Morning Wire XX
[0] Several recent high -profile incidents in aviation, including the Alaska Airlines Flight Emergency, have increased scrutiny on the industry, with many questioning how much it prioritizes passenger safety.
[1] In this episode, we speak to William Trackman, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, who believes staffing shortages and DEI hiring policies could be playing a role, and who is currently involved in a lawsuit against the FAA over the issue.
[2] I'm Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[3] It's Saturday, April 20th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[4] Joining us to examine the complexities facing the aviation industry and explore pathways toward enhancing safety and restoring public confidence is William Trackman, former deputy assistant secretary for civil rights for the Trump administration.
[5] He's also involved in a lawsuit over -alleged race discrimination at the FAA.
[6] William, thank you so much for coming on.
[7] My pleasure, greetings from Denver, Colorado.
[8] So we've seen a lot of dangerous incidents on airplanes hit the headlines recently.
[9] Can you go over some of those?
[10] Well, we have the famous Alaska airline flight where the side of the plane blew off.
[11] We've got a video of a pilot apparently fixing a window issue on a plane just over the last few days.
[12] And honestly, if you gave these incidents to a scriptwriter for an airline sitcom, they would say, send it back.
[13] This is too implausible.
[14] How are all these things happening at one time?
[15] But obviously, there is an epidemic of failure in our aviation industry right now.
[16] Yeah, so what do you think is driving this?
[17] What's causing these lapses?
[18] Well, it's got to be multi -factor.
[19] Obviously, there are cultural issues of Boeing, which is why the CEO resigned and acknowledged that there isn't a culture of accountability at Boeing.
[20] Our lawsuit, my firm Mountain States Legal Foundation, is suing the Federal Aviation Administration over their hiring practices, which use deep.
[21] DEI to gerrymander the racial makeup of the hiring pool.
[22] So we represent over 900 would -be air traffic controllers as part of a class action that's been going on.
[23] And clearly the Biden administration is committed to DEI above all else.
[24] And that's obviously the way some of the airlines and some of the airplane manufacturers are proceeding with their internal operations as well.
[25] Can you tell us more about this lawsuit, some of the specific claims there?
[26] So our clients passed the pre -employment test to become air -trial.
[27] traffic controllers.
[28] Many of them had gone to school, taking college programs, specifically to take this test.
[29] Many of our clients passed with 100%.
[30] So flying colors did very well.
[31] And the FAA decided that the hiring pool was too white.
[32] And so they wanted to balance the racial makeup of the pool better.
[33] They flushed the test.
[34] Our clients passed.
[35] Adopted a new pre -employment test called a biographical assessment, which you can tell sounds ominous just by the title.
[36] And then our clients, over 900 of them, failed that new test.
[37] And so we are suing for race discrimination in federal court in D .C. Was there any transparency about what constituted a fail or pass in that biographical assessment?
[38] A little.
[39] I mean, we definitely have the questions from the test and the questions were different.
[40] As I said, just the term biographical assessment indicates that they cared more about biography on the second test than they did about skill, merit, competence, experience.
[41] And so we can see the difference there.
[42] And really, the only explanation for that difference is that they wanted to change who was passing the test and make it different.
[43] It seems kind of shocking that we have this example of a lot of people turned down when there's an apparent need for more employees in the industry.
[44] We've heard since COVID that there's been a lot of shortages, of pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers.
[45] Is that correct?
[46] Yeah, we've heard about shortages, of course, when things are going wrong, morale decreases.
[47] And if you're hiring based on race and gender instead of merit, that certainly is going to affect the working pool of people who would consider working in the aviation industry.
[48] In terms of what the root causes, it's probably multi -factored.
[49] But here, we absolutely have both a number of concerning incidents and also a staffing shortage.
[50] And so clearly if the FAA were a responsible actor, you'd expect it to do more to preserve safety for Americans on planes.
[51] But I don't trust the FAA to really do anything other than try to say that they're doing a lot with respect to Boeing and airlines.
[52] So if only we had one responsible actor in the industry, that would be nice.
[53] I just don't think that we do currently.
[54] In terms of shortages, what has been the most dire, directly impacted aspect of the airline industry?
[55] Where is scarcity impacting the industry the most?
[56] Yeah, I'll give you an example from our case, which involves air traffic controllers.
[57] A lot of the air traffic controller hiring was supposed to happen under the Obama administration.
[58] You might remember that there was a sequestration order, blast from the past term.
[59] And so our claim in the lawsuit is that all of our clients, literally all of our clients would have obtained jobs as air traffic controllers, regardless of.
[60] what the demand was, just because there was enough slots for over 900 people to become air traffic controllers.
[61] And so there you have a real shortage of quality versus the pool that they had.
[62] In terms of other places where airlines are short -staffed, you know, anecdotally, I can see that the flights are taking longer, many are delayed, that the amount of assistance you have at the gate is often decreasing.
[63] In terms of my anecdotal evidence, that seems to be happening a lot in my hometown of Denver.
[64] But I do think we face a real crisis, which is how are we going to recruit more and more talented people in order to address these issues.
[65] Now, you've said from the beginning here that DEI ideology is driving this totally different approach, what you're calling it a racially discriminatory approach to hiring practices.
[66] What other ways might that be impacting the industry?
[67] So we think that President Biden, because he's announced a whole of government approach to what they call equity, racial equity in general, is considering that factor with respect to everything that the FAA does.
[68] So if the FAA is interacting with a regulated industry, they're probably considering how racially, quote -unquote, diverse that entity is.
[69] And here, with respect to hiring, I doubt that it's limited to air traffic controllers.
[70] I could see it expanded to anyone, really, who's employed by the FAA.
[71] So even high -level appointees might have gotten there based partly on a factor, including their race or their gender.
[72] And so it's DEI all the way down.
[73] We don't know necessarily who's qualified to be there because of their merit and experience or who's there partly because of immutable characteristics like race and gender.
[74] In terms of the chances of your lawsuit being successful, what legal precedent is there for these kinds of cases and how do they perform in the courts?
[75] Well, I'd like to say 100%.
[76] So just last year, the Supreme Court ruled in the affirmative action case called Students for Fair Admission, that who you are has really nothing to do with your race.
[77] You can be white and you can have a perspective and you can be black and you can have the same perspective.
[78] So there's no connection between your race and necessarily your life experience, what you bring to the table, what you contribute to a school.
[79] And we think that principal holds just as well in the workplace.
[80] There's no reason why who you are, what your skin color is, really matters in terms of your perspective.
[81] So schools in that case said that diversity makes us all stronger, but the court expressed real skepticism that you could ever make sweeping generalizations about someone.
[82] And one of the points that I appreciated was something like 60 % of the globe is Asian, but you would never say that all of those individuals have the same life perspective and bring the same things to the table.
[83] And that's true for individuals.
[84] of every race.
[85] And so we think it's a pretty easy cross -application from the school setting to the workplace setting.
[86] Final question, what changes need to be made in the airline industry to keep American passengers safe?
[87] So in the aviation industry, challenges are going to be inevitable, whether it's weather or turbulence or mechanical failures.
[88] There is necessarily going to be something that pops up unexpectedly.
[89] And when that happens, you want the best person for the job.
[90] You want the person who has the most skill, the most experience, the most competence.
[91] And so any time you tamper with that by inserting things that don't make a difference in job performance like race or gender, you really are courting danger.
[92] Now, there's slack in our system.
[93] We have a good enough system that we're all still flying.
[94] I'm taking a plane next week.
[95] So I'm not about to stop flying and take trains.
[96] But we don't want to use the slack.
[97] We don't want to court danger.
[98] We want to be secure.
[99] we want the peace of mind that we can go onto a plane and not have to worry, were the people that are flying my plane chosen based on merit or not?
[100] And that peace of mind is in itself valuable way beyond the question of whether my airplane will crash or not.
[101] You know, that is, of course, an important question.
[102] But the most important question is, is airline travel safe?
[103] Do consumers have confidence that they can get from one place to another without having to worry about who's in the cockpit and who else is on the plane?
[104] Well, certainly questions.
[105] on a lot of travelers' minds these days.
[106] William, thank you so much for talking with us.
[107] My pleasure, happy to do it anytime.
[108] That was William Trackman, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Trump administration, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.