Tag Archives: plane-crash

Mid-Day Digest · April 28, 2025

THE FOUNDATION

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” —Samuel Adams (1775)

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY

Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, & Jordan Candler

WI judge arrested: On Friday, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by the FBI and charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent arrest. The arrest was in connection with Dugan’s having intervened to prevent ICE agents from detaining an illegal alien who was at the court facing three misdemeanor battery charges. Upon seeing federal officers at the courthouse, Dugan had the illegal alien escorted out a restricted door in order to bypass the public area where the federal agents were waiting to arrest him. Fortunately, the agents were able to chase down the illegal alien and detain him. Following Dugan’s arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi explained, “You cannot obstruct a criminal case, and, really, shame on her. She’s protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.” No one is above the law, right, Democrats?

The Kristi Noem purse thief is an illegal alien, professional thief: “It was frankly … a nice-looking purse.” So said U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, reporting on the investigation into the theft of Kristi Noem’s purse on Easter Sunday. A suspect is in custody, one Mario Bustamante-Leiva, a Chilean who is in the U.S. illegally and believed to be part of a large East Coast robbery organization. Bustamante-Leiva was likely attracted to Noem’s Gucci handbag, not her prestigious position as the secretary of homeland security. He was previously charged with a crime spree of similar thefts in London in 2014-15. An unnamed man, who is also an illegal alien and is suspected of being Bustamente-Leiva’s accomplice, was arrested in Florida over the weekend. Martin confirmed that Bustamente-Leiva and his accomplice will never set foot in the U.S. again.
Deadly car attack in Canada: In what Canadian politicians are calling the “darkest day” in Vancouver’s history, at least 11 people are dead after a man drove a car into a crowd of people celebrating a Filipino heritage festival on Saturday. Victims of the attack range in age from five to 65. The perpetrator was detained by bystanders at the scene and arrested by police. He was described as a “lone male” who was “known to police in certain circumstances.” The Vancouver Police Department said, “At this time, we are confident that this incident was not an act of terrorism.” Vancouver officials later noted that the 30-year-old perpetrator has a “significant history of interactions with police and healthcare professionals related to mental health.” More details will certainly be forthcoming as police investigate. On top of this, Canadians head to the polls today for their national election.
Mainstream media trots out lone honest reporter to save face: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner happened on Saturday night. The event’s highlight was when Axios reporter Alex Thompson received the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence for being one of the few mainstream reporters to cover Joe Biden’s mental decline. Thompson’s speech is seen as a fiery reckoning by some because he went as far as saying, “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.” Uh-huh. That’s rather like saying an arsonist bears some responsibility for a building burning down. By the way, we at The Patriot Post were never fooled about Biden’s mental decline. Thompson’s speech and the mainstream media reckoning he called for might carry more weight if he weren’t helping Jake Tapper whitewash his image in their joint book, Original Sin, about the Biden administration’s cover-up.

Columbus Day rises like a phoenix: Donald Trump is waging an ongoing battle to undo or reverse every bad decision the radical Left has forced on this country in recent years. Apparently, he’s worked down his list to minor holidays. Columbus Day is probably not anyone’s favorite national holiday, but it did rank as the most hated by blue-haired leftists until they started replacing it with “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Trump is reinstating Columbus Day in those places where it had been replaced. If asked what “Indigenous Peoples” accomplished, most of us would be at a loss for words. On the other hand, Columbus navigated across the Atlantic Ocean and returned to publicize the existence of a continent between Europe and Asia for the first time in history. Any Europeans currently living in the New World owe him a debt of gratitude.
Most prominent Epstein victim dies by suicide: A reminder of just how damaging the impact of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse was on his victims, even years after his death, came via news over the weekend. Virginia Giuffre, one of the primary victims who helped expose Epstein’s crimes, committed suicide. “It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family explained in a media statement. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.” She was 41. When she was 16, Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell first began to groom Giuffre, who claimed to have been sexually trafficked to British royal Prince Andrew at age 17. Her family’s statement adds, “In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”
Pope’s funeral, Trump’s suit: President Donald Trump is doing such a great job in his second term that the mainstream media is forced to cook up hoaxes about the suit he wore to the pope’s funeral. Trump wore his typical blue suit to the funeral, breaking the “strict” dress code calling for attendees to wear black. This ostensibly was such a faux pas that The New York Times, Fortune, USA Today, The Independent, and every Democrat on social media had to run headlines or post about it. The way they told the story, you’d think that Trump was the only person at the event not wearing black. Unfortunately for that narrative, it’s not true. Prince William, heir apparent of King Charles III, wore an almost identical shade of blue, as did Joe Biden and many others in the crowd.
CNN spirals: The first 24/7 cable news station, CNN, may go the way of the dodo if things don’t change. The Leftmedia outlet’s primetime viewership numbers have dropped below 500,000 viewers and are down to fewer than 100,000 with the coveted 25-54 demographic. CNN’s only show to pull in more than half a million viewers was “Anderson Cooper 360” with 535,000. To put this in perspective, CNN’s best hour is behind MSNBC’s worst hour, which brought in 799,000 viewers, and not even close to Fox News’s worst hour, which brought in 1.5 million viewers. Even heavy investing by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, which poured $300 million into CNN+, an online stream service in 2022 that ultimately failed, has not been able to reverse CNN’s continued decline.

Headlines

Judge temporarily blocks Trump order ending collective bargaining rights for most federal workers (Fox News)
DOJ strips terrorist-tied UNRWA of immunity in U.S. courts (Washington Free Beacon)
George Santos sentenced to 87 months in prison in federal fraud case (Fox News)
Multi-agency raid hits Tren de Aragua hotspot; officials take more than 100 into custody (Daily Wire)
Elite universities form private collective to resist Trump administration (WSJ)
Washington first state to recognize Islamic holidays as state holidays (Daily Wire)
GOP governor vetoes bill meant to shield kids from sexually explicit books at school (Daily Wire)
Humor: Joe Biden arrested for harboring 11 million illegal aliens (Babylon Bee)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here.

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FEATURED ANALYSIS

Black Hawk Pilot Error Among Factors

Mark Alexander

On the evening of January 29, there was a collision between commercial flight American Airlines 5342 and Army Black Hawk PAT 25 at about 275’ above the Potomac River — 75’ ABOVE the Black Hawk’s critical restricted ceiling. The Black Hawk flew directly into the path of AE 5342, which was on its designated approach vector, and because of the angle of approach, it was likely not visible by the AA pilots. All 67 aboard both aircraft were killed, leaving a lot of grieving families and friends.

This tragic collision was the first fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial flight since Colgan Air 3407 in February 2009 (49 killed). Fact is, air travel in the U.S. is astoundingly safe — since 2009, more than 10 billion passengers have flown in the U.S. on more than 150 million flights totaling more than 225 million hours in the air.

But that is no comfort to the families of those who perished.

Knowing quite a few Black Hawk and Apache helicopter pilots, a Signal thread lit up with speculative assessments of the cause of the collision. (No, Pete Hegseth was not in the thread.)

Those pilot assessments ranged from evaluations of Air Traffic Control coms with the two aircraft and the fact coms were inadvertently stepped on by others on the frequency, to limitations of peripheral vision when using Night Vision Goggles, assuming the H60 pilots were using NVGs as is often the case on certification night flights along this corridor.

Unknown factors notwithstanding, within 24 hours, the pilots in this thread — which by then included two former military pilots who are now commercial pilots with thousands of landings at Reagan International Airport — concluded that the fault was not with ATC and not with the pilots of AA 5342. Their conclusion was that this was a lethal error by the pilot of the Black Hawk, and it was distressing for these pilots to blame one of their own.

One military pilot who has flown this corridor many times noted: “DC has a whole network of helo routes and zones designed to organize helo traffic and route it under and around commercial traffic. Route 4 goes right down the east side of the Potomac, max altitude of 200’. It is not uncommon for helos to be flying under landing traffic once visual separation is established and with correct altitudes maintained. And if NVGs were in use, that limits FOV [field of vision] to 40 degrees, which means the pilot has to keep his head on a swivel. From the ADSB data, it looks like the helo was southbound on Route 4, and the airliner was on final to RWY 33. The collision took place at about 300’ but the restricted ceiling for the Black Hawk was 200’.”

Again, the conclusion was Black Hawk pilot error. So, who was that pilot?

The three soldiers killed on the Black Hawk were from Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The helicopter’s copilot, an instructor with 1,000 hours, was CWO2 Andrew Eaves, 39. The Black Hawk crew chief was SSG Ryan O’Hara, 28.

But oddly, the name of the Black Hawk pilot was withheld until days after the other crew members were identified. The Army officially reported her name was CPT Rebecca Lobach but did not identify her as the pilot in the news release: “Army identifies Third Soldier involved in Helicopter Crash.” Likewise, many MSM outlets reported Lobach as the “third crew member” instead of identifying her as the pilot.

The Army says the pilot’s name was not released at the request of her family. For the record: Families, their grief notwithstanding, do not dictate whether or not the name of a pilot in charge of a helicopter flying ABOVE its restricted ceiling directly into the path of a commercial flight on its designated approach vector, then colliding and killing all 67 aboard both aircraft, is released.

Lobach, 28, had about 450 hours in helicopters. Not reporting the pilot’s name was a disservice to Lobach and the families of all victims, and unnecessarily fueled speculation about Lobach’s qualifications.

According to a statement by her family, she spent a lot of her time while stationed in DC supporting “the President and First Lady in hosting countless White House events…”

Fact is, the ATC tower bears some responsibility because they are using the most accurate overwatch tools.

But, in a report released by the NTSB this week: “The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet. Warrant Officer Eaves then turned his attention to Captain Lobach. He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342… She did not turn left.”

BG Matthew Braman, director of Army aviation, noted correctly that multiple factors contributed to the collision: “I think what we’ll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening.”

Finally, there was some reflexive emotionally incontinent chatter blaming Donald Trump for the crash given the shortage of ATC personnel in the DCA tower.

If you want to make a legitimate case about political policy resulting in a shortage of ATC personnel, consider the lawsuit against the FAA for rejecting more than 1,000 highly qualified applicants because they did not meet the DEI criterion. According to the FAA’s revised 2021 authorization under Joe Biden: “The FAA is fully committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity while maintaining the highest safety standards as outlined in the agency’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2021-2025.”

And a footnote: Notably, the aforementioned 2009 Colgan Air crash occurred a month after Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles successfully ditched their US Air A320 (Cactus 1549) into the Hudson River, miraculously with no significant injuries. The evening of the DCA crash, I was watching the outstanding movie account of that event, “Sully,” again for the first time in years. I met Sully a few years after that crash and heard his account firsthand. It was somewhat surreal, at the conclusion of that movie, to get a text message about a commercial flight crash into the Potomac River.

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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MORE ANALYSIS

Nate Jackson: True and False Immigration Narratives — Leftmedia lies about Trump administration actions might actually be helping control the crisis.
Emmy Griffin: Dems Are Losing in the Digital Age — The Democrat Party is being outplayed and utterly exposed on social media.
Douglas Andrews: Why the Rightward Shift of Young People? — Donald Trump and the Republicans have clearly made inroads into this traditionally diehard Democrat voting bloc.
Thomas Gallatin: UK Plans to Dim the Sun — The British government has green-lighted an experimental plan to cool the planet in an effort to combat climate change.
Brent Ramsey: China vs. America: Who Will Win? — Summarizing what has been said and what can be done about the Chinese threat.
Roger Helle: Can We All Get Along? — Why does hate have to be our first response when we perceive offenses?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

BEST OF VIDEOS

The Hidden Truth Behind School Closures and COVID Policies — David Zweig exposes one of the greatest scandals of our time — the catastrophic shutdown of America’s schools during COVID.
The Amish Are Rebuilding a Small Town — The Amish are at it again, saving our country one quickly built structure at a time.
We Proved Trans Women Are Men — Maya Forstater talks about how the UK Supreme Court defined women by biology.
These Women’s Book Lists Are Worse Than You Think — Just when you think TikTok cannot stoop lower than a girl twerking after two drinks, it does.
For Public Safety — Minneapolis prosecutor defers charges for serial Tesla vandal.
Humor: Freshman Brainwashed After Just Two Weeks of College — This freshman had a bright future ahead of her, but then her parents spent $250,000 to send her to a public university. Will she survive?

SHORT CUTS

The BIG Lie

“We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the opposition.” —MSNBC’s Eugene Daniels at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner

Projection

“Anyone who’s not prepared to stand up and fight for the Constitution doesn’t deserve to lead.” —Sen. Chris Van Hollen

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

“I think the message coming from the Democratic Party is a good message. The problem we’ve got, I’ll say, is that we have to depend upon the media to deliver it.” —Rep. James Clyburn

Non Compos Mentis

“Before I describe the details of Russia’s recent online influence campaigns, I would like to call upon [the European Parliament] to stand firm against another autocracy: The United States of America.” —former Disinformation Governance Board director Nina Jankowicz

A Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day

“The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man. … [T]he ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman. … Properly understood these further provisions would be unworkable, inconsistent, and incoherent if they bore a [gender identity meaning].” —United Kingdom Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of “man” and “woman” is based on science and biological sex, not imagined “gender identity”

“I’m still stunned by this. Nike is funding a study that disfigured young boys to understand if they can be physically impaired enough to compete with girls without significant ‘retained male advantage’. Why is a sneaker brand doing medical experiments on children?” —tennis icon Martina Navratilova, a lesbian

Upright

“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while doctors, motivated by ideology, profits, or both, exploit and mutilate our children. Under my watch, the Department will act decisively to protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of care.” —Attorney General Pam Bondi

Re: The Left

“In 318 reports in recent weeks, CNN and MSNBC referred to Garcia as a ‘Maryland man’ more than 500 times, while referring to his illegal status only 32 times. The point of this propaganda is to scare you into thinking that you or any other citizen could be the next person to be detained and deported.” —Gary Bauer

“Democrats do not own El Salvador — although they act like it when dictating to its government that El Salvador cannot detain one of its own citizens on its own soil for its own reasons.” —Victor Davis Hanson

“In 1963, the court ruled that reading the Bible in schools, which parents could opt their children out of, was unconstitutional — on the grounds it might unduly influence children. Now, Scripture is banned, but books like ‘What Are Your Words?’ ‘Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,’ and ‘Pride Puppy’ are read to children with no right to opt out.” —Tony Perkins

“It is an exceedingly small favor to ask schools to allow parents to opt out of classes that teach ‘inclusivity’ — a euphemism for a radical cultural agenda. The fact that schools refuse to meet this request only illustrates the radicalism of these institutions.” —David Harsanyi

For the Record

“For more than two decades Putin has won again and again in negotiations with us because he never tells the truth or keeps his word. His word means nothing. But when it comes to Ukraine, the word of the United States is not worth much either. We swore to protect it, but we didn’t — not even from its most obvious threat.” —Michael Reagan

And Last…

“The same political party that arrested a PRESIDENT on made up ‘crimes’ is now feigning outrage about arresting a judge who allegedly committed a felony. The Trump administration just sent a message: if you help illegal immigrants violate federal law, there will be consequences.” —Scott Jennings

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TODAY’S MEME

For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.

ON THIS DAY in 1817, three years after the end of the War of 1812, the U.S. and Great Britain reached an agreement to limit their naval forces in the Great Lakes.

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic’s Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

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Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.

News Roundup & Comment | VCY

THE FOUNDATION

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY

Headlines

FEATURED ANALYSIS

Black Hawk Pilot Error Among Factors

MORE ANALYSIS

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

BEST OF VIDEOS

SHORT CUTS

TODAY’S MEME

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