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The Pentagon has quietly scrapped a policy that assisted troops who needed to travel to receive reproductive health care including abortions, a US defense official said Friday.President Donald Trump’s new administration has taken aim at multiple military policies opposed by Republicans, including seeking to end “transgender ideology” in the armed forces and to reinstate troops dismissed for refusing Covid vaccines.The end of the reproductive health care policy took effect earlier this week, the defense official said, without providing details on the decision.While the policy has been contentious, it was only used a limited number of times — 12 — at a cost of less than $45,000 between June and December 2023, the only time frame for which figures were released by the Pentagon.The US Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the nationwide right to abortion, meaning troops stationed in states that restricted or banned the procedure must take leave and travel to areas where it is legal to obtain one.The Defense Department responded by permitting service members to take administrative absences to receive “non-covered reproductive health care,” and establishing travel allowances.- Security held ‘hostage’ -The policy drew fire from Republicans, especially Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach who sought to delay the approval of hundreds of senior military officers’ promotions in response.At the top of the US armed forces, Tuberville’s actions led to three officers serving as the acting heads of military branches and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff while also performing their previous jobs as deputy service chiefs.Tuberville eventually backed down, but US officials have said his “hold” on promotions caused significant disruption.The senator hailed the end of the policy, saying Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had secured “what I’ve been fighting for since I got to Washington: ZERO taxpayer dollars should go towards abortions.”Hegseth responded to Tuberville’s post on social media site X, saying: “Thank you for your leadership, Coach.”Others were opposed to the change, including Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.The end of the policy “will harm the health and wellbeing of our service members and does nothing to support our military readiness,” Shaheen said on X.Senator Tammy Duckworth — who lost both legs when her Black Hawk helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq — slammed Tuberville in a post on X.”You held our national security and military readiness hostage for 9 months over this compassionate policy,” said Duckworth, another Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

US President Donald Trump sent an envoy to Venezuela Friday to warn leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to accept the unconditional return of deported Venezuelans or face consequences.Richard Grenell, an outspoken Trump ally who serves in a broad role as envoy for special missions, traveled to Caracas to speak to Maduro as the new Washington administration vows to push a hard line.State TV broadcast images Friday afternoon of Maduro receiving Grenell for a closed meeting at the presidential palace.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Grenell would demand that Caracas allow repatriation flights for members of the Tren de Aragua — the Venezuelan criminal gang Trump has designated a terrorist group. “President Trump expects Nicolas Maduro to take back all of the Venezuelan criminals and gang members that have been exported to the United States, and to do so unequivocally and without condition,” Mauricio Claver-Carone, US special envoy for Latin America, said separately.Claver-Carone said Grenell was also demanding that “American hostages need to be released — immediately, unequivocally.””All I would do on this call is urge the Maduro government — the Maduro regime — in Venezuela, to heed to Special Envoy Ric Grenell and to his demands and what he puts on the table, because ultimately, there will be consequences otherwise,” Claver-Carone told reporters.It was one of the first known meetings by the second Trump administration with a government it considers hostile.Maduro was sworn in for a third presidential term on January 10 despite being accused of stealing the election last July. The opposition, and much of the international community, considers rival Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia the rightful winner.Claver-Carone said the talks did not imply any softening of the position on Maduro, whose previous term Washington had also considered illegitimate.The Joe Biden administration had agreed to relax sanctions on oil as part of a deal for American prisoners and free elections. Venezuela freed 10 Americans in a swap. But Biden reimposed sanctions after Maduro did not follow through on democratic reforms.Maduro recently announced the capture of seven “mercenaries” and said two were US citizens — including a “senior FBI official.”The Foro Penal rights NGO says eight Americans are imprisoned in Venezuela, plus two people of unknown nationalities who had resided in the United States.”This is not a quid pro quo, is not a negotiation in exchange for anything. President Trump himself has made very clear we don’t need Venezuelan oil,” Claver-Carone said.Venezuela has the world’s biggest known oil reserves, but production is stunted and GDP has dropped 80 percent in a decade on Maduro’s watch — prompting more than seven million of the country’s 30 million citizens to flee.- Top priority for Trump -Trump has made the deportation of undocumented people in the United States a top priority. During his campaign, he described immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the United States.Since his return to the White House, he has pressed countries to take back deportees — a top priority for Secretary of State Marco Rubio as he starts a five-nation tour of Latin America on Saturday.In his first week back in office, Trump vowed crushing tariffs on Colombia, a longstanding US ally, after its president called for more humane treatment of repatriated citizens.The Trump administration quickly ended protections from deportation for more than 600,000 Venezuelans living in the United States under a special status. The Biden administration had allowed them to stay due to fears for their safety if they return to Venezuela.Venezuela’s opposition decried the lifting of the protections, saying the vast majority of Venezuelans in the United States were “honest and hard-working” and forced to flee by Maduro.Trump also signed a law making it easier to detain migrants who commit crimes, naming it after 22-year-old Laken Riley, a nursing student murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant who had been arrested but released twice.

President Donald Trump has said he wants to send 30,000 “criminal illegal aliens” to the notorious Guantanamo Bay US military base in Cuba.The site houses the prison where hundreds of terror suspects labelled “enemy combatants” were held — many for years without charge — after the 9/11 attacks. Some were tortured.Trump said this week he had ordered the construction of a detention center there to “double our capacity immediately” to hold undocumented migrants.The plan has raised questions and concerns.- Is it new? -Guantanamo Bay has for decades been used to hold Caribbean asylum seekers and refugees caught at sea. Migrants are held in a different part of the base than that used for terror suspects.In the 1990s, it was used to house tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans who fled crises in their homelands.They were accommodated in tent cities, many eventually sent home after being held at Guantanamo for years.Trump’s move would entail a significant expansion of what is known as the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center (GMOC).But Deepa Alagesan of the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) says migrants are already being held “in inhuman conditions, and expanding the facility will be nothing short of disastrous.”In a report last September, the IRAP reported conditions at the GMOC including “undrinkable water and exposure to open sewage, inadequate schooling and medical care for children, and collective punishment of detained Cuban and Haitian refugees.”- Is it legal? -“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump said of the migrants he plans to ship off to Guantanamo — adding it is “a tough place to get out of.”Bill Frelick, refugee and migrants director at Human Rights Watch told AFP that Trump’s intention appears to be “to detain people indefinitely.” He explained there was leeway under domestic and international law to detain migrants administratively for short periods of time until they can be sent back to their home countries.If they cannot be returned, “there is no longer a legitimate reason for the detention, and it becomes arbitrary,” said Frelick.Making matters worse, Guantanamo is a remote, closed military base “which the US government has used to evade legal protections and public scrutiny” in the past.”When detention becomes prolonged and indefinite and untethered from proper oversight, it violates human rights and may amount to torture,” said Frelick.The UN human rights office said Friday that migrants should only be detained “as a last resort. And only in exceptional circumstances.”Observers say migrants in Guantanamo would find it hard to access legal counsel.Many would be legitimate asylum seekers who have the right under US and international law to live and work in America while their applications are considered.- Is it necessary? -Thousands of undocumented migrants have been arrested since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, including some accused of crimes.An unknown number have been repatriated to Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil and other countries. Trump has vowed to expel “millions.”The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency currently has funding for 41,500 detainee beds, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.In a report this week, it said US military facilities such as Guantanamo “can play a central role in management of detention and deportation” — and already have been used for this purpose under previous administrations including that of Joe Biden.The United States leases the site holding the prison from Cuba under a treaty dating back to 1903.The communist government in Havana considers it an illegal occupation, but the US Department of State website states the lease was the product of “international agreement and treaty” and can only be ended by mutual agreement.

President Donald Trump will impose tariffs Saturday on the three largest US trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — the White House said, sparking concern for global trade.Trump has reiterated plans for 25 percent tariffs on neighbors Canada and Mexico on Saturday, unless they cracked down on illegal migrants crossing the US border and the flow of deadly fentanyl.He was also threatening an additional 10 percent duty for Chinese goods on the same day, similarly over the drug.”The February 1st deadline that President Trump put into place at a statement several weeks ago continues,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Friday.She added that the issue remains the flow of illegal fentanyl.While Trump has not specified tools he would use, analysts have suggested he could tap emergency economic powers, which allow the president to regulate imports during a national emergency. But this could be hindered by lawsuits.Fentanyl, many times more powerful than heroin, has been responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year.Beijing has rebuffed claims of its complicity in the deadly trade, while close US ally Canada has countered that below one percent of undocumented migrants and fentanyl entering the United States comes through its northern border.JPMorgan analysts believe tariffs are “a bargaining chip” to accelerate the renegotiation of the existing trade deal known as USMCA between the United States, Mexico and Canada.”However, potentially dismantling a decades-long free-trade area could be a significant shock,” said a recent JPMorgan note.One lesson from Trump’s first term was that policy changes could be announced or threatened on short notice, it added.Tariffs are paid by US businesses to the government on purchases from abroad and the economic weight can fall on importers, foreign suppliers or consumers.- Recession risks -Assistant professor Wendong Zhang of Cornell University said Canada and Mexico would suffer the most under 25 percent US tariffs and with proportional retaliations.”Canada and Mexico stand to lose 3.6 percent and two percent of real GDP respectively, while the US would suffer a 0.3 percent real GDP loss,” he added.Oxford Economics analysts warned that blanket tariffs and pushback could tip Canada and Mexico into recessions, adding the United States also risks a shallow downturn.Mexico’s biggest export sectors — food and beverages, transport equipment and electronics — account for the bulk of its manufacturing activity, said Joan Domene, chief Latin America economist at Oxford Economics.Canada exported nearly 80 percent of its goods to the United States in 2023, and accounts for nearly 60 percent of US crude oil imports, noted the Congressional Research Service (CRS).It is unclear if there could be exceptions, such as on oil imports.Canadian heavy oil, for example, is refined in the United States and regions dependent on it may lack a ready substitute.Canadian producers would bear the brunt of tariffs but US refiners would also be hit with higher costs, said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service. This could bring gasoline price increases.US merchandise imports from both countries largely enter duty free or with very low rates on average, said the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).A tariff hike would shock both industrial buyers and consumers.Canadian officials said Ottawa would provide pandemic-level financial support to workers and businesses if US tariffs hit, vowing their readiness to respond.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday her government was in close contact with Trump’s administration.- ‘Grand bargain’ -Trump is also mulling more tariffs on Chinese goods.Beijing has vowed to defend its “national interests,” and a foreign ministry spokeswoman previously warned that “there are no winners in a trade war.”On the election campaign trail, Trump raised the idea of levies of 60 percent or higher on Chinese imports.Isaac Boltansky of financial services firm BTIG expects “incremental tariff increases” on Chinese goods, with consumer goods likely to face lower hikes.”Our sense is that Trump will vacillate between carrots and sticks with China, with the ultimate goal being some sort of grand bargain before the end of his term,” he said in a recent note.

US pilot Sully Sullenberger, who famously landed a damaged plane on the Hudson river in New York in 2009, said he was “disgusted” but “not surprised” by President Donald Trump’s point-scoring rhetoric surrounding this week’s crash in Washington.Trump has launched a political offensive blaming diversity hires for the midair collision between an airliner and a military helicopter that plunged into the Potomac river killing 67 people.Republican Trump blamed his Democrat predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden for diversity policies that he said were responsible for the crash, though he provided no evidence.Asked by left-leaning MSNBC about his reaction to Trump’s comments, Sullenberger responded on Thursday: “Not surprised, disgusted.”Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger became a national hero after calmly piloting his US Airways airliner onto the water following a bird strike, in an episode remembered as the “Miracle on the Hudson.”A 2016 film “Sully,” starring Tom Hanks and directed by Clint Eastwood, additionally wowed audiences with its account of his emergency landing. Sullenberger urged a measured approach in investigating the crash, with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) compiling a report.The NTSB “is the gold standard of the globe for accident investigation,” Sullenberger said, reminding that it took 16 months for the final report when his own flight crashed.”We can have great confidence that the results will be found, they will be made public,” he said.On Friday Trump posted new blame on his Truth Special platform, singling out the helicopter’s supposed trajectory.”The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot,” Trump posted. “It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”

The US Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure accelerated for a third month in a row in December, according to government data published Friday, while underlying inflation was unchanged.The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 2.6 percent in the 12 months to December, up from 2.4 percent in November, the Commerce Department said in a statement. Inflation rose 0.3 percent from a month earlier. This was in line with the median forecasts from economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.Stripping out volatile food and energy costs, the so-called core index rose by 0.2 percent from a month earlier, and by 2.8 percent from a year ago. “I’m liking this PCE number,” Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee told CNBC in an interview. “It was expected, and it was even a little better than expected.””The report showed slightly higher inflation, but it was in line with expectations, meaning it won’t disrupt the narrative of a potential Fed rate cut in the first half of the year,” Jochen Stanzl, Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets wrote in a note to clients.Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income eased slightly to 3.8 percent in December from 4.1 percent in November, the Commerce Department said, indicating that consumers saved less of the money they earned last month.- Moving away from 2% -Headline inflation has been moving away from the Fed’s long-term target of two percent since September, causing issues for policymakers at the US central bank.The Fed has a dual mandate to tackle inflation and unemployment, and does so mainly by raising and lowering short-term lending rates, which then trickle through into consumer and producer borrowing costs.On Wednesday, the Fed voted unanimously to pause rate reductions following three consecutive cuts, holding the bank’s benchmark lending rate at between 4.25 and 4.50 percent.While headline inflation has accelerated, economic growth has been strong, and the labor market has remained resilient, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.1 percent last month.”There’s still more work to be done to bring inflation closer to our two percent goal,” Fed governor Michelle Bowman told a conference in New Hampshire on Friday.”I would like to see progress in lowering inflation resume before we make further adjustments to the target range,” added Bowman, who is a permanent voting member of the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee FOMC).One potential spanner in the works of the Fed’s inflationary fight is President Donald Trump’s threats to introduce new tariffs on several US trading partners, which could come into effect as soon as this weekend.”We’ve got a lot of policy uncertainty,” said Goolsbee from the Chicago Fed, noting that he was not weighing in on what policies he expected the US president — or Congress — to enact.”If it affects prices, it affects us,” he continued, adding that the Fed’s signals became “muddied” when things happened that drove up prices. 

The global economy is bracing for impact as US President Donald Trump’s deadline to impose sweeping tariffs on the three largest US trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — draws near.Trump said shortly after taking office that he planned to introduce 25 percent tariffs on neighbors Canada and Mexico on February 1, unless they cracked down on illegal migrants crossing the US border and the flow of deadly fentanyl.He is also eyeing an additional 10 percent duty for Chinese goods on Saturday, similarly over fentanyl.While Trump has not specified tools for the new tariffs, analysts have suggested he could tap emergency economic powers — which allow the president to regulate imports during a national emergency. But this could be hindered by lawsuits.On Thursday, he reiterated commitment to levies on all three countries, while re-upping threats of 100 percent tariffs on BRICS nations — a bloc including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — if they create a rival to the US dollar.Fentanyl, many times more powerful than heroin, has been responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year.Beijing has rebuffed claims of its complicity in the deadly trade, while Canada has countered that below one percent of undocumented migrants and fentanyl entering the United States comes through its northern border.JPMorgan analysts believe tariffs are “a bargaining chip” to accelerate the renegotiation of a trade deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada.”However, potentially dismantling a decades-long free-trade area could be a significant shock,” said a recent JPMorgan note.One lesson from Trump’s first term was that policy changes could be announced or threatened on short notice, it added.Tariffs are paid by US businesses to the government on purchases from abroad and the economic weight can fall on importers, foreign suppliers or consumers.Another looming deadline is April 1, by which Trump has called for reviews including on trade deficits.- Recession risk -Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor at Cornell University, said Canada and Mexico would suffer the most under 25 percent US tariffs and with proportional retaliations.”Canada and Mexico stand to lose 3.6 percent and two percent of real GDP respectively, while the US would suffer a 0.3 percent real GDP loss,” he added.Blanket US tariffs and Ottawa’s response in kind could cause Canada to fall into a recession this year, Tony Stillo of Oxford Economics told AFP, adding that the United States also risks a shallow downturn.Mexico could face a similar situation, Tim Hunter of Oxford Economics added.It is unclear if there could be exceptions. Trump said he expected to decide Thursday whether to include crude oil imports in the new levies.Canada and Mexico supplied more than 70 percent of US crude oil imports, said a Congressional Research Service report.Stillo noted that heavy oil is “exported by Canada, refined in the US, and there aren’t easy substitutes for that in the US.”US merchandise imports from both countries largely enter duty free or with very low rates on average, said the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).A tariff hike would shock both industrial buyers and consumers, cutting across everything from machinery to fruits, PIIE added.Canadian officials said Ottawa would provide pandemic-level financial support to workers and businesses if US tariffs hit, vowing their readiness to respond.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was confident her country could avoid the levy.But Trump’s commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said Wednesday “there will be no tariff” if Canada and Mexico acted on immigration and fentanyl.- ‘Grand bargain’ -Trump is also mulling more tariffs on Chinese goods.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week: “The president has said that he is very much still considering that for February 1st.”Beijing has vowed to defend its “national interests,” and a foreign ministry spokeswoman previously warned that “there are no winners in a trade war.”On the election campaign trail, Trump raised the idea of levies of 60 percent or higher on Chinese imports.Isaac Boltansky of financial services firm BTIG expects “incremental tariff increases” on Chinese goods, with consumer goods likely to face lower hikes.”Our sense is that Trump will vacillate between carrots and sticks with China, with the ultimate goal being some sort of grand bargain before the end of his term,” he said in a recent note.

The US Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure accelerated for a third month in a row in December, according to government data published Friday, while underlying inflation was unchanged.The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 2.6 percent in the 12 months to December, up from 2.4 percent in November, the Commerce Department said in a statement. Inflation rose 0.3 percent from a month earlier. This was in line with the median forecasts from economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.Stripping out volatile food and energy costs, the so-called core index rose by 0.2 percent from a month earlier, and by 2.8 percent from a year ago. “The report showed slightly higher inflation, but it was in line with expectations, meaning it won’t disrupt the narrative of a potential Fed rate cut in the first half of the year,” Jochen Stanzl, Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets wrote in a note to clients.”This reinforces the Fed’s reluctance to give clear signals on when it will lower rates and highlights the prudence of maintaining a strict, wait-and-see approach,” he added.- Moving away from 2% -Headline inflation has been moving away from the Fed’s long-term target of two percent since September, causing issues for policymakers at the US central bank. The Fed has a dual mandate to tackle inflation and unemployment, and does so mainly by raising and lowering short-term lending rates, which then trickle through into consumer and producer borrowing costs. On Wednesday, the Fed voted unanimously to pause rate reductions following three consecutive cuts, holding the bank’s benchmark lending rate at between 4.25 and 4.50 percent.It did so despite calls from President Donald Trump to “immediately” cut rates shortly after he was sworn into office earlier this month. While inflation continues to accelerate, economic growth has been strong, and the labor market has remained resilient, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.1 percent last month.”There’s still more work to be done to bring inflation closer to our two percent goal,” Fed governor Michelle Bowman told a conference in New Hampshire on Friday.”I would like to see progress in lowering inflation resume before we make further adjustments to the target range,” added Bowman, who is a permanent voting member of the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee FOMC).”The last thing you’re going to want to do is cut rates now, if inflation is being stubborn, going the wrong way, still above two percent,” Allianz Trade senior North America economist Dan North told AFP earlier in the week.And personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income eased slightly to 3.8 percent in December from 4.1 percent in November, indicating that consumers saved less of the money they earned last month.”From the Fed’s perspective, these data confirm the FOMC’s story that the pace of progress back to the two percent inflation target has slowed,” economists at High Frequency Economics wrote in a note to clients published Friday. 

A South Carolina man convicted of murder is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Friday, the first execution in the United States this year.Marion Bowman Jr, 44, was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder the previous year of Kandee Martin, 21, a high school friend.Martin was shot to death and her body placed in the trunk of her car, which was set on fire.Bowman, who was 20 years old at the time, has acknowledged that he sold drugs to Martin but denied any involvement in her murder.”I am so sorry for Kandee and her family, but I did not do it,” he said in a statement posted online by his lawyer. “I just don’t want to be executed or imprisoned for life for a crime that I didn’t commit.”Bowman has filed numerous appeals seeking to put off his execution including a claim that the attorney who defended him at trial “held racist attitudes.”Bowman is Black. Martin was white.Bowman’s attorneys also argued that two witnesses who testified against him and received plea deals suffered from “credibility issues.”Bowman has also sought to halt his execution because of the possibility of complications stemming from his body size — he weighs nearly 400 pounds (180 kilograms).This exposes him to the danger of a “potentially torturous execution process,” his lawyers said.Bowman’s appeals have all been denied and he is to be put to death at 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) at a prison in Columbia, the state capital.The judge who denied Bowman’s appeal over concerns about lethal injection said he could have opted for the electric chair or the firing squad instead.There were 25 executions in the United States last year. Three used the controversial method of nitrogen gas while the rest relied on lethal injection.Four more executions are scheduled over the next two weeks, including two in Texas.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others — Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in the White House he called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Investigators on Thursday recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington’s Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.US President Donald Trump launched a political attack blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter late Wednesday.”The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred. One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.Over 40 bodies had been recovered as of Thursday evening, according to US media reports.The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.- Trump politicizes crash -The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.Just 24 hours before the collision, another plane coming in to land at Reagan National had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, The Washington Post and CNN reported, citing an audio recording from air traffic control.Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a press conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI — a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the United States.Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he claimed: “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”Trump aimed criticism directly at Biden’s openly gay transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.”He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.The message was hammered home as Vice President JD Vance and new defense secretary Pete Hegseth took turns at the podium to repeat — without evidence — the hard-right theory that diversity measures keep capable Americans out of responsible jobs.Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”Buttigieg responded on X, calling Trump “despicable.””As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” he said.Democratic Senator Chris Murphy posted that Trump’s comments “blaming the FAA’s hiring of women and black people for the crash — was disgusting.””He’s in charge. This happened on his watch,” Murphy said.Trump later issued an official memo directing the government to investigate “deterioration in hiring standards” under Biden and “replacement” of anyone unqualified.- Skaters among victims -Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.Two Chinese citizens were also among the victims of the crash, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the Chinese embassy.A Filipino police officer was also on board, Philippine police said.The force of the collision made it clear early on that survivors were unlikely.”I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.And Hegseth said the chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”