Fact-checking Trump’s claims about diversity schemes and the Washington plane crash

President Donald Trump has caused controversy after suggesting that diversity programmes supported by his predecessors played a role in Wednesday’s mid-air collision between a passenger jet and helicopter in Washington DC.

In a news conference on Thursday, Trump said that under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden candidates with “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” could be hired as air traffic controllers (ATCs). He suggested, without offering any evidence, that this could be to blame for the crash.

When challenged by reporters about why he thought this, he responded: “Because I have common sense.”

The investigation into the cause of the crash – which officials say killed 67 people – is continuing. The president has also blamed the helicopter’s flight path for the collision.

Some aviation experts said that while there had been diversity recruitment schemes within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), ATC candidates still had to pass rigorous medical and psychological tests.

BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind the president’s claims.

President Trump said a “diversity push” by the FAA – the US government agency in charge of civil aviation – had focused “on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”.

He added: “They can be air traffic controllers.”

The president appeared to be referring to diversity and inclusion policies established during the Obama administration. They included “targeted disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring”.

Details were available on the FAA website until December. BBC Verify found an archived version of the page.

It listed a number of “targeted disabilities”: “Hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism”.

The FAA employs around 45,000 people, of which ATC staff number about 14,000.

A new programme was established in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, seeking to give people with disabilities a pathway to work in air traffic operations.

An FAA press release at the time said the aim was to “help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations” and that up to 20 people would train for up to one year at a number of air traffic control centres.

It also emphasised that “candidates in this program will receive the same rigorous consideration in terms of aptitude, medical and security qualifications as those individuals considered for a standard public opening for air traffic controller jobs”.

One of the first three graduates of the program became an air traffic control trainee in August 2021, the FAA said in a blogpost.

Candidates seeking to become ATCs have to go through years of training, as well as physical and mental tests. The FAA says they are screened during the recruitment process for psychological issues.

Randy Babbitt – a former head of the FAA – told the NewsNation network: “They have very, very high standards to be an air traffic controller. Diversity has nothing to do with it.”

BBC Verify has asked the FAA if it has hired any air traffic controllers with severe intellectual or psychiatric disabilities since 2013, but is yet to hear back.

When talking about standards in the aviation agency under the Obama administration, Trump said: “They actually came out with a directive, too white.”

In 2011 Obama did introduce an initiative to make the FAA a “more diverse and inclusive workplace” – although this didn’t label the agency “too white”.

The Obama administration also added a “biographical questionnaire” to the air traffic control recruitment process as part of efforts to hire more diverse candidates.

This came after several reviews had found equal opportunity issues with the FAA’s hiring process.

In 2019, a legal firm filed a lawsuit against the FAA because of this questionnaire on behalf of more than 2,500 aspiring air traffic controllers.

According to the firm, the questionnaire awarded higher points to candidates for selecting certain answers to multiple choice questions about their socio-economic background.

On one question about job history, it claimed, an applicant would be awarded the highest points available if they indicated that they had not been employed in the last three years.

BBC Verify has not been able to independently verify the marking system for the questionnaire.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that they were discriminated against by the FAA because they did not fit its “preferred ethnic profile as determined in the biographical questionnaire”.

The FAA and the Department of Transportation are contesting the lawsuit.

The questionnaire was removed for air traffic controllers in 2018 under Trump.

In 2024, it was removed for wider FAA hiring, after Republicans in Congress introduced a provision to scrap the biographical questionnaire into a funding bill, which was signed by then-President Biden.

The diversity of the FAA workforce, on some measures, has gradually increased in recent years, according to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

In 2016, under Obama, white men made up 59% of the workforce and people with targeted disabilities made up 0.7%.

In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, 57% were white men and 1% of the workforce had targeted disabilities.

In 2023, those figures stood at 55% and 2%.