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🔵 FAA’s Diversity Scandal
Citizen Frank
February 01, 2025
Good evening. It’s Friday, January 31.
The Federal Aviation Administration is fighting a class-action lawsuit alleging it denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed that staffing levels were “not normal” at the time of this week’s deadly midair collision.
Complaints about the FAA’s hiring policies resurfaced after the American Airlines passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, killing 67 people in the country’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter-century.
Details of the litigation re-emerged, too, as Andrew Brigida, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed in 2015, suggested the federal aviation agency’s obsession with diversity hiring and inclusion had only ensured that an accident was likely to happen.
A medical transport plane carrying a child, her mother and four other people went down in a fiery crash near a mall in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday.
The Learjet 55 crashed near the Roosevelt Mall around 6:30 p.m. after departing from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, according to authorities.
Moment of impact: Plane crash caught on multiple videos in Northeast Philadelphia
Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Jeff Lyash — the highest-paid federal employee with a compensation package of $10.5 million per year — abruptly announced Friday that he was retiring 11 days after the return to office of President Trump, who during his first term slammed Lyash’s “ridiculous” pay and vowed to fire him.
“Sounds like Lyash got DOGE’d,” a senior administration official told The Post, referring to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to rein in allegedly wasteful federal spending.
A TVA rep denied that Lyash was departing either in response to or to get ahead of pressure from Trump’s team after six years in the job.
The new federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Friday that taxpayers will see just over a $1 billion savings through the elimination of 104 diversity, equity and inclusion-related (DEI) contracts.
As of Wednesday, DOGE had recorded the cancellation of 85 “DEIA” contracts from 25 federal agencies. By Friday afternoon, that number had grown to 104 contracts totaling $1,000,060,792, according to a DOGE news release.
Of note, 21 Department of the Treasury contracts were canceled, saving a total of $25,247,783. In second place was the Department of Health & Human Services, which canceled 15 contracts worth $28,187,448.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that seeks to deport international students who attended pro-Palestinian protests.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump reportedly told donors that he would crush pro-Palestinian protests and revoke visas for international students who attended them if he won back the White House.
Last spring, police officers arrested thousands and students and faculty after colleges called them to clear pro-Palestinian tent encampments that had popped up on campuses across the country. The protesters demanded that their schools divest from Israel amid the war in Gaza.
US prosecutors announced Friday that they had charged a former Federal Reserve adviser with economic espionage on behalf of China, accusing him of trying to steal trade secrets.
The US Department of Justice said it had charged John Harold Rogers, 63, with spying on behalf of Beijing while employed as a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB).
The indictment, unsealed on Friday, said Rogers had leaked secret information from the Fed’s board and from its powerful rate-setting committee while he was working for the FRB’s Division of International Finance.
The monetary black hole that is the MTA apparently hasn’t figured out a way to secure its property, despite what appears to be an incessant, neverending need for additional cash.
That’s because the NYPD is now searching for six suspects who allegedly stole an R train from a Brooklyn storage yard and took it for a joyride, traveling down the tracks.
The incident occurred around 10 p.m. Saturday near the 71st Avenue station in Forest Hills, Queens, according to Fox 5.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new type of nonopioid painkiller from Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
The drug, Journavx, or suzetrigine, was approved to treat moderate to severe acute, or short-term, pain in adults. Experts say the drug, which is billed as nonaddictive, could reduce the number of opioids patients are prescribed after surgery or be used by patients who can’t take other pain medications — though several told NBC News they would like to see more research.
In a statement, Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, the acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, called the approval “an important public health milestone in acute pain management.”
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