President Trump answers questions from journalists in the White House on Thursday on the collision of an American Airlines flight with a Black Hawk military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
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No, the Federal Aviation Administration has not recruited intellectual disabled people to work as air traffic controllers.
Despite what the president. Donald Trump said at a press conference on Thursday – “they can be air traffic controllers” – this is not how the hiring of disability works, explains Chai Feldblum, lawyer for disability and former commissioner of The Committee on Employment Opportunities in the United States.
The law on the employment of disabled people, she says, requires “that the disabled person be able to perform the essential functions of work”.
And this is how it worked in the Biden administration, known as Kelly Buckland, who was the advisor to the disabled people from the former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg. Any hiring of people with disabilities at the FAA, said Buckland, “would only be qualified disabled people, emphasizing the qualified”.
Trump suggested that FAA diversity efforts, including hiring disabled people, had compromised air security. He said that the crash of a commercial jet and a military helicopter on Wednesday evening “could have been” caused by the diversity of hiring, but noted that the cause survey was still in progress.
A journalist asked him how he could link the crash to a diversified workforce, the president replied: “Because I have common sense.”
“Scapegoats disabled for this tragedy seem to be incompatible with the facts,” Katie Neas Neas, director of the United States arc, defends people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, told NPR.
“It is very sad that this stigma against disabled people continues to be used as a reason why qualified people cannot be hired.”
There is a recent story of some people who try to link the diversity air security problems – including the hiring of disabled people – not only with the Wednesday crash but also when a Boeing Aircraft has lost a flight door Last January.
Last year, a few days after the problem with the door of Alaska Airlines Jet, Fox News published A History on a long -standing policy of the FAA to recruit disabled people for a wide range of jobs. The Fox report suggested that people with intellectual disability and important mental health diseases were recruited for key safety stations. History has largely circulated, including in publications on social networks of Tech Billionaire and Trump Advisor Elon Musk.
During his press conference on the accident on Wednesday evening, Trump quoted this Fox News article to say, wrongly, that unqualified disabled people were hired in positions such as air traffic controller.
The statements have also been resolved in a executive decree Trump published the day after his entry into office last week. This order said to the Secretary of Transport and the FAA administrator to cancel the efforts of Dei and a Information sheet that accompanies it Criticized the Biden administration for policies that “prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on security and efficiency”.
During his press conference, Trump criticized Buttigieg, Biden transport secretary. “He put the ground with his diversity,” said Trump.
But FAA’s files show that the agency’s diversity hiring effort existed even before Trump’s first mandate.
“Despicable,” replied buttigieg in an article on X, formerly Twitter. “While families cry, Trump should lead, not lie. We put security first, we made close calls, increased control of air traffic and had no gap in the commercial airline on million flights or monitor. “
