(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court on Thursday struck down a longstanding federal ban that prevented the sale of handguns to Americans between the ages of 18 and 20 — a landmark gun control regulation in place since 1968.
The conservative Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the federal law banning handgun sales to teens is inconsistent with the nation’s historical tradition and violates the Second Amendment.
The decision cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion by Clarence Thomas in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which significantly expanded gun rights and threatens to rollback other gun safety laws nationwide.
“Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected,” the court wrote in its opinion statement.
The statement went on, “The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence ‘cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.'”
The immediate nationwide impact of the ruling is unclear. The case is almost certainly bound for the Supreme Court.
Handguns have been the most commonly used weapons in murders and mass shootings for decades in the United States, according to government data analyzed by The Violence Project.
Last term, the Supreme Court upheld a longstanding federal law prohibiting the possession of firearms by people under domestic violence restraining orders.
In the next few weeks, it will consider whether gun manufacturers can be held liable for violent crimes perpetrated by criminals who easily get the weapons.
Henry Callander says his forehead blew up like “a giant bee sting” after a Botox treatment. Via ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — JGL Aesthetics’ Instagram profile promised its clients radiant skin, friendly service and a machine they said could give people toned abs. However, some clients allege that the New York medical spa’s owner injected them with fake Botox that caused negative side effects.
Aesthetician Joey Luther was arrested last Wednesday for allegedly buying counterfeit Botox from China and injecting it into patients, without the required New York medical license, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
The 54-year-old was charged with wire fraud, smuggling and other crimes related to the purchase and import of misbranded and counterfeit drugs at the Manhattan spa. None of the counterfeit Botox was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, prosecutors said.
According to the criminal complaint, an investigation began after one of Luther’s patients said they experienced double vision, heart palpitations, weakness from the waist up and other problems after receiving a Botox injection from JGL Aesthetics.
One alleged victim visited three hospitals to treat her symptoms and was diagnosed with Botulism — a potentially fatal illness — in March 2024, prosecutors said.
Almost 5 million people in the U.S. got Botox in 2023, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
“So I think I saw the biggest uptick in requests for Botox during the pandemic,” Dr. Evan Rieder, a dermatologist, told “Nightline.” “When we were sitting at home during the pandemic, people were really glued to their cellphones and they were really diving into social media.”
Prosecutors say that Luther didn’t have the required New York State medical license to administer Botox.
When one client in the criminal complaint allegedly texted Luther about her symptoms, the complaint claims that “Luther falsely responded that he injected Botox from Allergan,” the name brand.
“If you’re getting something that’s actually not Botox, no one knows what is actually going into that mixture,” Rieder said. “If you have Botox that’s counterfeit, but it’s too strong, you could get Botulism, and it can cause all sorts of side effects in your body where the nerves are being paralyzed.”
The complaint alleges that Luther responded to multiple clients’ concerns, reassuring them about alleged symptoms including worsening vision, difficulty swallowing, headaches and neck fatigue.
While Luther was messaging his clients, the complaint alleges that he was in contact with his supplier to inform them that the product he got from them was tainted.
According to the complaint, “he, in fact, tries to bargain with his supplier, suggesting that, if they want to keep him as a client, that they need to send better product and send it quickly,” trial attorney and ABC News contributor Brian Buckmire said.
Henry Callander was among Luther’s patients, but isn’t part of the criminal complaint. His friends recommended JGL Aesthetics, and he thought he was getting his forehead treated for a fraction of the price.
“It was probably like 20% cheaper than regular Botox,” Callander told ABC News. “Depending on the treatment I was doing, it was probably like $400 a treatment.”
An attorney representing Luther did not respond to a request for comment from “Nightline.”
Luther is out on bail, but could face decades in prison if the complaint leads to trial and he’s found guilty. His next court date is Feb. 12.
The alleged danger isn’t limited to New York — the CDC issued a notice about counterfeit Botox and injections from individuals who were not following state or local requirements in December after 17 people across nine states suffered negative reactions.
In California, Lori Reed said she got Botox and filler treatments from a woman who she thought was a nurse for a few years because the price was right. Eventually, she alleged she had a bad reaction.
“My eyes were swollen and they were beet red,” she told “Nightline.” “And it has not gone away to this day.”
Several years later, Reed said she is still dealing with the consequences, even after getting multiple procedures to reverse the damage.
“For a while, I was very self-conscious. I wouldn’t even date,” she told “Nightline.” “I felt like I looked like a monster.”
According to a civil complaint filed by 16 different women, the injector was never licensed to inject Botox. The suit has since been settled.
She was ultimately found guilty in a criminal case and is serving probation after her six-year prison sentence was suspended.
“I wanted her to reap some sort of consequences for the damage that she had done — I expected her to do jail time,” Reed said. “It turned out that she did not. So I was a little disappointed in that.”
A “Nightline” episode that aired on ABC on Jan. 28, and is available now on Hulu, details the allegations about counterfeit Botox that led to criminal charges.
Rangers await restart of border wall construction. Via ABC News.
(COLUMBUS, N.M.) — As the conflict between U.S. law enforcement and the cartels continues, some New Mexico residents are hopeful that Trump will be successful in finishing the border wall to ensure their safety.
Those who remain hopeful include ranchers Brandy and Russell Johnson, who are living just outside the village of Columbus, New Mexico, on a cattle ranch that borders Chihuahua, Mexico. They say they are eager to see the restart of the border wall construction under the new Trump administration.
The couple recalled to ABC News a time in 2019, during Trump’s first term, when funding came through for new construction on the border wall. The Johnsons fought to be included in the plans, with construction expected to seal up close to 9 miles of the border.
“It’s Oct. 20, 2019, and I received a call today from United States Border Patrol agents advising that we had yet another vehicle drive through,” Russell Johnson said. “This vehicle made its entry through the barbed wire portion of the fence that we share with Mexico. Nobody should have to deal with this kind of activity on their ranch or anywhere for that matter.”
However, the Johnsons, who both have law enforcement backgrounds, never expected to become embroiled in a political conflict over the border.
Months after construction began on their wall section, former President Joe Biden was elected. He promised a more empathetic approach to immigration. By March 2021, he halted the construction project, froze funding, and terminated the emergency declaration made by the first Trump administration along the border.
According to Russell Johnson, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, all the contractors working on the border wall found themselves in a state of uncertainty. Their equipment had been fully operational, but now the site resembled a ghost town, with all the machinery and materials abandoned.
“It’s probably millions of dollars, considering the amount of steel and what steel costs, it’s probably millions of dollars that’s been sitting there for over four years at this point, that you know, the taxpayer paid for, and it’s just been sitting out there,” Russell Johnson said, referring to the border wall building materials that have been sitting on his property since December 2020.
During the Biden administration, the funding and staffing for the Department of Homeland Security were decreased.
In 2024, a bipartisan border security bill aimed at enhancing resources for the department failed to pass after Trump lobbied Senate Republicans to oppose the bill.
“As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible, open borders betrayal of America,” Trump said at his Nevada rally in 2024. “It’s not going to happen.”
It’s a move that Democrats have criticized as a political stunt.
“This bill would save lives and bring order to the border,” Biden said at State of the Union address in March 2024. “I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He viewed it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.”
The Johnsons believe that limited border patrol agents in the field made them more vulnerable. Additionally, a gap in the border wall, which is less than a mile long, has increased their risk of becoming a target for trafficking.
“It’s one of those deals that if you could take the politics out of it, we could have it fixed overnight,” Russell Johnson said. “And that’s what’s been extremely frustrating to me, is I feel like we’re just a political pawn down here, used by both sides at times, to push one narrative or the other.”
The Johnsons are hopeful that Trump can fulfill his promise to resume construction on the border wall. However, they understand that this requires funding and bipartisan support.
“And I think if, and I’ve preached this to several people, if we could all just sit down at a table, there’s going to be some common ground we can find,” Russell Johnson said.
(WASHINGTON) — Tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada that are set to take effect could hike the price of a gallon of gasoline for some drivers by as much as 70 cents and send grocery bills climbing, experts told ABC News.
The Trump administration this week reiterated plans to slap 25% tariffs on all products from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1. Those countries make up two of the three largest U.S. trading partners, government data shows.
Tariffs of this magnitude would likely increase prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to consumers, experts said. The policy could raise prices for an array of products ranging from tomatoes to tequila to auto parts.
“The scary thing is the list of products is very, very long,” said Jason Miller, a professor of supply-chain management at Michigan State University.
The price impact remains unclear, however, since businesses within the supply chain could opt to take on some or all of the tax burden, some experts added, noting the tariffs may not take effect at all since Trump has previously used them as a source of leverage in international negotiations.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, a White House spokesperson touted Trump’s previous economic policies, including tariffs.
“In his first administration, President Trump instituted an America First economic agenda of tariffs, tax cuts, deregulation, and an unleashing of American energy that resulted in historic job, wage, and investment growth with no inflation. In his second administration, President Trump will again use tariffs to level the playing field and usher in a new era of growth and prosperity for American industry and workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told ABC News.
Here’s what to know about which products could see price increases as result of the tariffs, according to experts:
Gas
Mexico and Canada account for 70% of U.S. crude oil imports, which make up a key input for the nation’s gasoline supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a government agency.
Those imports come primarily from Canada, which sends crude oil to U.S. refineries built specifically to process the crude and redistribute it as car-ready gasoline, Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee who studies the petroleum industry, told ABC News.
Gasoline that originates as Canadian crude reaches customers in the upper Midwest as well as some along the East and West coasts, Fitzgerald said. For those drivers, he added, prices could rise between 40 and 70 cents per gallon of gasoline.
“You could definitely be looking at 50 cent-a-gallon increases in a lot of parts of the country,” Fitzgerald added, noting that the effects would be limited to the regions that rely on imported crude.
The tariff-related price increase may combine with a seasonal price hike set to take effect within weeks, since demand for gas typically grows as travel picks up in the warmer spring weather, experts said.
That seasonal price impact could add another 30 cents per gallon, putting the total increase in gasoline prices at $1 per gallon if the tariffs remain in place at the onset of spring, Fitzgerald said.
Tomatoes and Avocados
The U.S. imported $38.5 billion in agricultural goods from Mexico in 2023, making it the top recipient of such products, U.S Department of Agriculture data showed. Those imports include more than $3 billion worth of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Mexican imports account for a large share of some fruits and vegetables routinely eaten by Americans.
Roughly 90% of avocados eaten in the U.S. last year originated in Mexico, USDA data showed. Other products with a high concentration of Mexican imports include tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalapenos, limes and mangos, Miller said.
It would be difficult for the U.S. to replace those goods with domestic production or an alternative supplier, making it likely that prices would rise significantly if the tariffs take effect, he added.
“You’d certainly expect to see an impact on prices,” Miller said.
The U.S. also imports large quantities of beer, tequila and other alcoholic beverages from Mexico, experts said. In 2022, the U.S. imported about $26 billion worth of alcoholic drinks from Mexico, according to the USDA.
“Don’t forget all that beer we import from Mexico,” Miller said.
Cars and auto parts
Carmakers and consumers depend on the auto industry’s deep ties to Canada and Mexico, making tariffs a threat to prices, experts said.
Mexico and Canada make up the top two U.S. trading partners for both finished motor vehicles and car parts, according to a Cato Institute analysis of data from the U.S. International Trade Commission.
In 2023, Canada and Mexico accounted for nearly $120 billion worth of U.S. motor vehicle imports, which totaled about 47% of all such vehicles imported that year. Canada and Mexico made up nearly the same share of auto parts imports that year, the Cato Institute analysis showed.
“The operations of auto companies on both sides of the border will be hugely affected by these tariffs,” Robert Lawrence, a professor of trade and investment at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.
“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.
This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”
Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order “aimed at undoing all of that damage” caused by the “Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the president said. “If they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
When asked in the earlier briefing by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.
When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
DEI and any similar programs do not apply to air traffic control hiring, though — no one is given preferential treatment for race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, a former FAA official told ABC News.
Applicants must pass a medical exam, an aptitude test and a psychological test that is more stringent than that required of a pilot, said Chris Wilbanks, FAA deputy vice president of safety and technical training.
In 2022, 57,000 people applied for an ATC position, Wilbanks said, and 2,400 qualified to attend the academy. Of that 2,400, only 1,000 made it to the first day of training.
Wilbanks said 72% make it through the academy and roughly 60% of those will finish training.
According to the FAA, the training process lasts about three to four years from the hire date. Applicants must be younger than 31 and must retire by age 55.
Anyone who has taken Ritalin or Adderall in the last three years doesn’t qualify, the former FAA official said.
No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.
However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation.”
In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, “What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened.”
“And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination,” he added. “That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a “mistake was made” in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be “colorblind and merit-based … whether it’s flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, “We want the best people at air traffic control.”
“If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vance said. “That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”
Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “just got a good line of bulls—” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “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.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump’s comments “dangerous, racist, and ignorant.”
“President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy — while families are mourning their loved ones — to insert his own political agenda and sow division,” Kelly said in a statement. “This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.
“Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security,” she added. “The issue with our country is not its diversity. It’s the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump’s actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved a new type of prescription pain medication for adults to treat moderate to severe acute pain.
The drug, called Journavx (suzetrigine) and manufactured by biotech company Vertex Pharmaceuticals, is a non-opioid painkiller, which doesn’t have addictive properties, unlike opioids often used for this type of pain.
This is the first class of non-opioid pain medication approved to treat moderate to severe acute pain approved by the FDA in more than 20 years.
“Today’s approval is an important public health milestone in acute pain management,” said Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a press release. “A new non-opioid analgesic therapeutic class for acute pain offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option.”
In two clinical trials, tested on adults between ages 18 and 80, Journavx was found to reduce moderate to severe acute pain for adults from baseline by about 50% in 48 hours.
The average time to meaningful pain relief ranged from two to four hours, compared to eight hours in the placebo group.
Journavx works by inhibiting the NaV1.8 pain signal in the peripheral nervous system. This channel is not expressed in the brain or anywhere else in the central nervous system, therefore the drug does not have addictive properties like opioids, according to Vertex.
Journavx was found to be as similarly effective as hydrocodone, an opioid pain medication, for reducing acute pain, with the added benefit of being a non-opioid and non-addictive drug.
In another clinical trial, the drug was tested in patients with a broader range of surgical and non-surgical acute pain conditions and was found to be safe and effective.
More than 80% of patients in this clinical trial rated Journavx as a good, very good or excellent pain medication when investigating multiple acute pain types.
The new drug “offers a safer option for managing moderate-to-severe acute pain, reducing reliance on opioids,” Dr. Jianguo Cheng, a professor of anesthesiology and medical director of the Cleveland Clinic Consortium for Pain at Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the clinical trials, told ABC News. “It offers rapid relief and can be integrated into postoperative pain protocols or acute pain scenarios where immediate relief is critical.”
“By managing acute pain effectively, [Journavx] may help prevent the transition to chronic pain, reducing the need for long-term pain management strategies,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Sean “Diddy” Combs “abused, threatened and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires” over a longer period of time than first alleged, federal prosecutors in New York said in a superseding indictment filed Thursday.
The indictment contains no new charged crimes but includes additional conduct as part of the alleged racketeering conspiracy, which prosecutors now say spanned a longer time frame of about 20 years, from 2004-2024.
Prosecutors also included additional victims of Combs’ alleged sex trafficking.
The superseding indictment said Combs assaulted not only women but also “his employees, witnesses to his abuse and others.”
That alleged violence was most vivid in a video of Combs kicking, dragging and throwing a vase at his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura inside a Los Angeles hotel. The superseding indictment said Combs, with the assistance of several close associates, paid hotel security staff $100,000 for the footage.
The superseding indictment alleged Combs used force, coercion and threats to cause at least three female victims, identified only by number, “to engage in commercial sex acts.” Something he referred to as “Freak Offs” but others “involved only Combs and a female victim,” according to the indictment.
“Like the Freak Offs, these commercial sex acts involving Combs and a female victim were prearranged, sometimes lasted multiple days, were sometimes electronically recorded by Combs and often involved Combs distributing a variety of controlled substances to the victim, in part to keep the victim obedient and compliant,” the new indictment said.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the new indictment and is scheduled for trial on May 5. Prosecutors said the new indictment should not affect the timing of the trial.
“The latest Indictment contains no new offenses. The prosecution’s theory remains flawed. The government has added the ridiculous theory that two of Mr. Combs’ former girlfriends were not girlfriends at all but were prostitutes. Mr. Combs is as committed as ever to fighting these charges and winning at trial,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said in a statement to ABC News.
Last month Combs abandoned an attempt to be released on bail. Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since he was arrested in September.
Handout/Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The three soldiers of the Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a jetliner on Wednesday night just off of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were all very experienced and not only had thousands of hours of flight time between them but were very familiar with the flight patterns above the Potomac River.
The Army has confirmed that all three soldiers were from Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C. The unit primarily transports senior U.S. military officials around the Washington area and beyond.
Recovery efforts for two of the soldiers in the Black Hawk in the frigid waters of the Potomac River continued Thursday, as did the search for the missing among the 64 aboard American Airlines Flight 5342. Also being sought are the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorder and the helicopter’s integrated data and voice recorder.
The helicopter flight along the Potomac was a routine nighttime qualification flight in which an instructor pilot tests a pilot’s skills at navigating the various routes through the Washington area that are key parts of his or her mission.
“It was a very experienced group,” said Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chief warrant officer with more than 30 years experience in flying Army helicopters. Koziol has been attached to the Unified Command Post created at Reagan National Airport to coordinate efforts following the deadly collision.
Koziol confirmed to reporters on a conference call that the male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours of flight time, the female pilot who was commanding the flight at the time had more than 500 hours of flight time, and the crew chief was also said to have hundreds of hours of flight time.
Koziol said that given the short duration of most helicopter flights, the number of hours they had flown showed how experienced they were.
As part of their annual qualifications, all Army aviators are tested on their skills during daylight and nighttime, as well as instrument flying.
An Army flight safety investigative team from the Army’s Combat Readiness Center at Fort Novosel in Alabama has arrived in Washington to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.
The evaluated pilot was in command of the flight, but if an emergency was to occur, the instructor would have taken control of the helicopter.
“Both pilots had flown this specific route before at night — this wasn’t something new to either one of them,” he said. “These are our top pilots doing this National Capital Region.”
The airspace around the nation’s capital is one of the busiest in the nation, but Koziol described the helicopter flight corridor above the Potomac as “a relatively easy corridor to fly because you’re flying down the center of the river, and it’s very easily identifiable, especially at night” because there aren’t a lot of lights.
Night vision goggles are available for Army aviators during nighttime missions, but they are not always necessary, said Koziol, who noted that he did not know if the pilots were wearing the goggles during Wednesday night’s flight.
“They are helpful at night, obviously, and in an urban environment, they’re still useful,” but he discounted the notion that the Washington’s bright lights may have affected the pilots, saying they were flying over the Potomac River, where “there are no lights, so that wouldn’t impact them.”
“They would have the peripheral vision of the lights on both sides of the shore, which actually helps them align and know which direction they’re going,” he added. “And it would help them see other aircraft.”
Furthermore, Army aviators are required to test their ability to fly “night unaided” without night vision goggles.
Koziol said the pilots’ situational awareness would have been aided by a moving tracking screen in the cockpit pinpointing their exact location, along with visual aids within their lines of sight.
“You have the lights on either side of you and, obviously, the rotating beacon on Reagan National to point out the airfield and all the traffic on it for them to know exactly where they’re at,” he said.
Army statistics show that last year saw the biggest spike in aviation mishaps in more than a decade following years of a downward trend.
There were 15 Class A mishaps in the Army in fiscal year 2024, the highest number since fiscal year 2014, when there were 16 mishaps. Last year’s increase came after a period of time when the number of mishaps had trended downward. For example, there were seven mishaps in fiscal year 2021, four in fiscal year 2022, nine in fiscal year 2023 and then the 15 in fiscal year 2024.
Last April, the Army held what’s called a “stand-up” where it reinforced safety training but continued flight operations — this followed a series of Apache helicopter incidents the previous month.
There had previously been a stand-down of Army aviation that followed the March 2023 collision of two Black Hawk helicopters at Fort Campbell that killed nine soldiers.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.
“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.
This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”
Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order “aimed at undoing all of that damage” caused by the “Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the president said. “If they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he then said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.
When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.
However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation.”
In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, “What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened.”
“And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination,” he added. “That didn’t happen yesterday. That’s not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a “mistake was made” in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be “colorblind and merit-based … whether it’s flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government,” he said.
Vice President J.D. Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, “We want the best people at air traffic control.”
“If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vance said.
“That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”
Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “just got a good line of bulls—” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “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.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump’s comments “dangerous, racist, and ignorant.”
“President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy — while families are mourning their loved ones — to insert his own political agenda and sow division,” Kelly said in a statement. “This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.
“Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security,” she added. “The issue with our country is not its diversity. It’s the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump’s actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee peppered director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard with questions about her controversial rhetoric on Russian aggression, Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and government surveillance programs at her high-stakes confirmation hearing on Thursday.
But it was her statements about Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of national secrets, that generated the most colorful moments of her three hours of public testimony.
Senators from both sides offered Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, countless opportunities to withdraw her past support of Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records.
And while she acknowledged on multiple occasions that Snowden broke the law, she stood firm in ways that seemed at times to frustrate even some Republicans on the panel.
Gabbard has in the past called Snowden a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.
On Thursday, she repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”
“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.
She declined to say. Instead, Gabbard repeated that she felt his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. “I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.”
But, she added, he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”
Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee, and at least two members of the panel, Susan Collins and Todd Young, declined to offer their support after the open portion of the hearing concluded.
While she stood firm on Snowden, Gabbard backtracked on other matters, including her suggestion in 2022 that U.S. and NATO forces had provoked Russia into its war with Ukraine. Asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who bore responsibility for Moscow’s aggression, Gabbard was unequivocal: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war in Ukraine.”
She also said that she “shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime,” referring to Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator who fled Damascus late last year. Gabbard was chastised in 2017 for meeting with Assad in person and later casting doubt on intelligence tying his regime to the use of chemical weapons.
Several senators also raised Gabbard’s past criticism of government surveillance programs, including the FISA 702 authority, which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant.
Gabbard expressed support for FISA 702 and explained her vote as a congresswoman against its reauthorization as a reflection of her stance on defending civil liberties.
“I will just note that my actions in legislation in Congress were done to draw attention to the egregious civil liberties violations that were occurring at that time,” Gabbard said.
But on Snowden, Gabbard refused to back down. Republican Sens. James Lankford and Todd Young presented her with several opportunities to clarify her views on the government leaker. Each time, she equivocated.
“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
Gabbard did at one point back off her support of a presidential pardon for Snowden, who now resides in Moscow, where he is not subject to extradition treaties. In an exchange with Collins, she said the DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.
“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”
Collins said after the hearing that she has not made up her mind on whether she will support Gabbard’s nomination and was still reviewing portions of her testimony that she missed while attending a concurrent hearing.
But when asked if the jury was still out on her support, she said, “that’s correct, I want to make a careful decision.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, the committee chairman, said he would move to a vote on Gabbard’s nomination soon. The closed-door portion of the hearing continued on Thursday afternoon.
-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
