A corollary to this: people who don't have expertise in any field might never realize this, and will believe whatever Reddit (or HN, Twitter, etc) tells them that matches their previous-held beliefs.
I recommend people become technically proficient at at least one thing in their lives. It gives you an anchor to reality (you can easily recognize bullshit), and it will cure you of the illusion that most people know what they're talking about.
Then the rest go around repeating it ad nauseam.
The reality is that most of this either had no effect or not enough time to have an effect, but whether it has bite politically remains to be seen. My view on it is that it's an explicit attempt to use Trump's own tactics against him.
From what information is currently available, the actual investigation will likely blame pilot error on the part of the helicopter pilot, but also decades-old systemic problems with ATC understaffing, crowded and awkward airspace at DCA squeezed too much by increased traffic and no-fly zones, and years of "accepted practice" that normalized an unnecessarily dangerous situation, all of which are solidly bipartisan problems. (The Philadelphia crash I haven't read much about; I would guess it probably won't have as much in the way of broadly applicable takeaways for the aviation system, but it coming in such quick succession certainly helps build narratives.)
Still I'd have to say the narrative I outlined above is more of an attempt to hang the crash around his neck than something that reflects the truth particularly well. Of course Trump for his part as always immediately tried to hang it around Biden's and Obama's necks (neatly skipping over his own prior administration) with no evidence, so turnabout is fair play. Now, whether the Muskification of the whole government will be the cause of problems going forward, that's another story.
I was writing something here about having great confidence in the NTSB to perform a thorough investigation and account for various factors if they're allowed to remain independent and operate without interference... and then I saw a post from the NTSB today that they'll no longer be sending out email to media and instead only posting updates to their Twitter account... so put a lot of emphasis on that "if."
You are supposed to be outraged. You are supposed to think that the 'dumb libs' have no legitimate points, that they only believe 'orange man bad' and therefore everything they say can be completely disregarded.
Stop reading, sit back, and figure out what you think without feeling like you have score points over some imaginary opponent.
If you don't think that could have had an impact on morale, and therefore attentiveness, I can only wonder if you've never witnessed large-scale layoffs first-hand. They're pretty common in tech. From what I've seen in our industry, first and second hand, almost nobody gets any real work done for several days after getting such an email. The ATCs don't have such luxury, but instead, they continue their life-and-death job with an elevated level of stress.
And we know that one of the ATCs was dismissed early that day. Was it because undue stress, caused by that email, was impacting their performance? If so, will their supervisor be brave enough to say so in public? We don't know. But this is a substantial reason to suspect that the administration's actions could have had a direct impact on the people in that control tower.
[1] https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2025/01/...
[1] https://www.natca.org/2015/12/09/natca-discusses-air-traffic...
These non viable careers include pilots, atc, teaching, and a large portion of the skilled trades and more. While a non viable career path will still have some individuals in the field due to sunk cost, passion, or inertia - a shortage is inevitable.
Supply and demand should rationalize this - but if training is long, wage visibility is low, and sunk cost is high, and negotiation power is low - its entirely possible for a employers to collectively push the prevailing wage below the level which makes the job worth it to enough individuals.
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears...
If suddenly I have to worry about my job security and the possibility of losing a bunch of colleagues and becoming overworked there's no way I'd be able to be all there.
That said, conditions in the ATC facility were likely a contributor, and the overall management and control environment of the FAA created those conditions. Frankly, the Elon stuff is insane, and who knows if the people who approve the overtime, etc exist anymore.
Trump deserves blame for the circus and harm created by his administration’s irresponsibility and recklessness. But he didn’t crash a plane.