers were among the millions of government workers who received the email, which used similar language to a message sent to Twitter employees when Musk took over in fall 2022, even though the FAA has already been trying to manage a persistent shortage of those crucial aviation safety workers.

The investigation into the collision will be managed by the independent National Transportation Safety Board, which is chaired by Jennifer Homendy – who has also clashed with Musk over the safety of self-driving software in his Tesla vehicles.

Trump blames ‘diversity’ for deadly Washington airliner collision


By AFP
January 30, 2025

Part of the wreckage is seen as rescue boats search the waters of the Potomac River near Washington, on January 30, 2025 - Copyright AFP Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

US President Donald Trump — speaking as the bodies of 67 people were being pulled from Washington’s Potomac River — launched an extraordinary political attack Thursday, blaming diversity hires for the midair collision between an airliner and a military helicopter.

The Republican confirmed the deaths of all those aboard both aircraft, and also cited pilot error on the helicopter in the nighttime crash.

But he chiefly used a press conference to open fire at what he said were left-wing diversity practices under his predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama that he said kept out good employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.

“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump said. “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”

As Trump spoke in the White House, police divers searched for more bodies in the water.

Wreckage of the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary protruded from the surface, surrounded by emergency vessels and diving teams. It had been carrying 64 people.

The army Blackhawk helicopter, which had three soldiers aboard, was also in the river.

“We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly said. Twenty eight bodies had already been found.


The trajectories and altitudes of a military helicopter and a passenger jet which collided midair in Washington on January 29. — © AFP

The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 when 49 people were killed near Buffalo, New York — occurred late evening on Wednesday as the airliner came into land at Reagan National Airport after a routine flight from Wichita, Kansas.

Reagan National is a major airport located only a short distance from downtown Washington, the Pentagon and other major sites in the capital. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.

Dramatic audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet “in sight,” and then just before the crash telling it to “pass behind” the plane.

– Trump politicizes crash –

Multiple agencies responded to the reported collision of a passenger jet and military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington. — © AFP

Trump opened his press conference by speaking of the nation’s “anguish” and said that the investigation would take time.

However, he then launched into an extended broadside against so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies.


US President Donald Trump launched into a political attack on diversity hiring practices at a press conference on Washington’s deadly plane crash. — © AFP

Trump — who began his presidency a week ago with an onslaught against decades-old measures aimed at preventing sexism and racism in the United States — singled out Biden’s openly gay transport secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.

The message was hammered home as Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took turns at the podium to repeat that diversity measures kept capable Americans out of responsible jobs.

Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”

– Skaters among victims –

Two rescue boats pull debris from the water after a US passenger jet and a military helicopter crashed over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport in Washington. — © AFP

Hundreds of rescuers were rapidly at the scene, but found themselves battling darkness and floating ice through the night. Some of the debris was found a mile downriver.

Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.

The violence of the collision soon made it clear that survivors were unlikely.

“I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.

– What happened? –

Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.

Police continue to search the Potomac River but have given up hope of finding anyone alive from the collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter – Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

Hegseth said the Black Hawk chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”

“Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

Trump, in addition to blaming racial and other kinds of diversity policies, offered extended remarks on the flight paths.

The helicopter was “going at an angle that was unbelievably bad,” Trump said.

“The air traffic controller said, ‘Do you see… Do you see him?’ But there was very little time left when that was stated,” the president added, blaming a “confluence of bad decisions.”

Trump’s claim diversity and Democrats 'could have' caused deadly collision draws backlash

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about Wednesday's deadly midair collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Eagle flight 5342 near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Elizabeth Preza

January 30, 2025

ALTERNET

As first responders work to recover bodies from the freezing waters of the Potomac, President Donald Trump, without evidence, suggested that diversity hiring and Democrats were at least partly responsible for Wednesday night’s mid-air collision that claimed over 60 lives. His politicized remarks from the podium on Thursday have sparked widespread outrage, compounding the grief of many Americans grappling with the nation’s first fatal aviation disaster since 2009. In addition to “DEI,” Trump also baselessly pointed fingers at former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

The NTSB has only just begun its investigation, which could take years to determine the cause of the deadly collision.

“Minutes after saying the airport collision shouldn’t be politicized, and that it should bring Americans together in common cause, Trump blames Democrats and DEI for the deadly incident,” The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward reported, which is in line with the paper’s reporting.

RELATED: ‘This Is His Responsibility’: Trump’s Response to Deadly Mid-Air Collision Stuns Critics

“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office,” CNN reported Trump said, at a press conference to address the horrific disaster that has shaken many Americans. “And here’s one, the FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce said ‘they want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said

Trump claimed that during his first administration, “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.” He also claimed that when he “left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level,” Trump alleged, NBC News reported, adding, “their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”


The President also lashed out at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling him “a disaster,”

“He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump announced live in-air, before alleging Secretary Buttigieg ran the Transportation Department “right into the ground with his diversity.”




Buttigieg quickly responded.

READ MORE: ‘Crisis Deepening’: Funding Freeze Remains White House Says After OMB Memo Pulled

“Despicable,” the former Transportation Secretary wrote on social media. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker observed, “Trump’s move to blame the crash on diversity reflects his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political lens whether facts fit or not. After the terrorist attack in New Orleans, he blamed immigration even though the attacker was a US citizen born in Texas.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis remarked, “The commander-in-chief should be offering condolences and competent solutions rather blaming women and people of color for everything that goes wrong. Racism and misogyny in response to a national tragedy.”

“This isn’t about making America great again,” commented Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “It makes me profoundly sad that an American tragedy, which requires investigation to assess the cause and prevent future accidents has been politicized & shoehorned into Trump’s anti-inclusion policy for anyone who isn’t a sis [sic] white christian nationalist male or supporter. It makes me sadder that so many people still don’t understand that he’s trying to drive wedges in between us to accumulate more power for himself.”

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison added, “Words can’t express my disgust. In a moment in which you should lead the nation in mourning and navigating a tragedy this heartless imbecile finds ways to divide.”

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, as CBS News reported. “It just turns your stomach.”

Others pointed to a memo posted to the White House’s website, titled (in all-caps), “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness And Restores Excellence And Safety Within The Federal Aviation Administration.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Crashing the economy: Inside Trump's blueprint for more grifting

Thom Hartmann,

 AlterNet
January 30, 2025 

Photo illustration: Christopher Sciacca/Shutterstock

Democrats are warning that Trump’s threats to increase our national debt by as much as $7 trillion (with new tax cuts for billionaires), shift billions of Treasury dollars into crypto, and impose tariffs on imported goods risk creating a financial crises and maybe even a second Republican Great Depression.

After all, tariffs will jack up inflation, crypto is incredibly volatile, and increasing the national debt will pull hundreds of billions out of the treasury in interest payments that could have otherwise been used to help the American people, rebuild our infrastructure, and upgrade our schools. Any of the three could trip off a national economic emergency: all three could be a perfect storm.

Trump, though, seems unconcerned, even though Republican economists are also signaling their alarm. Which raises the question: Why is he so willing to risk an economic crash on his watch with these risky policies?

To the average person, the idea of a recession or even a crash like we saw under Bush in 2008, Reagan in 1981/82, or Hoover in 1929 seems grim. Millions are laid off work, businesses are in crisis as bankruptcies erupt across the nation, and poverty explodes during a time when more than half of American families live paycheck-to-paycheck.

To understand why a billionaire like Trump — and the billionaires who put and keep him in office — might be not just willing but enthusiastic about creating an economic crisis, you first must view it from a rightwing billionaires’ point of view.

— First, a time of economic disaster is a great excuse to gut government programs or reduce taxes with the excuse that federal tax revenues have cratered along with the economy. Both Reagan and George W. Bush used recessions as an excuse to “stimulate the economy” by cutting trillions from the taxes of billionaires and big corporations.

Reagan’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 used that year’s severe recession as an excuse to reduce funding for social programs including food stamps, Medicaid, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). George W. Bush used his recession as the justification to try to cut Social Security, although that plan died in the face of widespread public opposition.

— Second, times of economic crisis increase the tolerance for strongman governments. FDR, for example, pushed through a number of then-radical programs using the Republican Great Depression as his excuse. Rightwing politicians were beside themselves, calling him a tyrant, communist, and usurper of constitutional authority, but the majority of Americans at the time were largely with him.

In Europe, Hitler used the Depression to his advantage when he came to power in 1933, demanding — and receiving — massive emergency powers including the ability to rule by decree and outlaw his political opponents.


Trump could similarly use a severe economic crisis to consolidate his power and ram through the authoritarian Project 2025 wish-list as a starting point to take America down the road to an America First form of neofascism.

His billionaire social media backers are already seeding the ground. The US and the UK both embraced neoliberalism (destroy unions, cut taxes on the rich, embrace free trade) around the same time (Thatcher/Reagan) with similar consequences for the middle class of each country.

A new study by Channel 4 in England, reported in The Times, found:

“Most young people are in favour of turning the UK into a dictatorship, according to a ‘deeply worrying’ study, which has revealed an acceptance of authoritarianism and radicalism among Generation Z.
“Fifty-two per cent of Gen Z — people aged between 13 and 27 — said they thought ‘the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.’
“Thirty-three per cent suggested the UK would be better off ‘if the army was in charge.’”

Where did they get these ideas? From social media, it turns out, including the feeds of accused racists, misogynists, and neofascists like “Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson,” who were “trusted” by 42 percent of British young men.

Fifty-eight percent said they trusted social media posts more than traditional news sources. And 45 percent believe women have gained too many rights, echoing Tate’s argument that, as young British men told Channel 4, “We have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men.”

Here in America, the percentage of young men who believe women have acquired too much power has increased from 32% to 45% in just five years, while fully 52% say they trust what they read or see on social media.


— And third, billionaires often make the most money when there’s a crash. They absolutely love market collapses because they are, uniquely, in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people or those who’ve invested their 401Ks in the market.

This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.

My (late) friend Gloria Swanson once told me over dinner in her apartment how her former manager and lover Joe Kennedy, who’d made a pile of money manipulating the stock market in the 1920s, bailed out as the market began its slide in 1929 and even shorted the market, increasing his wealth. But once it had crashed, when everybody was broke, she said, he bought stock with a vengeance.


“Cash is king” was the phrase of the day, and Kennedy was well stocked in cash (he even bought a movie studio). By the end of the Depression, he was one of the richest men in the nation.

J. Paul Getty’s favorite phrase was, “Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until everyone else is buying.” It’s something you can only do at scale if you’re fabulously rich to begin with.

The afternoon of the Great Crash — October’s Black Tuesday under Republican President Hoover in 1929 — Getty skipped his parents’ golden wedding anniversary to head to Wall Street where he began buying stocks, particularly in small oil companies that were in trouble.


“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing,” Getty later wrote. Out of that, he became one of the richest men in the world.

Flash forward to the modern era.

When Wall Street banks — exploiting Republican-demanded deregulation of banking and investment rules — crashed the American economy in 2007, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.

The stock market plummeted by over 50% in the last year of Bush’s presidency. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594.


While over 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent (and the Bush and Cheney families) saw it as a buying opportunity.

Working-class people were desperately unloading stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a collapsing labor market.

But the morbidly rich were doing great.


Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery really began, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.

As the economy recovered, rich people who’d used their increased income to buy stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became $4.62 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.

Then they did it again 10 years later!


The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020, for example, presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.

Once again the market collapsed, this time under Republican Trump, and working people, now out of work, were selling their stocks at a loss just to pay the mortgage and buy food.

But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.

March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump, and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2007!

Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent.

And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 4 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).

Just during that one single terrible “crash” year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world’s 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.

And now it begins anew: Republicans are meeting at Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami today to plan strategy.

Don’t expect them to argue that it would be a bad thing if his plans provoked an economic crisis: To the contrary, that may well be exactly what they — and their billionaire owners — are hoping for.

THAT'S A DISQUALIFIER 

They're both dangerous': Senators worried Patel and Gabbard refused constitutional pledge

Sarah K. Burris

Matt Laslo

RAW STORY
January 30, 2025


President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (R-HI) to serve as the Director of National Intelligence, but critics and analysts aren't certain that will actually happen. (Photo credit: lev radin)




This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.


WASHINGTON — Senators questioned two appointees from President Donald Trump who aim to oversee top national security posts on Thursday and some of those members have serious concerns.



Kash Patel, nominated to serve a 10-year term as the head of the FBI, faced a combative committee where he was forced to explain his conspiracy theories and pledge of retribution against his enemies list.

Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to lead the intelligence community as the director of national intelligence, similarly was forced to answer for her proposed legislation to pardon Edward Snowden and her relationships with Syrian and Russian leaders.
























































Speaking to Raw Story, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that one of the most disturbing answers Patel gave was when he asked who the FBI works for.

ALSO READ: 'Worried and confused': GOP senators say their phones are blowing up over Trump budget freeze

"I think I asked this two or three different ways," the senator recalled. "And he said, 'Well, we report to,' — and I said, 'Okay you're part of the Department of Justice. I agree with that, but I asked Attorney General [Pam] Bondi this question. Who do you work for? And [Patel] said basically, the White House."


Coons said Bondi cited the American people and the Constitution.

The second question he took issue with was Patel's response to questions about how he would respond if Trump asked him to do something illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional.

Coons took issue with Patel's answer: "If directed to do — I would never break the law."


"You have to be willing to refuse an order and resign," Coons said, recalling that he asked the same question of Christopher Wray and his two previous predecessors.

"He just wouldn't..." Coons said, trailing off. "It gives me real pause because he's not — Bill Barr answered easily. Pam Bondi answered easily. Merrick Garland answered easily. I do that with every nominee."

ALSO READ: Trump Cabinet pick raises alarm on unchecked domestic terrorism


Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said there are issues with Gabbard's "qualifications and experience" to lead the intelligence community, which oversees 18 intelligence agencies.

When it comes to Patel, she said she has "Serious concerns about his ability to do the job in an objective and fair way and not [be] driven by an ideological desire to go after people, including the media."

Raw Story noted that Patel said that Democrats are "making up lies."


"Well, we are using his own words," Hirono quipped.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed Patel and Gabbard "are both dangerous."

"It's unpleasant to be told we're making up lies when we're using his actual words and when we're using the actual words of his Trump-appointed colleagues who work with him. So, there's a disconnect with his defense, which I think is for the TV and for Trump and the actual facts of the matter," he continued.


"Honesty is not the watch-word here," Whitehouse noted.

ALSO READ: Kash Patel's top enemy probably isn't who you think it is

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) criticized Gabbard for being glib when he asked about her how she would respond to an illegal order from Trump.


Gabbard said, "I don't believe for a second that President Trump would do anything to break the law." Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in the state of New York.

"You know, that's a constitutional question," Wyden said, calling that question "the ball game." He called her answer "very disappointing."

"This is constitutional lawlessness, let me use that word specifically," said Wyden. "If they say we're just going to blow off illegal orders.

‘Lot of fear’: Federal employees reeling from ‘chaos and turmoil’ created by Trump admin

EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE

Erik De La Garza
January 30, 2025 

RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk speaks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024 Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Federal employees struggling to grasp President Donald Trump’s flurry of new executive orders are feeling the “chaos” that has taken over their jobs in the opening days of the administration.

Civil servants across multiple agencies expressed “fear” about being fired and described work morale as “low” as the new administration swiftly upends the U.S. government in Trump’s name, NBC News reported.

“There’s a lot of fear about returning to the office,” one official at the U.S. Agency for International Development told the outlet. The agency that administers foreign aid has seen some of the biggest shakeups over the last 10 days, which the official said, “has sent a chill through the building.”

Government workers this week began receiving emails allowing them to take a “deferred resignation,” which includes a severance package of approximately eight months’ pay with benefits. But that appears to have added to their stress levels.

“There’s a lot of skepticism about that, given the fact that this email seemed to model Elon Musk’s email to the Twitter folks who never got paid,” the official said, according to the news report. “So it’s caused a lot of chaos and turmoil. I think the point is to really scare people and make them think that their jobs are threatened. It’s definitely working.”

“It is chaos over here right now,” a second USAID official told NBC News this week of the work atmosphere at the agency. “People in the halls are getting texts saying to log off of all government equipment and leave the building. No official announcements have been made, but individuals are being notified. People are walking around, whispering and crying. It’s like watching a sniper work through a captive crowd.”

An official at the Department of Transportation viewed the move to end remote work as offensive.

“They’re trying to insult us, to be honest, to say that we’re not being productive,” the official told NBC News. “And that’s simply not the case for a lot of people who are working remotely. … We have so many different series of jobs that don’t require people to be in the building.”

“It’s very low,” an employee at the Social Security Administration told the network of office morale. “There are a lot of people looking for other work. … We’re afraid to get fired. I don’t have a backup job right now and I understand that the market is getting ready to be saturated. We already have several people who are leaving our office.”

Still, White House officials have defended its efforts to dramatically alter federal agencies – a key campaign pledge of Trump’s.

“For far too long, a bloated federal bureaucracy has cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year while strangling American enterprise and families with burdensome rules and regulations,” according to a statement from White House spokesperson Kush Desai. “President Trump received a resounding mandate to streamline our gargantuan government to better serve the needs of the American people. He will use every lever of executive and legislative power to deliver.”

MAHA Moms: Why RFK Jr's health agenda resonates with MAGA  Americans

Agence France-Presse
January 30, 2025

Chana Walker (3rd L) poses with members of "Moms for America" at the US Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 30, 2025. (AFP)

by Issam AHMED

He has been pilloried for his vaccine skepticism, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to reduce America's reliance on processed foods and pharmaceuticals has also struck a chord.

As RFK Jr. faced hostile questions from Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearing, the corridors were filled with supporters eager to catch a glimpse of their hero -- now bidding to become President Donald Trump's health secretary.

"H was a huge factor in my vote for Trump," said Chana Walker, a 37-year-old hairstylist and former Democratic voter, as she waited outside an overflow room with fellow fans of Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" movement.

For these "Moms for RFK," concerns about food additives, water pollution and rising autism rates -- issues that resonate with scientists and elements of the political left -- intertwine with a mistrust of the medical system and skepticism toward vaccine safety that can drift from established facts.

Sporting matching purple shirts, they came from varied political backgrounds, defying easy categorization.

"If you look over in Europe, you can probably name and recognize most of the ingredients," said Emily Stack, the 30-year-old political director of Moms for America.

"But here, you look at the same product and can't even pronounce half of them."


Priscilla Lyons, a 35-year-old who works in sales, said she opposes Ozempic-like drugs as a quick fix for America's obesity epidemic.

She's inspired by Kennedy's emphasis on organic foods and exercise to address root causes rather than enriching pharmaceutical companies.

When the subject turns to how the US health care system manages depression, the group sighs in agreement.

"It's always, 'take pills,'" said Rachel Truhlar, a 52-year-old military spouse.
- Growing movement -
Kennedy, 71, was once a celebrated environmental lawyer who accused climate change deniers of treason.

By the mid-2000s, he began shifting his focus toward public health, taking on obesity and criticizing harmful practices by Big Agriculture.

However, he also took a hard turn toward conspiracy theories, chairing Children's Health Defense -- a nonprofit widely regarded as a source of vaccine misinformation.

In a recent book, he went so far as to question whether germs truly cause disease and cast doubt on whether HIV causes AIDS, positions thoroughly at odds with scientific consensus.

Epidemiologist Syra Madad, a fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, believes Kennedy has succeeded in exploiting a void left by successive governments' failure to address persistent public health problems.

"They're highlighting statistics that are true -- like the obesity crisis -- and as a mom of three, that resonates with me," she told AFP.

"I'm very conscious about what my children eat and what they put into their bodies."


Yet she faults Kennedy for "bumper sticker" slogans that lack deeper substance, coupled with his harmful anti-science positions.

"That's where the rubber meets the road: when you look at RFK -- his experience, his line of thinking, and who he surrounds himself with -- it's concerning because he doesn't support science-based evidence."

Madad also found it troubling that Kennedy, during his hearing, seriously downplayed his history of hostility toward vaccines -- from falsely linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot to autism, to calling Covid-19 vaccines the "deadliest ever made."

On the question of vaccines, the Moms for RFK generally take a dim view.


Walker noted that while her son received his early-childhood shots, she eventually sought a religious exemption so he would not need any further ones.

Another member, 49-year-old business owner Shari Nielsen, blamed Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine for her husband's heart problems.

How did human brains get so big? The answer is with our gut microbes


By Dr. Tim Sandle
January 28, 2025

DIGITAL JOURNAL


Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Public Health Image Library, NIAID, Image ID: 18139)

Microbes supporting the production of more metabolic energy could be key to the evolution of large brains. This is based on a study that shows how gut microbes from different animal species shape variations in their biology.

In particular, the research offers new take on human evolution, especially in relation to the evolution of our large brains. This is based on animal studies, which showed how mice with large-brain primate microbes eat more, but grow slower and put on less body fat.

Furthermore, these mice use the excess energy to produce high levels of glucose, which is the brain’s primary fuel source.

Brain tissue is among the most energetically costly in the body, and as a result, larger-brained mammals require more energy to support brain growth and maintenance. Specifically, primates with higher encephalization quotients (EQs) (i.e. brain size relative to body size) generally have higher fasting blood glucose.

Yet determining which biological changes allowed human ancestors to meet the very high needs for energy as they evolved larger brains has remained unclear. Now a new Northwestern University study points to the role of gut microbes.

From Anatomy of the Human Body. Image by Henry Vandyke Carter. Creative Commons 3.0.

In a controlled lab experiment, researchers implanted microbes from two large-brain primate species (human and squirrel monkey), and one small-brain primate species (macaque), into mice.

The findings showed the mice with microbes from large-brain primate species produced and used more energy, while those with microbes from the small-brain species stored more energy as fat.

The research is the first to show gut microbes from different animal species shape variations in biology between animal species and supports the hypothesis that gut microbes might influence evolution by changing how an animal’s body works.

After introducing the gut microbes into microbe-free mice, the researchers measured changes in mouse physiology over time, including weight gain, fat percentage, fasting glucose, liver function and other traits. They also measured differences in the types of microbes and the compounds they were producing in each group of mice.

Scientists using laboratory instruments. — Image by © Tim Sandle

According to lead researcher Katherine Amato: “We know the community of microbes living in the large intestine can produce compounds that affect aspects of human biology — for example, causing changes to metabolism that can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain… Variation in the gut microbiota is an unexplored mechanism in which primate metabolism could facilitate different brain-energetic requirements.”

The strongest pattern was the difference between large-brained primates (humans and squirrel monkeys) and smaller-brained primates (macaques).

The researchers have found that the mice given microbes from the humans and squirrel monkeys had similar biology, even though these two larger-brained primate species are not close evolutionary relatives of one another. This suggests something other than shared ancestry — likely their shared trait of large brains is driving the biological similarities seen in the mice inoculated with their microbes.

Specifically, the findings suggest that when humans and squirrel monkeys both separately evolved larger brains, their microbial communities changed in similar ways to help provide the necessary energy.

The findings have been published in the journal Microbial Genomics. The study is titled “The primate gut microbiota contributes to interspecific differences in host metabolism.”

CLIMATE CRI$I$

‘I’m out of here’: French town braces for rising floods

By AFP
January 30, 2025


Surrounded by two rivers, a canal and marshes, several parts of Redon in Brittany have been sitting in water since Wednesday - Copyright SANA/AFP -

Floods had nearly encircled and seeped into a French town on Thursday, with officials warning that one nearby river could reach historic levels in coming days.

The Herminia depression earlier this week unleashed downpours on northwestern France, sparking some of the worst floods in decades.

Surrounded by two rivers, a canal and marshes, several parts of the town of Redon in Brittany have been sitting in water since Wednesday.

The Vilaine river’s level was on Thursday morning hovering just below that of historic floods in 2001, but was expected to rise further during the day, official alert body Vigicrues reported.

Its projections could see the river surge to near a level not seen since 1936.

“It’s highly likely that the peak won’t be reached today, but it will be in the next few days,” said Redon’s Mayor Pascal Duchene.

He said an estimated 750 residents could be affected.

The Red Cross had set up an emergency shelter for 50 people at a local gym, with camp beds lined in a row and tables and chairs set up under its basketball hoops.

A second shelter was being set up at another sports centre for 200 people, a Red Cross official said.

Adeline Bernard, 29, was one of the first people to find refuge at the sport hall.

“When I saw that the electricity was going to cut, and that the water was rising, I thought: ‘That’s it, I’m out of here,'” she said.

Isabelle Rousselet, 66, said she was happy to be living in a higher part of town.

“It will take time for it to all drain away. It’s a bit scary,” she said.

In a flooded part of town, one resident waded through the water at the bottom of her home in rubber boots, while another wobbled along long planks of wood balanced over cinder blocks at one street corner.

In the adjacent town of Saint-Nicolas-de-Redon, on the other side of a flooded bridge, police had evacuated 300 people.

In total, around 1,600 people have been forced to leave their homes in the wider region.

President Emmanuel Macron assured on X on Thursday his “solidarity with resident of the west” of France.

Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher said she expected a “state of natural disaster” in coming days.

Scientists have shown that climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels is making storms more severe, super-charged by warmer oceans.

Herminia, which brought on the heavy weather over western France, follows Storm Eowyn that hit Ireland and Britain before the weekend.

Its impact on France’s northwestern regions was exacerbated by the fact that the ground was already drenched from previous persistent rainfall.

Japan #MeToo survivor says media are failing in wake of Fuji TV scandal


By AFP

January 28, 2025


Japanese journalist Shiori Ito won a landmark civil case in 2019 against a prominent TV reporter accused of raping her - Copyright AFP/File Behrouz MEHRI

Katie Forster

Japanese media are still failing to report sexual assault cases properly, a key figure in the country’s nascent #MeToo movement told AFP in the wake of the scandal surrounding celebrity Masahiro Nakai and Fuji TV.

Former boy band star Nakai was accused in a tabloid last month of sexually assaulting a woman in 2023, allegedly paying her some 90 million yen (about $570,000) as she signed a non-disclosure agreement.

The furore culminated last week with Nakai, 52, one of Fuji Television’s most famous hosts, announcing his retirement.

Top executives at the company then resigned Monday after facing growing criticism over their handling of the case.

Shiori Ito, who won a landmark civil case in 2019 against a prominent TV reporter accused of raping her, said she was not surprised to hear about the Nakai allegations.

“Japanese media are more comfortable to (report on) sexual violence compared to when I went public in 2017,” said Ito, 35, who has turned her ordeal into an Oscar-nominated documentary.

But the journalist added: “I am disappointed because of how media are always, and still, covering these cases up for powerful people, not just Nakai, but who’s sitting in the boardroom.”

In the Nakai case, most Japanese media used the word “trouble” instead of directly referring to the allegations of sexual violence — something Ito feels “so mad” about.

“It could sound like there was romantic involvement,” or as if “the woman must have done something”, she said.



– ‘Stones thrown’ –



Despite several high-profile cases, Japan has never seen an outpouring of #MeToo allegations, Ito said.

Instead, in Japan, survivors who reveal their identity get “all these stones thrown at them, these nasty words online”, said Ito.

“I knew how hard it would be speaking up about (my) case, as a woman, with my face and name, but I’m still constantly trolled,” she said.

“It’s not creating a safe space for other survivors who could possibly want to speak out to seek justice.”

Government surveys in Japan show few rape victims report the crime to the police, although the number of consultations at sexual violence support centres is increasing.

Former soldier Rina Gonoi won praise but also faced online hate when she posted on YouTube about being sexually assaulted by male colleagues, three of whom were later given suspended jail sentences.

Earlier this month, the president of Fuji Television — who resigned Monday — admitted the channel knew about the Nakai scandal before it was reported in the media and dozens of brands pulled their adverts from the network.

Some media have described an endemic culture within Japan’s entertainment industry of wining and dining top presenters, with women staffers often invited to join such parties.

Ito said this “toxic culture” is easy to imagine, because “sexual violence, harassment, always happens when power is unbalanced”.



– Black Box Diaries –



Ito alleges that former TV journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi — with close links to then-prime minister Shinzo Abe — raped her after inviting her to dinner to discuss a job opportunity in 2015. He denies the charges.

Her film “Black Box Diaries”, nominated for best documentary feature at the Academy Awards, shows how she was initially ignored by police, prosecutors and many media outlets.

Having told Ito there was insufficient evidence, police then said they would arrest Yamaguchi — before suddenly backing off.

In the film, Ito records one police investigator telling her the order came from “higher-ups”.

She eventually won $30,000 in damages in a civil case followed by a toughening of Japan’s rape laws.

While the documentary has been shown around the world, it has not been released in Japan.

A lawyer representing Ito has said the documentary uses video and audio that was covertly shot or meant for court, which is “legally and ethically problematic”.

“Even though we’re Oscar-nominated, I haven’t been able to show my film in Japan,” Ito said.

“I still feel so isolated.”