Trump Finds Solution to Aviation Woes—Fire a Democrat
Since January, President Donald Trump has moved swiftly to purge board members overseeing independent agencies.
Keyur Khamar/US PGA TOUR
The White House on Monday ousted the vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), as President Donald Trump continues to boot Democratic appointees from independent government agencies.
A White House official confirmed the departure of Alvin Brown, a former Democratic mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, who was designated as vice chair of the five-member board in December by then President Joe Biden. He had joined the NTSB, which investigates all civil aviation accidents, in March 2024.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has moved swiftly to clear out board members overseeing independent agencies, including two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
President Donald Trump has justified firing officials from independent agencies by arguing that the agencies “have exercised enormous power over the American people without Presidential oversight.”
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While a 1935 Supreme Court ruling—known as Humphrey’s Executor—held that presidents can’t remove independent board members without cause, the Supreme Court in April allowed Trump’s dismissals to proceed for now.
Brown’s ouster from the NTSB comes at a time of growing alarm over aviation safety, following the Jan 29. mid-air crash between a U.S. Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet on approach at Ronald Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people. The NTSB is currently leading the investigation into the accident.
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Ongoing equipment and staffing issues at Newark Liberty International Airport have disrupted hundreds of flights and led to potentially dangerous outages since late April. On April 28, controllers handling Newark traffic lost radio contact with airplanes for 30 seconds, Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Monday.
To address the national shortage of air traffic controllers, Duffy said that he planned to ask Congress to fund a multi-year effort to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic control infrastructure and boost hiring.
“We’re going to build a brand-new air traffic control system—from new telecom, to new radars, to new infrastructure. We’re bringing on new air traffic controllers,” Duffy said Monday in an interview on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle. “This has been a problem in the decades coming, and we’re going to fix it.”
In addition to all civil aviation accidents, the NTSB also investigates major incidents in other transportation modes. No more than three of five of its members can belong to the same political party. With the departure of Brown—whose term was supposed to expire in 2027—there are now two Democratic and two Republican members serving on the board.
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