Friday, June 19, 2026. Chump's deal or 'deal' has already hit a snag, Republicans in the US Senate don't see themselves as Chump's drones, Pete Hegseth faces more problems, Kristi Noem's errors and mistakes continue to surface from her time as Secretary of Homeland Security, in Chicago Barack reminds how a real president conducts themselves and honors this country, and much more.
As Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes above, Israel's attacked Lebanon and it appears the 'deal' or 'memo' may be off.
The nascent
U.S.-Iran deal faced fresh challenges on Friday after Switzerland said
that the next phase of talks had been postponed and as Israel launched
new strikes in Lebanon following a deadly attack on its soldiers there.
Israel
said its military had struck more than 80 targets belonging to the
Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, killing dozens, in response to an attack
on an Israeli tank crew that left four soldiers dead in southern
Lebanon. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that Israeli airstrikes
overnight had killed at least 18 people and injured 33 others.
The
upsurge of violence showed how Lebanon remained a major obstacle to the
durability of the preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement. Israel is not a
party to the U.S.-Iran talks, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that he is not bound by the deal, which calls for a cease-fire on all fronts, including Lebanon.
Mr.
Netanyahu said on Friday that he had ordered the Israeli military to
respond forcefully to the deaths of the tank crew, warning that Israel
“will exact a very heavy price from Hezbollah for these attacks.”
Some
lawmakers in Israel, and some Republicans in Congress, have strongly
criticized the deal, which President Trump and President Masoud
Pezeshkian of Iran signed this week. Critics say it gives Iran significant economic relief while punting tougher negotiations, including on Tehran’s nuclear program, down the road.
Vice
President JD Vance had been expected to fly to Switzerland for talks
with Iranian officials, but the White House said late Thursday that his
trip would be delayed. The United States was looking forward “to
beginning technical talks as soon as possible,” a White House statement
said.
MS NOW notes JD's trip is off for now and details some of the lies Miss Sassy has been telling about the proposed deal.
On the 'deal,' 'memo,' 'cease-fire,' 'chain letter' Chump's been pimping as the greatest deal ever. Holly Baxter (INDEPENDENT) notes that Vice President JD Vance tried to talk up the effort yesterday:
As he pointed out himself during this very press conference, he has absolutely zero experience in conducting diplomatic negotiations.
“Progressive critics” say he can’t do “hostile negotiations,” he said,
with a smile, “but just two days ago I went on The View.”
Nobody
laughed. He tried again: “Joy Behar is way more hostile than the
Iranians and she and I are best friends now.” The room remained silent.
Notwithstanding the fact that Joy Behar seemed to quite openly dislike
Vance when she encountered him on The View,
this joke doesn’t really work unless you follow it up with solid proof
that you actually do have good political credentials and the
“progressive critics” are wrong. Instead, Vance merely moved on.
When
pressed why this deal was better than Obama’s, Vance couldn’t offer a
lot of specifics. He kept going back to the idea that “Gulf states like
this deal” and they didn’t like the old one, “and I trust their
judgment”. He didn’t seem to know exactly why they’d come to that
judgment.
Is Cuba next? “You guys would have to
ask Marco [Rubio] about Cuba,” he said, before adding that the
administration is talking with the Cuban government and hopes they “make
smart decisions.”
Is he still going on his
promised trip to Switzerland Friday to sign the deal that has, it turns
out, already been signed? Apparently not. There are other people going
“on the ground” in Iran to do “technical negotiations”, possibly over
the weekend, and the Geneva signing may or may not happen after that.
“So you’re not going tomorrow?” one reporter asked. Vance equivocated and, again, moved on.
Then
we entered the weirder portion of the presser. When told that the Pope
had hailed the end of the war, Vance said, in a tone of voice that
skirted a little too close to sarcasm, “My response to that is: Praise
Jesus!” When someone said they noticed his voice is hoarse, he said,
“I’ve been on a book tour,” thus reminding everybody of the fact that
the chief Iran negotiator has been wasting his time this week on daytime
talk shows soft-launching a 2028 presidential run by shilling a book
about Christianity.
Once, we had wars of choice. Today, we have wars of distraction.
Call the catastrophically misguided war in Iran and the blink-and-you-missed-it war with Venezuela the Epstein Wars.
These were not wars fought to defend U.S. national security. They were not wars fought to advance our national interests.
They
were wars conjured up not by generals or seasoned foreign policy
advisors but by a frightened old man and his public relations team to
distract from a scandal he fears will be his undoing.
President
Donald Trump's director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is firing back
after a Democratic lawmaker accused the administration of giving luxury
treatment to Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell,
who authorities said helped run Epstein's child trafficking operation
for years, was controversially moved from a facility in Florida to an
amenity-filled "prison camp" in Bryan, Texas generally reserved for
low-level offenders, breaking the rules that usually would prohibit sex
offenders from such a facility — right around the time the
administration was trying to get her testimony to turn down the
temperature on public outrage over the Epstein case files.
Rep.
Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Oversight
Committee, broke down the apparent injustice of it all in an interview
on CNN this week.
"Oversight and Judiciary Dems
visited Ghislaine Maxwell’s prison today, it is essentially a pristine
park with fountains and ample green space," said Garcia, posting his
reaction to X. "She’s the only convicted sex offender there ... this
isn’t justice."
He demanded answers as to why
then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, now Trump's acting attorney
general and nominee for the permanent role, sent her to that facility.
The statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not say anything that mattered or was factual. And, as Tom Latchem (DAILY BEAST) notes,
"The agency did not explain why a convicted sex offender was placed at a
camp that, under its own rules, bars such inmates without a special
waiver."
As you may recall, last July Blanche, who was serving as Deputy
Attorney General, conducted a two-day interview with Maxwell while she
was seeking clemency. After making favorable comments about Tr*mp, she
wasn’t granted a pardon, but she did see her fortunes turn for the
better.
From the minute Maxwell stepped into Camp Bryan, her presence
“disrupted” the lives of her fellow inmates, all of whom are non-violent
offenders serving much lighter sentences for far less serious crimes.
Last August, she was allowed to take meetings outdoors while the rest
of the women had to stay inside. According to WSJ, the warden even scheduled a talk with
other inmates after one incident where he warned that any aggressive
behavior toward Maxwell would be punished. He also allegedly cautioned
inmates not to speak with press about Maxwell, a move which, according to Jamie Raskin, violates the inmates’ rights.
“Every inmate I’ve heard from is upset she is here,” one reporter said of the facility where Theranos grifter Elizabeth Holmes is also serving time and where former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah recently finished 33 months.
Since the start of Maxwell’s sentence, she’s also had access to special meals, a specialized response team,
and other privileges seemingly denied the other inmates, none of whom
have committed crimes anywhere near the scale of Maxwell’s.
Money might be able to buy you plenty of privileges in prison, but they don’t buy you that much.
House Democrats have been asking Blanche what the deal is for months,
when a Wall Street Journal investigation broke the story of Maxwell’s
special treatment wide open. So far, they haven’t gotten any clear
answers.
In other news . . .
Time for Convicted Felon Donald Chump to preen and pose. The ego maniac has set some new standards. David Edwards (RAW STORY) reports:
President Donald Trump just broke three of his own records in a new poll, and none of them are good.
The NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll,
conducted June 8–11 among 1,340 adults with a margin of error of plus
or minus 3 percentage points, finds Trump hitting simultaneous lows: his
worst-ever economy approval rating, his worst-ever approval spread, and
a disapproval rating that ties the highest ever recorded for him.
Just
33% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy — the
lowest Marist has recorded since it began asking the question in 2019.
Sixty percent disapprove.
Trump's overall approval sits at
36%, with 59% disapproving — a 23-point gap that is the widest Marist
has ever measured for him across either term.
President
Donald Trump is calling for Republicans to pass a $350 billion bill to
fund the military while notching conservative policy victories — and GOP
senators aren’t exactly scurrying to action.
House
Republican leaders and committee chairs have been meeting for weeks
about what to include in a new party-line reconciliation package.
Speaker Mike Johnson has also had conversations about the House’s vision
with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
But
the Senate has taken no concrete steps toward advancing a bill, and GOP
senators and aides said this week it was becoming clear any
“Reconciliation 3.0” would be a House-led effort. Multiple Senate
Republicans — including members of leadership — say they don’t currently
see a path that could marshall 50 votes behind such a measure on their
side of the Capitol just months before the midterms.
“Everybody
has a different concept of what they want, which is going to be the
problem,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview this week.
Sen.
John Cornyn (R-Texas) said a third bill “doesn’t look to me like it's
got a lot of life in it,” while Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) separately
warned that if his party was going to pass a third reconciliation bill,
Republicans need to “saddle up and ride hard, because we’re running out
of time.”
Wait. They aren't marching in lockstep behind him? Singing a hearty tune? Chris Brennan (USA TODAY) explains there are hostilities currently:
President
Donald Trump has groused repeatedly during his second term about the
sometimes lengthy nomination process needed for key administration
officials to be approved by the U.S. Senate.
That was, until Trump derailed the fast-track with a petulant, early morning social media post just before 4 a.m. on June 17, catching his Republican allies in the Senate off guard hours before Clayton's hearing.
That
annoyed Trump, who lobbed his bombshell into the nomination process
from the G7 summit in France on June 17, where the six-hour time
difference meant he was tossing his tantrum about 10 a.m. local time
while Senate Republicans were likely sleeping back home in America.
President
Donald Trump is making life almost impossible for Senate Republicans —
and these days fewer of them are willing to just let it slide.
Some
lawmakers that were once happy to brush off impulsive and disruptive
behavior by saying they hadn’t seen the president’s social media posts
or that it was just “Trump being Trump” are increasingly willing to
speak out against what they view as bad decisions that undermine their
ability to deliver legislative wins as the midterms approach.
The
latest irritation was the early-morning Truth Social post Wednesday
that upended GOP hopes of quickly confirming a new director of national
intelligence and reviving a surveillance bill that Trump already
derailed earlier this month.
The chaos that
followed Trump’s sudden U-turn on Jay Clayton’s nomination, just hours
before a scheduled confirmation hearing, further loosened tongues in the
Capitol hallways — even from lawmakers who tend to be reliable allies.
“The
president’s timing and communication needs improvement,” Sen. Shelley
Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “I think it’s unfortunate. It throws a
kicker into the system when we get going and then we have to readjust.”
Asked
about frustration within the conference about the recent lack of
coordination, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) added, “Well, duh.”
Kennedy
added, “No, I don't,” when asked if Trump takes senators into
consideration: “He wants what he wants, and until he gets it, he just
keeps pushing.”
President Trump wants Republicans in Congress to do exactly as they are told.
But recently he has been hearing a lot of “no” from John Thune, the Senate’s top Republican.
That
has led to open conflict as Trump tries to push through a voter-ID law
that he has said is crucial to Republicans’ winning the midterms but
lacks enough support to pass. It is one of a series of disputes that
have intensified pressure on Thune, the lanky South Dakota conservative
who finds himself in an increasingly difficult political position just
months ahead of the elections.
[. . .]
Thune
has had to deliver a series of unwelcome news to Trump. Before they
agreed to pass a recent $70 billion border-security package, Senate
Republicans rejected funding for Trump’s White House ballroom and forced
the administration to scratch a $1.8 billion fund that could have been
used to compensate Trump’s political allies. Also, lawmakers loudly
objected to Pulte in the role as interim director, saying he lacked
national-security experience and airing concern that he would politicize
the position.
Republicans
are at a "boiling point" over tensions between President Donald Trump
and Senate GOP leadership, Punchbowl News reported on Thursday morning.
Senate
Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has been "bearing the brunt of the
fallout from Trump’s erratic behavior, expressing his frustrations with
the president in an intentional but very reserved manner," said the
report.
For the last week, the report noted, Thune
"was being stiff-armed by a White House that was refusing his request
for a briefing on the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement" — then things
kicked into high gear after Trump publicly blew up a hearing for one of
his own critical nominees and triggered a standoff.
Things
have gotten so tense that Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told reporters Trump
is "taking shots" at Thune, and lamented, “Who doesn’t like John Thune?
If you don’t like John Thune, you don’t like golden retrievers.”
Let's turn to one of the charm experts from Chump's cabinet. Lorne Cook (AP) reports,
"U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at NATO allies on
Thursday, announcing a six-month Pentagon review of American forces in
Europe whose outcome will depend on how fast the Europeans take
responsibility for their own security. The threat of a review was yet
another surprise for European allies and Canada as they learn to deal
with an increasingly unpredictable ally. U.S. officials and senior
military officers had promised to coordinate closely with the Europeans
as America draws down." Fresh from disgracing the United States at Normandy,
Hegseth's just spreading the ill will around, The man who only got
confirmed in the Senate thanks to JD Vance's tie breaking vote has been a
serial screw up going back to the Signal chat. Remember that?
Remember when the report from the Pentagon's Inspector General found
that, in that chat, Hegseth gave out the exact timelines, launch
sequences and even the specific weapons that would be deployed in the
strike on Yemen.
Yet he remained in the job. Loose lips Hegseth? He's apparently the cold sore America can't get rid of. Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) reports:
While
Donald Trump is being excoriated by Republicans over his Iran deal,
which one GOP lawmaker called “… a tremendous foreign policy blunder,”
MS NOW’s Bill Rohde stated on Thursday morning that Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth can expect that his role in advising the president to
launch the war has put his job at risk.
Discussing
the blowback Trump is facing over the war that, for the moment, has
ended in a stalemate, Rohde claimed that Hegseth is already a prime
target instead since he is already on the outs with a substantial number
of Republican lawmakers.
“At some point. President Trump is the person most responsible
for this strategic defeat and failure,” Rohde told the "Morning Joe”
co-hosts. “But I would argue the person second most responsible, who is
in the most dangerous position politically, is Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth. He repeatedly lied to the American public
in his press conferences about the progress of the war, and he also
refused to give basic information to members of Congress. There's a lot
of ill will among senators and House members towards Pete Hegseth.”
Senators and House members have ill will towards Hegseth? That would explain what Eren Waris (MEAWW) reports:
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing a bipartisan congressional rebuke as
lawmakers move to restrict his travel budget over long-running
complaints that the Pentagon has kept Congress in the dark.
The
proposed restriction comes as senators demand records related to
military strikes that have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides
of the aisle. The effort turns months of frustration over limited access
to information into a direct funding measure aimed at forcing greater
transparency from the Pentagon.
A Republican-led
Senate Armed Services Committee proposal filed Tuesday would block
Hegseth from using more than 25 percent of his travel budget until the
Pentagon turns over key documents related to military operations.
Under
the defense policy bill, lawmakers are demanding "unredacted civilian
harm investigations" and other records connected to strikes in the
Middle East and Latin America.
Committee members, led
by Republican Sen Roger Wicker, highlighted the April 2025 strikes in
Yemen that resulted in dozens of casualties and the February 2026 strike
on the Minab girls' school in Iran that left at least 150 students and
staff among the reported casualties.
Hegseth
is notorious for so many things -- most of them hideous. That would
include his refusal to wash his hands. Hygiene isn't a big thing with
Hegseth nor are vaccines. And that's coming back to haunt him. Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
A
major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force
Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated
for the flu, defense officials said.
The
outbreak at the base in San Antonio raced through an Air Force Basic
Military Training wing, where new recruits sleep on bunk beds in open
bays and share meals at large communal tables.
A
trainee in his sixth week of basic training died after falling ill on
Friday and being taken to Brooke Army Medical Center, the Air Force said
in a news release. It was not immediately clear whether the death of
the trainee, Keon McDaniel, was related to the flu outbreak.
A comprehensive medical review into his death is underway to determine the cause, according to the Air Force.
In the weeks since Mr. Hegseth’s vaccine policy took effect on April 21,
only about 40 percent of Air Force trainees have opted to take the
vaccine, which had previously been mandatory, an Air Force official
said.
And this is happening right now. Imagine what awaits come winter. Hegseth, ruining America just a little bit more each day.
Moving
over to air head Kristi Noem. As Chump's Special Envoy to the Shield
of the Americas, Kristi continues to screw up. She was laughed at earlier this week when asked which country in South America would qualify as the US' best friend and she responded,
"Well, we've worked so much with El Salvador and migration issues and
third country agreements. But also Ecuador's been fantastic; we did a
joint operation with them with the Department of War against the cartels
in their country. We work very well with Argentina; their economic
policies line up with ours. Costa Rica's been fantastic; they have a new
president" -- Stop. El Salvador and Costa Rica are not South American
countries, they are part of Central America.
It's
the sort of mistake a freshman in high school could make but not one
that the Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas should be making.
Prior to her current role, Kristi was the Secretary of Homeland Security
where she did so many things wrong. This included buying up facilities
to turn into ICE prisons. Hamed Aleaziz (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
The idea was meant to supercharge President Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement would purchase more than a dozen empty
warehouses across the United States to massively expand its capacity to
detain people deemed to be in the country illegally, which in turn would
spike deportations. A year into Mr. Trump’s term, it had bought 11
facilities at a cost of $1 billion.
But in a
major turnabout, the agency is planning to offload seven warehouses
purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other
federal agencies or selling them outright, according to documents
obtained by The New York Times.
The decision to
sharply scale back the warehouse plan is a rejection of a signature
initiative under the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem,
who pushed the boundaries of what the government can do to aggressively
round up potential deportees. The new secretary, Markwayne Mullin, who
had privately expressed skepticism about the plan, has said publicly
that he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out
immigration enforcement.
Yesterday, America was reminded of what a president can be as Barack Obama spoke in Chicago.
The opening of the Obama Presidential Center drew thousands, including A-list celebrities, to celebrate the facility honoring the 44th president's historic legacy.
Former President Barack Obama, joined on stage by his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters, oversaw the grand opening ceremony that also featured other living former presidents: Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
"Everybody's
got an opinion, and that means getting stuff done, involves reconciling
the demands of a couple of 100 million people," Obama said as he
reflected on America's political history. "Democracy can be frustrating,
it can be slow, it can be inefficient, and yet more than anything, I
hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how
precious our democracy truly is, and remind us what we can achieve when
we embrace our shared responsibilities as citizens."
Michelle Obama also commemorated the former president's work during a
speech about his tenure and the center's many community-oriented
amenities: "You were unflappable at every turn, always focused, always
calm, always looking at the long view," she told her husband.
The entertainment was first-rate.
People came together and did so with a purpose that was beyond greed. It was a reminder of what the country could be -- and will be again once Chump is out of the White House.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Tammy Duckworth's office:
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] — U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)—Ranking
Member of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation—is demanding the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reject any pressure to rubberstamp
President Donald Trump’s latest taxpayer-funded vanity project, the
so-called “Triumphal Arch,” that could jeopardize the safety of the
flying public. In a letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, Duckworth
warned against wasting time and resources reviewing the proposed
259-foot “Triumphal Arch,” which would be constructed in one of the most
complex and congested airspaces in the country.
Aviation Subcommittee Ranking Member Duckworth wrote, “President
Trump choosing to force the FAA to invest limited staff and resources
into a distracting review of his gaudy and disgraceful arch is merely
the latest example of Trump putting his pet projects first, while
neglecting America’s needs. This wasteful and dangerous project is
particularly irresponsible given the FAA’s ongoing efforts to implement
safety enhancements in and around DCA following the preventable DCA
collision in late January 2025, the deadliest domestic air crash since
the 2009 Colgan tragedy.”
In the letter, the Senator underscores the critical importance of
exercising the highest level of caution in DC airspace after the tragic
DCA collision claimed 67 lives. Initial reviews of the Arch project were
conducted on an expedited timeline, raising concerns about undue
pressure from the Trump Administration to advance a needless project
which could put people’s lives in danger.
“Your mission is to provide the safest, most efficient
aerospace system in the world. Accordingly, the FAA must commit to
upholding the highest safety standards and be firm in rejecting any
improper or irresponsible pressure from President Trump to prioritize
the construction of his gaudy, vanity arch over the safety of the
American people,” concluded Ranking Member Duckworth.
I write to demand the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uphold
the highest safety standards and reject any efforts from President
Donald Trump to pressure the FAA into wasting time and resources
modifying the complex National Capital Region (NCR) airspace as part of a
wasteful campaign to rubberstamp Donald Trump’s newest vanity project,
the so-called “Triumphal Arch.” The Trump arch—which Donald Trump’s arch
designer noted is a distinct memorial because unlike the Lincoln and
Jefferson Memorials, President Trump’s arch is intended to celebrate the living—would
offensively desecrate the hallowed symbolism of Arlington National
Cemetery by destroying the historic sightline between the Lincoln
Memorial and Arlington House that has symbolized post-Civil War unity
for decades.
Furthermore, the vanity arch’s proximity to Ronald Reagan Washington
National Airport (DCA)—which, as the Trump administration is well aware,
is one of the most complex, constrained and airspaces in the National
Airspace System—reflects a flagrant disregard for the operational
integrity of the airspace, aviation safety and the priorities of the
American people.
President Trump choosing to force the FAA to invest limited staff and
resources into a distracting review of his gaudy and disgraceful arch
is merely the latest example of Trump putting his pet projects first,
while neglecting America’s needs. This wasteful and dangerous project is
particularly irresponsible given the FAA’s ongoing efforts to implement
safety enhancements in and around DCA following the preventable DCA
collision in late January 2025, the deadliest domestic air crash since
the 2009 Colgan tragedy.
As you know, the FAA has failed to secure full funding for the Trump
administration’s “Brand New Air Traffic Control System” despite
Republicans controlling the U.S. House of Representatives and the United
States Senate since 2025, and jamming through not just one, but two,
massive partisan Republican reconciliation spending bills. Some may
brush off wasting millions, if not billions, of taxpayer dollars on
Trump’s vanity arch as only an annoying nuisance. However, FAA should
know better than anyone that such flippant dismissals are reckless and
wrong.
The NCR is an extremely challenging airspace because of complicated
flight paths, restricted airspace and complex civil-military operations.
Even minor disruptions can have cascading, fatal effects—a sobering
reality that our country witnessed just last year when a midair
collision involving a commercial aircraft and an Army Blackhawk
helicopter killed 67 people. The DCA midair collision underscores the
consequences of inadequate coordination and the need for extreme caution
when evaluating any new obstruction in this environment.
The FAA’s initial feasibility study was a “limited review” and far
from the required full aeronautical study that must be conducted.
However, even this limited examination confirmed that the proposed
259-ft Trump vanity arch structure requires red lighting because it
constitutes an obstruction under Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations
(CFR), Part 77. FAA’s initial review appears to have been completed on
an expedited timeline, raising questions as to whether Donald Trump or
his White House aides are already improperly pressuring FAA to
prioritize rubberstamping Trump’s vanity arch over public safety.
Importantly, the finished structure is not the only potential hazard
Donald Trump is forcing into this highly congested, complex DCA
airspace. The National Park Service (NPS) indicated that construction of
Trump’s vanity arch would require cranes reaching 300 to 320 feet in
height and NPS estimated construction could last 20 hours per day for two to three years.
On final approach to DCA, commercial jets can fly as low as 500 feet
above ground level (AGL). Introducing construction equipment approaching
the AGL limit in an already congested airspace raises additional
operational and safety issues.
There is already evidence that the Trump administration is dismissive
of, or simply avoids, advanced aviation safety planning in coordination
with FAA experts. In addition to the Trump administration’s chaotic
testing of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the NAS, commercial
pilots reported that during evening approaches to DCA, the bright lights
from Donald Trump’s personal UFC playground—which was installed on the
White House lawn for his taxpayer-funded birthday party—impaired pilot
visibility as they worked to navigate one of the most challenging
approaches in the NAS.
Your mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace
system in the world. Accordingly, the FAA must commit to upholding the
highest safety standards and be firm in rejecting any improper or
irresponsible pressure from President Trump to prioritize the
construction of his gaudy, vanity arch over the safety of the American
people.
