TRUMP USES CRASH TO SCORE POINTS
All 64 people onboard an American Airlines jet that collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington DC on Wednesday evening are feared dead, US officials said on Thursday.
The Associated Press said at least 28 bodies have so far been pulled from the Potomac River and the crash is likely to be the worst US aviation disaster in almost a quarter century. The three soldiers in the helicopter are also believed to have died.
The Washington Fire Department has confirmed they no longer believe there are any survivors, the ABC reports. “Despite all those efforts we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” John Donnelly, fire and EMS chief at Washington DC Fire Department, said.
At a press conference in the White House a couple of hours ago, US President Donald Trump said the country was “in mourning” and he was speaking “in an hour of anguish for our nation”, the BBC reports. The president confirmed Russian nationals were also onboard the flight, as well as other nationalities, although he did not specify from which countries.
US Figure Skating said, “Several members of our skating community were sadly aboard American Airlines Flight 5342”. The group was returning from a development camp in Wichita, Kansas. The New York Times reports the Kremlin has said Russian figure skaters were also among the passengers.
Covering Trump’s press conference live, the paper reports: “In his first press briefing back in the White House, President Trump, who has long been criticised for an ‘empathy gap’, quickly moves from mourning the victims to political attacks. He assails former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as ‘a disaster’, blaming him for diversity objectives at the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. The inference is that diversity by definition means incompetent.”
The BBC highlights that Trump said while the investigation into the crash was in its early stages, he had “strong opinions” on the collision and what may have caused it. The British broadcaster adds: “Trump repeatedly alleged that the hiring of unqualified air traffic controllers may have contributed — although he gave no specifics and there has so far been no evidence that this was the case. He specifically took aim at two of his predecessors: Joe Biden and Barack Obama.”
In a separate article, the NYT reports Trump was asked how he could say diversity hiring was to blame for the crash even though the investigation had just begun and replied “because I have common sense”. He added: “For some jobs, we need the highest level of genius.”
Newly-appointed US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was also at the White House briefing. He said in a statement the military helicopter had been on an annual proficiency training flight, Fox News reports. “We do know on our side who was involved,” he said. “It was a fairly experienced crew, and that was doing a required annual night evaluation. We anticipate that the investigation will quickly be able to determine whether the aircraft was in the quarter at the right altitude at the time of the incident.”
The New York Times said as well as Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared at the White House briefing room. “All three men began their comments by praising Mr. Trump’s leadership and repeating that they would eliminate diversity requirements and focus on competence,” the paper added.
More of President Trump’s administration nominations are facing questions from senators on Thursday, with health secretary nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr facing another grilling, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for leading the US intelligence community, and Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director.
The Trump administration’s envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, visited the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and also met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters highlights, in a trip aimed at reinforcing the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.
The Associated Press reports Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners on Thursday after eight hostages were freed by Hamas-led militants.
The newswire said it was a “chaotic process that briefly called the exchange into question and underscored the fragility of a ceasefire that began this month”, as large crowds gathered for the releases.
TERROR LEVEL TO REMAIN ‘PROBABLE’
The ABC reports “Australia’s terror threat level will remain at ‘probable’ despite the disturbing discovery of a caravan packed with explosives and an alleged antisemitic plot to attack several targets.”
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess said he did not anticipate changing the threat level in the immediate future.
“One of the key reasons we raised the threat level in August 2024 was because we anticipated spikes in politically motivated violence. Unfortunately, the security environment has evolved almost exactly as we expected,” Burgess said in a statement.
The police are continuing to investigate the discovery of the caravan in greater Sydney earlier this month and the ABC said yesterday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended his decision to convene a meeting of cabinet’s national security committee 11 days after the plot was discovered.
The opposition has continued its criticism of the government’s response to antisemitism, with Coalition leader Peter Dutton saying: “When the prime minister hasn’t stood up and been strong and renounced all of this activity over the last 15 months or so, of course it’s going to escalate.”
The AAP highlights former treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday night: “The Jewish community — and it’s about only 116,000 strong — is very scared. People are afraid to send their kids to school. People are afraid now to gather at places of worship.” He added: “Because of the absence of action those who hate and those who harm have been emboldened.”
The ABC says the opposition has urged the government to take action when Parliament returns next week.
Guardian Australia reports Albanese will be “hoping to use the coming fortnight in Canberra to help launch his reelection bid” with Parliament returning from the summer break on Tuesday. The site says Labor is on track to pass the centrepiece of its Future Made in Australia plan after Greens leader Adam Bandt said the party “support the principle of this bill” and crossbenchers David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie agreed to support it.
Legislation to establish a federal environment agency is listed for debate on Thursday but Guardian Australia says at present “there remains no clear path for Labor to get the laws through the Senate”.
Hate speech laws may receive Coalition support and fee-free Tafe places has backing from the Greens, but “the fate of other pieces of Labor’s agenda is uncertain”, the site adds.
The Sydney Morning Herald reckons one thing that doesn’t stand a chance of getting up is the proposals to reform gambling advertising, with the paper claiming no legislation on the subject will be presented before the upcoming federal election.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
There’s been a lot of news about AI chatbots of late, but not all of them spooked the stock market… some just failed to appreciate their own name.
Virgin Money customer David Birch wrote on LinkedIn last week he had been reprimanded by the company’s AI chatbot for using the word “virgin”.
The Financial Times reports Birch posted a picture of his conversation with the UK bank’s chatbot in which he asked: “I have two ISAs with Virgin Money, how do I merge them?”
He was told in response: “Please don’t use words like that. I won’t be able to continue our chat if you use this language.”
The FT says Virgin Money apologised for the mistake, adding: “Rest assured, we are working on it.
“This specific chatbot is one that had been scheduled for improvements which will be coming soon to customers.”
Say What?
It worked… we’ll just leave it at that.
Greg Norman
The former golfer told The Sydney Morning Herald he had been asked (again) to act as a bridge between the Australian government and US President Donald Trump. “There was a request put through, yeah,” he said, but wouldn’t give any more detail beyond that it had been “positive”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Mind you, if it’s waste and inefficiency that Dutton is worried about, Paul Keating left spending at 25.6% of GDP. The government Dutton was a senior member of left spending in 2021-22 at 26.4% of GDP, (helped in part by its reckless and incompetent defence expenditure under Dutton) which helped drive inflation up to 7%, and we’ve been wearing the consequences ever since.
At least Dutton’s office made its own modest contribution to improved efficiency by not troubling our inboxes with such insight. But Dutton is very skilled at turning on and off his media presence. A hallmark of his time as opposition leader — apart from refusing to subject himself to questioning by the Canberra press gallery — is that when things go badly for him, he simply hides from the media for a few days.
He might play the hard man, but turns out Dutton has a soft skin. It’s clever politics.
This is bad news for Australia’s underpaid, stressed-out publishing workers. (I’m not making a symbolic point: Hardie Grant announced a restructure and redundancies earlier this month). It represents another narrowing of possibilities for Australia’s underpaid, stressed-out authors, and for their agents. There are simply fewer doors to knock on, as the several literary agents who spoke to Kelly Burke this week attested.
The feeling is that multinational publishers are inhospitable to editorial risk-taking. There’s plenty of scepticism too about whether Text will be able to safeguard its independence in the future. As Alice Grundy wrote of the Text acquisition, contra the business-as-usual rhetoric of the press releases, “history shows that mergers often result in the dissolution of the smaller imprint”.
For those of us who care about Australian books and national literature unbeholden to market ideas of value, the transformation of an Australian independent publisher into a Big Five imprint represents a net loss. No-one believes these acquisitions will open up a space for new independent publishers to emerge — current economic conditions are utterly hostile to creative enterprises, especially small ones. If an apparently thriving firm like Text with a 30-year track record (and the backing of Maureen and Tony Wheeler) needs to join PRH, what hope is there for even the pluckiest start-up?
Spender is frustrated at how wedge politics gets in the way of serious tax reform, with many MPs only willing to call for it on their way out the door.
“I think there are a lot of good people in the major parties, but they are constrained by the politics and the wedging of this,” she adds. “There’s a desire to make that change, but they’re just caught in this electoral cycle. It’s just power, power, as opposed to saying, ‘Well, how do we fix this stuff?’”
Given all that, it’s a shame I can’t get Spender to endorse the fact that some Australians (specifically older, wealthier Australians) need to pay more tax in order for us to fix our broken intergenerational bargain — even though that’s what her green paper heavily implies.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
BBC apologises for culture of silence over Russell Brand (BBC)
Building-sized asteroid has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032 (New Scientist)
Swedish PM says shooting of anti-Islam campaigner may be linked to foreign power (Reuters)
Coalition not listening to Aboriginal voices on royal commission proposal — SNAICC (NIT)
‘Grim’: Number of Australians facing long-term homelessness surges 25% in five years (Guardian Australia)
Why Meta is paying $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit (The Atlantic)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Dutton walks more softly on China, with election in mind — Michelle Grattan (The Conversation): The Albanese government can claim the greatly-improved bilateral relationship as one of its major foreign policy achievements. China has brought Australia out of the deep freeze, lifting the $20 billion worth of trade barriers it had imposed. Dialogue and ministerial exchanges have resumed. Anthony Albanese has been welcomed in China.
But this week’s speculation relating to the new Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek is just the latest reminder of perennial security suspicions about the penetration of Chinese technology. (Incidentally, Dutton has an account on the Chinese-owned TikTok — despite it being banned from official government devices — in part to engage with the local Chinese community, as well as with younger people generally.)
Australia’s minerals industry is potentially vulnerable to Chinese displeasure. The Senate in the next fortnight will consider the government’s Future Made in Australia legislation, which provides a tax incentive for processing critical minerals. The Chinese have a global stranglehold on this processing and have shown a willingness to weaponise it, for example against Japan. China’s multi-billion dollar funding of nickel processing in Indonesia has had a dire impact on producers here in Australia.
The change of government in Australia certainly facilitated the improvement in the bilateral relationship, but that improvement was also strongly driven by China’s own interests. Similarly, the future of the relationship is more in China’s hands than in Australia’s.
Stop feeling stunned and wounded, liberals. It’s time to fight back — Charles M. Blow (The New York Times): Trump already appears to be burning the bridges his campaign built into some vulnerable communities. The brute force behind the enforcement of Trump’s immigration policies has become clear, including the possibility of raids at schools and churches. Many Americans angered by the Biden administration’s positions on the Israel-Hamas war now have to grapple with Trump suggesting that one approach in Gaza might be that “we just clean out that whole thing”.
In 2024, Trump said, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025.” Yet some of his top advisers are tied to the plan and some of his early initiatives seem to be following it almost to the letter.
Lots of Americans have already been burned for believing that Trump would somehow moderate the positions he took while campaigning. In many cases, just the opposite has proved true.
