Hotline between military and air traffic controllers in Washington hasn't worked for over 3 years
A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn't worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January's deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter. Sen. Ted Cruz said a hearing Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed that the agency didn't even know the hotline hadn't been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers did still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines, but the FAA is insisting the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan National Airport.
Defense department officials didn't immediately respond to questions Wednesday about the near miss earlier this month and the steps it is taking to ensure helicopter flights in the area are safe. The FAA didn't immediately answer follow-up questions after the hearing about how that hotline was supposed to be used.
'The developments at DCA (Reagan airport) in its airspace are extremely concerning,' Cruz said. 'This committee remains laser focused on monitoring a safe return to operations at DCA and making sure all users in the airspace are operating responsibly.'
The Army suspended all helicopter flights around Reagan airport after the latest near miss, but McIntosh said the FAA was close to ordering the Army to stop flying because of the safety concerns before it did so voluntarily.
'We did have discussions if that was an option that we wanted to pursue,' McIntosh told the Senate Commerce Committee at the hearing.
January's crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people — making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. The National Transportation Safety Board has said there were an alarming 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the crash that should have prompted action.
Since the crash, the FAA has tried to ensure that military helicopters never share the same airspace as planes, but controllers had to order two planes to abort their landings on May 1 because of an Army helicopter circling near the Pentagon.
In addition to that incident, a commercial flight taking off from Reagan airport had to take evasive action after coming within a few hundred feet of four military jets heading to a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. McIntosh blamed that incident on a miscommunication between FAA air traffic controllers at a regional facility and the tower at Reagan that he said had been addressed.
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Times
18 minutes ago
- Times
Los Angeles protests news: Trump feuds with Newsom as marines arrive
Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, has said that more than a dozen protesters were arrested in his state during clashes on Monday. Protests against the federal government's crackdown on illegal immigration broke out in several major cities, including Austin, Houston and Dallas. 'Peaceful protesting is legal,' Abbott said in a post on X. 'But once you cross the line, you will be arrested.' Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, has defended the decision to deploy marines to Los Angeles, where they were sent yesterday to assist the National Guard in tackling the protests. Addressing a congressional committee, Hegseth said that the troops were needed to support ICE operations rounding up illegal migrants in the city. 'We believe ICE agents should be safe in doing their operations, and we have deployed National Guard and the marines to protect them in the execution of their duties,' Hegseth told the House appropriations committee on defence. 'We ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country.' Betty McCollum, a Democrat, criticised President Trump's decision to send the National Guard into Los Angeles as 'premature' and said the move to deploy 'to active-duty marines as well is downright escalatory'. 'Active-duty military has absolutely no role in domestic law enforcement, and they are not trained for those missions,' McCollum added. President Trump's decision to send US reservists from the National Guard to Los Angeles was regarded by Democratic politicians as incendiary. The deployment of 700 marines, the elite of the US military, is a further ramping-up of his political brinkmanship. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has said the use of marines to defend federal sites from US protesters is 'un-American'. He wrote on X: 'US marines have served honourably across multiple wars in defence of democracy. They are heroes. They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfil the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president.' However, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, announced the marines' deployment and said the government had 'an obligation to defend federal law-enforcement officers, even if Gavin Newsom will not'. • Read in full: Is Trump's deployment of marines 'un-American' or necessary? Protests over recent weeks in some sanctuary cities — those where laws restrict local and state law enforcement assisting federal immigration authorities — have remained largely peaceful. In Seattle, several demonstrators gathered outside City Hall to protest against the arrest of the California trade union leader David Huerta. Protesters rallied in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday. David McMahon, an activist, told NBC that at least 20 migrants had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the neighbouring city Norristown. 'As of Friday, we think it's about 20 individuals who have been detained so far,' he said. 'And then we're not sure what happened over the weekend. More people over the weekend, but we don't have a sense yet of what that number is.' Dozens rallied outside the ICE field office in Atlanta, in the south. Protesters held signs with the faces of migrants arrested in recent weeks. Pro-immigration protests could be poised to spread across America after a weekend of unrest in California. On Monday the Texas Department of Public Safety deployed tear gas to break apart a crowd gathering at the Texas State Capitol building. There were also protests in Dallas and Houston. In New York City, at least 20 people protesting President Trump's immigration crackdown were arrested at the Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. A small group of protesters also gathered inside Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, holding signs describing the migrant arrests and deportations as 'kidnappings' and demanding that the Trump administration 'brings them home'. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, is to appear before both the House of Representatives and the Senate today, where he will be asked about the deployment of US Marines to Los Angeles. The sessions, ostensibly to discuss the Pentagon's budget — which is expected to climb to $1 trillion for the first time — will be the first time Congress has been able to question a leading member of the administration about the deployment. Hegseth will defend the move but he is likely to come under pressure from Democrats and moderate Republicans. President Trump is due to speak this afternoon at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which is one of the largest military bases in the world. His schedule reports that he will watch a 'military demonstration' before speaking at 4pm local time (9pm BST). It comes before a full military parade in Washington on Saturday, which happens to also be his 79th birthday, but the timing is notable given the president's deployment of troops to quell the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Los Angeles would be 'burning to the ground right now' if federal troops had not been sent in, President Trump has said. Writing on his Truth Social platform, the president compared the unrest in 'that once beautiful and great city' to the destruction wreaked by the Los Angeles wildfires in January, saying '25,000 houses burnt to the ground in LA do [sic] to an incompetent governor and mayor'. Trump criticised Gavin Newsom, the state governor, and Karen Bass, the mayor, for a 'bungled' permitting system that he claimed meant people were unable to rebuild their homes. Keep up to date with the latest news, politics and analysis from America in our weekly newsletter After the public standoff between the Republican president and the Democratic governor of California, opposition to the immigration crackdown appears to spread as protests erupt in other cities. With volatility rising, how popular is Trump's administration across America? Polls aggregated by The Times data team show the president's approval rating sits at 45 per cent, marginally higher compared with his first term but notably below that of an equivalent period during Joe Biden's presidency. Some 52 per cent of voters disapprove of Trump's performance in office. • Trump's approval rating: tracking the latest opinion polls While Trump faced criticism for railing against the sanctuary city policy in Los Angeles and other cities, before the protests a majority of Americans had supported his programme to deport immigrants illegally in the US, according to a YouGov poll for CBS. Some 54 per cent of respondents approved of the policy, against 46 per cent opposed. The California governor has suggested that Trump's deployment of US Marines to Los Angeles is a political stunt ahead of the president's planned military parade on Saturday. In a post on X late on Monday, Gavin Newsom wrote: 'US Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns. 'The secretary of defence is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It's a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this.' • Read the full report on Trump's parade here: Inside Trump's birthday military parade President Trump called for the arrest of the California governor and said that 'a civil war would happen if you left it to people like him'. The standoff between Gavin Newsom and the president escalated after the Democratic governor filed legal proceedings against Trump over the decision to deploy troops in Los Angeles. The head of immigration enforcement previously warned that city and state officials could face arrest were they to obstruct federal agents' work. • Read in full: Trump calls for arrest of 'grossly incompetent' governor An association of Korean Americans in Los Angeles has criticised Donald Trump Jr, the son of the president, for comments on social media and urged him not to exploit a riot that devastated their community 33 years ago. Trump posted a photograph of a man with a rifle on a rooftop on X with a message: 'Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!' It was a reference to the 1992 race riots in the city during which members of the community had taken up positions on store rooftops and were reported to have fired on looters. The Korean American Federation of Los Angeles expressed concern over the developments in Los Angeles over the past week and said their businesses had been seriously affected by the crackdown and arrests. The organisation said the president's son showed 'recklessness' in a post 'mocking the current unrest by mentioning the 'Rooftop Korean' from the LA riots 33 years ago'. It added: 'As the eldest son of the current president and an influencer with approximately 15 million followers, his actions could pose a huge risk in these icy times and we strongly urge the past trauma of the Korean people be never, ever exploited for any purpose.' Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. The arrest of a trade union leader while protesting in Los Angeles has become a cause célèbre among some of those demonstrating against the government. David Huerta, 58, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, was detained on Friday and accused of having 'deliberately obstructed' federal agents who were carrying out a raid. Huerta, whose union represents thousands of the state's janitors, security officers and other workers, was later released on a $50,000 bond. A crowd gathered at City Hall to celebrate on Monday. The International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF) was among the unions that criticised a 'disgraceful act of agression' against the union leader. 'It is part of a wider, dangerous trend: weaponising immigration enforcement to silence the voices of the most marginalised and anyone who dares to speak out against injustice,' the ITF president, Paddy Crumlin, said. A convoy of 10 to 15 buses with blacked-out windows, believed to be carrying marines, left the base at Twentynine Palms in the desert east of Los Angeles late Monday and headed toward the city. The vehicles stopped at about 1am local time at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, 20 miles (35 km) south of downtown LA. The Pentagon has said about 700 of the troops could be deployed in the city at the President's request. Some 4,000 National Guard, who are reservists based in every state, had been called up on Trump's orders and started arriving on Sunday. Trump has claimed that the city would have been 'completely obliterated' if he had not deployed the Guard. Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the guardsmen and protesters, as police have largely been dealing with crowd control during the protests and sporadic instances of violence. Community leaders and the families of immigrants detained by federal law enforcement in Los Angeles have called on California officials to honour pledges to protect migrant residents. The Trump administration says those who have been arrested are criminals or in the United States illegally. However, the California Values Act designated California as a 'sanctuary state' in 2017. The law ensures that public resources, such as local police, are not used to assist federal immigration enforcement. The Los Angeles police chief, Jim McDonnell, has repeatedly refuted claims that the department aided raids by the agency ICE. But Elena Jung Jee Vermeulen, of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, accused police of suppressing the ensuing protests. 'Instead of upholding the constitutional rights of those detained, [law enforcement] prepared to repress those rising up against these atrocities,' she told CBS News. Protesters in Mexico City staged a demonstration outside the US embassy on Monday, calling for an end to sweeping immigration raids across the border. Video from Reuters showed people waving Mexican and American flags and burning an effigy resembling President Trump. 'We cannot remain silent as the Trump administration escalates its war on our communities in the United States,' said the activist Alejandro Marinero from the migrant organisation Aztlan. 'Immigration policy is not a party issue but a class issue. It is the tool of a system that seeks to divide us, exploit us and keep us in the shadows to ensure its profits at the expense of our humanity,' he said. Los Angeles witnessed a series of co-ordinated immigration raids by US law enforcement officials on Friday, resulting in the arrest of dozens and igniting widespread protests. Many undocumented immigrants who went to their ICE check-in appointments at a federal building in Los Angeles last week were taken into custody, brought to the basement and held there, some overnight, according to immigration lawyers and family members. Los Angeles is a so-called sanctuary city, meaning the city has policies in place to protect undocumented immigrants from federal immigration enforcement. • Read in full: Five things to know about the LA protests By David Charter, Washington Protests against President Trump's immigration crackdown have given him the perfect opportunity to burnish his credentials as a law-and-order leader and see how far he can assert his will over a Democratic-run state. Not only is Los Angeles a 'sanctuary city' but California is a 'sanctuary state', designations that instruct local authorities to limit co-operation with federal agents seeking to arrest and deport illegal migrants leading otherwise law-abiding lives. Trump has repeatedly railed against the sanctuary city policy, adopted by more than 500 cities in the US, some of which have become the most likely places for the spread of unrest against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement backed up by the threat of further troops. • Read in full: Crackdown offers Trump two victories — and one big risk The state of California filed on Monday a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that the president violated the constitution in overriding Gavin Newsom's authority by sending the California National Guard. The governor accused the administration in the lawsuit of an 'unprecedented power grab' in deploying the troops in Los Angeles. 'Defendants have overstepped the bounds of law and are intent on going as far as they can to use the military in unprecedented, unlawful ways,' the lawsuit stated. It also asked for the court to stop future deployments. The Los Angeles mayor has said her city is being 'used for an experiment' by the federal government as they bring in military forces and a 'test case' for taking power away from local authorities. Karen Bass pushed back against President Trump's comments that the city was being 'invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals,' saying that things had been peaceful until the federal government intervened. A television news crew was removed by police from a protest zone in downtown Los Angeles on Monday night. One officer told the CNN reporter Jason Carroll and other crew members to put their hands behind their backs before escorting them away. 'We're going to take them all out, one at a time,' police said. One officer took down the details of the individuals. 'You're not under arrest because you're press,' the officer added. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has described video of a journalist being shot by a rubber bullet while covering the protests as 'horrific'. Lauren Tomasi, a US correspondent for Nine News, was broadcasting live from Los Angeles when an officer was seen in the background aiming and firing at her, hitting her in the leg. 'She was clearly identified. There was no ambiguity,' Albanese told reporters at the National Press Club on Tuesday. Albanese said he had raised the issue with the Trump administration. The prime minister said he spoke with Tomasi earlier in the day, who assured that she was 'sore but otherwise unharmed,' Nine News reported. There is a sentiment among some protesters in Los Angeles that Donald Trump has betrayed them. Many of those gathered in the downtown district are Latino, a demographic which swung heavily towards Trump in the past election. Francisco, a 32-year-old man born in Guatemala, said the president had 'lied' to people like him. 'He had an agenda to get Latinos to vote for him. He promised he'd look out for them. But look what he's doing to us,' he said as he marched through Little Tokyo earlier this evening. 'Trump wants to deport us. 'It used to be black people 30, 40 years ago. Now ICE agents are targeting brown people.' Francisco added that he did not have the right to vote in American elections. A spokeswoman for the US Northern Command confirmed earlier that a battalion of roughly 700 US Marines were set to arrive overnight from their base in Twentynine Palms, near the Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave Desert region. The troops will be tasked with protecting federal property and buildings. A persistent, small minority of demonstrators remain in downtown Los Angeles after midnight local time, with police doing what they can to respond to disturbances. In one confrontation, armed troops gathered underneath a building fired non-lethal projectiles at a masked man who was standing in the centre of an intersection attempting to slow a convoy of passing police cars. He quickly fled but not before sticking up his middle finger at the troops as he slipped under the cover of some trees. The unrest, it seems, is now largely being fuelled by such individuals, who the police have branded 'agitators'. In one confrontation in Little Tokyo, protesters used rubbish bins as cover while police fired concussive devices in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Others shouted 'f*** the pigs' as a convoy of police cars raced through the city centre to respond to yet another emergency incident. One small business owner whose property was graffitied said she supported the government's deployment of reservists and soldiers. 'I think it's needed to stop the vandalism,' she told AFP, declining to give her name. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. Despite the temporary deployment of hundreds of marines, those continuing to gather in downtown Los Angeles did not seem scared by the prospect of military intervention. 'I hope they do bring in the marines, they won't stop us,' said Estrella Corral, 39, from the nearby city Pasadena. Corral, who said she had been tear-gassed four times since Friday, accused the government of antagonising the protesters with its 'militarised' response. 'They're the ones escalating this, not us. Why do we need marines? It's not Afghanistan.' Protests in Los Angeles against President Trump's immigration crackdown took place for the fourth day in a row on Monday. Thousands peacefully attended a rally at City Hall while hundreds demonstrated outside a federal complex that included a detention centre where some immigrants were being held. After darkness had descended, a near-constant percussion of gun shot-like bangs erupted throughout the downtown district as those brave, or foolish, enough to antagonise police — either by throwing water balloons or bottles — were met with pepper spray projectiles, tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets. The Los Angeles police chief said he was confident in the police department's ability to handle large-scale demonstrations without assistance from troops. Jim McDonnell said that the US Marines' arrival without co-ordinating with the police department would present a 'significant logistical and operational challenge' for them. Newsom called the deployments reckless and 'disrespectful to our troops' in a post on X. 'This isn't about public safety,' Newsom said. 'It's about stroking a dangerous president's ego.' The California governor has threatened to sue the government over the 'illegal' deployment of the National Guard and US Marines, saying they were being used as 'political pawns' by the White House. 'It's a blatant abuse of power,' Gavin Newsom said. 'The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling.' The White House has remained defiant in the face of the growing national protests, which threaten to spiral into a mass movement not seen since the widespread demonstrations in 2020 sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In a statement released on Monday night, the vice-president, JD Vance, said the 'administration will not be intimidated by lawlessness'. 'President Trump will not back down,' he wrote on X. Protests against the Trump administration flared in nine other American cities on Monday night, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. In Austin, Texas, tear gas was used to disperse a crowd that had gathered outside a federal detention facility. Police declared an unlawful assembly and told protesters they would be arrested or subject to 'chemical agents' if they did not leave. About 60 people were arrested in San Francisco and several more detained in New York after about 100 people gathered near a federal building in Manhattan. In Dallas a crowd of about 400 protesters chanted 'ICE, ICE, shut it down' and scuffled with police, resulting in further arrests. The Pentagon has confirmed that 700 US Marines would be deployed alongside up to 4,000 National Guard reservists to quell further unrest in Los Angeles, despite resistance from the state governor and city mayor. Though military forces have been used domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, rarely have they been deployed to quell civil disturbances. The last time came in 1992, in Los Angeles, amid widespread rioting sparked by the acquittal of white police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King. The use of marines marks an intensification in the showdown between President Trump and those opposed to his government's deportation of suspected undocumented immigrants. The White House has said it aims to deport 3,000 illegal migrants every day. At least 56 people have been arrested in the past two days of protests in downtown Los Angeles after a sweeping crackdown on illegal and unauthorised migrants. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) carried out raids since Friday, which resulted in more than a hundred arrests. The Department of Homeland Security said that immigrants detained in the raids included individuals convicted of sex crimes, burglary, drug-related charges and other offences. Activists and community members argue that blameless immigrant workers are being detained and families have been torn apart. The California governor has condemned President Trump's decision to deploy marines as 'un-American'. Gavin Newsom posted on X that Marines 'shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfil the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.' Some 700 US Marines based at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Centre in Twentynine Palms were preparing to mobilise for deployment to Los Angeles, according to a post on X from US Northern Command. President Trump ordered active-duty marines and 2,000 more National Guard troops into Los Angeles on Monday as he vowed that those protesting an immigration crackdown would be 'hit harder' than ever. After a fourth day of protests, with clashes between police and demonstrators, he wrote on his Truth Social platform: 'I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before.'
Reuters
23 minutes ago
- Reuters
US NIH director says hopeful will settle with universities over suspended grants
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya told a U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday he was hopeful that President Donald Trump's administration would reach a settlement with universities that have had research grants suspended. "I'm very hopeful that a resolution being made with the universities where those decisions have been made, where those grants have been paused," Bhattacharya said while appearing at a hearing of the Senate Appropriation Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on the NIH's 2026 budget request. The NIH has terminated 2,100 research grants totaling about $9.5 billion and an additional $2.6 billion in contracts since Trump took office Jan. 20, dozens of scientists, researchers and other employees at the agency said in a public letter. The contracts often support research, from covering equipment to nursing staff working on clinical trials.
The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
When it comes to the LA riots, not even the law seems to stop Donald Trump
There are several important things to keep in mind in relation to Donald Trump and Los Angeles. First of all, Los Angeles is what is called a 'sanctuary city' – as is my hometown of Chicago and my second hometown, New York City. These are cities that do not conduct immigration raids, nor do they conform to the latest missive from Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Second is that Trump detests LA, just as he does NYC and Chicago. These are bastions not only of the Democratic Party, but also of those who detest the Republican Party, and especially its latest iteration under Donald J Trump. For a man who has been on American TV for decades in one incarnation or another and who possesses that level of narcissism, to be loathed by the country's major cities and media outlets, is a low blow. And remember: coming down that escalator during his first campaign for POTUS, he called immigrants 'by and large rapists' – that is those capable of rape. We can assume that everyone is an aider and abettor. He and especially his special advisor, Stephen Miller, believe that immigrants – especially from what used to be called 'The Third World' – are less than human. Miller's anti-immigrant stance must make his own Yiddish-speaking ancestor turn in her grave and Trump's Bavarian roots shake a bit. But this is neither here nor there in Maga world. His supporters turned out in their droves to return 'The Donald' to the Oval Office for a second time – allowing him to continue his spree in defying the Constitution he swore to uphold. In other words, he is the president of a body of small sovereign nations which elected him to the post of running and protecting the federal government. Not to deploy the US Marines. The POTUS is not elected by the general vote, because if that were true, Hillary Clinton would have entered the White House. She beat him in that area. Trump was instead elected by the Electoral College, the number of votes assigned to each state. Trump won that. Twice. The states have enormous constitutional power, much of which has been ceded to the executive branch over the decades. The National Guard of each state is under the command of the governor of the state. The President of the United States does not interfere with the National Guard usually. The last time this was done was during the Civil Rights in the 1960s, when Lyndon Baines Johnson federalised the National Guard in the South to ensure the adherence to civil rights legislation. Donald Trump has no legal authority to nationalise the National Guard if the governor does not want him to do so. He is also prohibited from sending the United States military on to American soil under The Posse Comitatus Act. The title of the Act comes from the legal concept – a concept under which a sheriff can conscript anyone to enforce the peace. This idea was thrown out in 1878. Trump believes, nevertheless, that he can override this and do as he pleases. It may take the Supreme Court – packed with conservatives and two genuine Trump-enablers – to sort this one out. The other thing to keep in mind that the people who voted for Donald Trump voted for this: vigorous elimination of what they see as illegal immigration. First Amendment rights in relation to the protesters be damned. 'Habeas Corpus' – the right of a person to face their accusers and a bedrock of the American jurisprudence system – can go away, too. Trump feels mandated to do what he's doing and will continue to do so. It will not stop the peaceful protests, protected under the First Amendment, nor a state's right not to have federal mobilisation on its soil. Will the governor of California, Gavin Newsom – a Democrat and a potential rival of Donald Trump (don't count Trump out of trying for a third term, even though the Constitution bans him) – be placed under arrest by the guy enforcing the arrest of fruit vendors at gunpoint – a meatball named Tom Horman – who threatens to put the media-friendly governor in cuffs? Donald Trump, who has been on US television screens for over three decades, did not survive by not knowing what the people want. Even down to the possibility that a US Marine may be deployed in his or her own neighbourhood.
