Good morning. It is January 30th. Yesterday's wind carried off all the mild air from New York City and it is a cold, wintry morning once more, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The United States' decade and a half long streak of avoiding major catastrophes with passenger aircraft ended over the Potomac River last night, when an Army Blackhawk helicopter flew into the descent path of an American Airlines regional jet trying to land at DC National Airport. Everyone aboard both aircraft, 64 people on the jet, and three aboard the helicopter, is presumed dead. Among the victims, the New York Times reports, were Russian and American skaters “returning from a training camp for top juvenile, intermediate and novice skaters that follows the national figure skating championships which were held in Wichita, Kansas. An American Paris figure skater,” the Times reports, “told RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, that there were about 14 figure skaters on the plane, not counting their parents and coaches.” The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, went on social media to post, 

“It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!” All caps, three exclamation points. Newly appointed secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy of MTV's “The Real World, Boston” and “Road Rules” told the press, “obviously it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said nothing because there is no head of the Federal Aviation Administration. The previous one resigned when Trump took office and had been publicly castigated by Elon Musk for his efforts at regulating Musk's sloppy rocket launches at SpaceX. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of Fox News was doing a TV hit denouncing diversity in the military, around the time three of his soldiers rode into the plane on the helicopter. National airport is overloaded. The airspace around it is congested and there have been multiple near misses in recent years. Nevertheless, Congress, led by Ted Cruz, forced five more flights into the schedule over the objections of the airport administrators and the local members of Congress. And the entire federal workforce was dealing with the effort by Trump and Elon Musk to induce mass resignations this week.

How did these various forces interact to bring about last night's entirely avoidable midair carnage? Maybe we'll find out eventually. Maybe with this administration, we won't. 

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Meta, aka Facebook, aka Mark Zuckerberg, followed in the footsteps of ABC News by paying Donald Trump an immense cash settlement in a lawsuit Trump was likely to lose on the merits. The company, the Journal writes, “has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit that President Trump brought against the company and its CEO after the social media platform suspended his accounts following the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year, according to people familiar with the agreement.” That's slightly excessive use of chronology in place of causation in news writing. It wasn't that they suspended his accounts following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, it was that they suspended his accounts because he used the accounts to organize and incite the attack on the US Capitol. The story continues. “Of that, $22 million will go toward a fund for Trump's presidential library.” Same fund ABC paid into, “with the rest going to legal fees and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the case. Meta won't admit wrongdoing, the people said. Trump signed the settlement agreement Wednesday in the Oval Office, as presidents sign their presidential business. ‘It looks like a bribe and a signal to every company that corruption is the name of the game,’ Senator Elizabeth Warren, (D) Mass said in a statement after Meta pays to play. What does Mark Zuckerberg expect as a return on this investment?” Warren's take seems basically right, but also a little optimistic, if anything. The Supreme Court has long since ruled that it will only consider something bribery if when someone gives something of value to a public official and the public official does something for the person who gave them the thing of value, even if, say, the public official's wife specifically requested a particular model of watch, that does not count as a bribe unless the person providing the thing of value asks the public official beforehand to do something specific for them in exchange for the item of value. And really, you need to prove that it was something the public official otherwise wouldn't have done. Regardless of all that, Zuckerberg's $25 million payout seems less like a bribe and more like tribute or a shakedown Depending on whether you read Trump as a monarch like the Supreme Court does or just as an organized crime boss.

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news column is “ADMINISTRATION LIFTS AID FREEZE AFTER AN UPROAR / CONCESSION BY TRUMP / Review on Spending Cuts for ‘Woke’ Ideologies Will Proceed.” That's all an attempt to pack the complete chaos of Monday night's lawless and unconstitutional memo cutting off all federal grant funding. But the trouble is that no one, and apparently not even the administration, genuinely knows what's going on. The Times writes, “on Wednesday, Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director for the Office of Management and Budget, told federal agencies that the memo, freezing aid, had been rescinded.” Lower down, the Times writes, “Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote on social media that ‘This is NOT a
rescission of the federal funding freeze.’ She said the president’s executive orders on federal funding ‘remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.’” The Times continued, “She appeared to be referring to the fact that the executive orders Mr. Trump signed last week — which directed government agencies to review and eliminate spending on so-called woke ideologies — remain in force.”

Why on earth is the New York Times taking it upon itself to advance a claim about what the White House press secretary appeared to be referring to when she said something that flatly contradicted something else the administration had said? In its attempt to impose a logical and coherent and a sensibly lawful meaning onto her statement, the Times had to leave out part of it. What leave it wrote was “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction.” That's the injunction against the grant spending freeze that a judge issued after the memo came out. If you're going to say what Levitt appeared to be doing with her statement, what many people read that as was an extremely clumsy admission that the administration plans to defy the injunction by withdrawing the memo while pressing ahead with the conduct that the injunction specifically forbade. 

Next to that is a dispatch on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.' hearings for his confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Times writes, “whose antipathy toward vaccines and messages about healthy living helped him build a large national following, faced bruising questions from Democratic senators in his first confirmation hearing on Wednesday. He displayed limited knowledge of critical programs at times and struggled to convince skeptical lawmakers that he was not anti-vaccine.”

Refreshingly forthright from the Times. “Antipathy toward vaccines” is an accurate assessment of what Kennedy's career has been built on and his babbling claims not to be anti-vax are so obviously untrue that they're not worth including in the characterization of his position. 

Then there's yet another whack at the deportation flights story mostly reporting on what happened inside the plane to Brazil. where Brazilian federal police made a spectacle of liberating shackled deportees from the US immigration goons who were transporting them. But it does once again repeat the White House line about Trump's argument with President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, describing dueling threats of tariffs that the Times writes “ultimately ended in Mr. Petro backing down.” A few paragraphs later, after Donald Trump is quoted as saying of the Colombian deportees that “every one of them is either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin of some kind, a head of the mob, or a gang member.” Which, even on its own terms, notice that he slipped “gang member” in there at the end. And after then writing, “the head of Colombia's migration authority said that in reality, none of the deportees who arrived on two flights to Bogota on Tuesday had criminal records.” Eventually, the Times circles back to write “Mr. Petro had initially turned away the deportation flights because they were operated by the U.S. military, a recent change under the Trump administration. It was Colombian military aircraft that flew the Colombian deportees home on Tuesday.” Mr. Petro backed down, except for the part where the specific thing that he objected to was changed to accord with his demands. 

Down at the bottom of page one, despite the Supreme Court's bribery jurisprudence, “Tearful Menendez Gets 11 Years In Bribery and Corruption Case.” There are some limits to what you can get away with even now, and for former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, stuffing gold bars in the pockets of his clothes met the standard. At least until the case gets thrown out on appeal or Donald Trump pardons him. 

Crook to crook, speaking of which, there is New York Mayor Eric Adams on page A20. “Justice Department said to have discussed getting Adams' case dropped.” The story notes that Adams' lawyer, Alex Spiro, is also Elon Musk's lawyer. And the Times writes, “Mr. Trump has the power to pardon Mr. Adams, who, as New York City's mayor, could aid his plans for mass deportations.” Or, the Times notes “that they could just drop the prosecution in lieu of a pardon.” Either way, that's a pretty blatant quid pro quo to sketch out in passing. Adams lets Trump round up people of his city. Trump lets Adams get away with stealing millions of dollars from them. And one more piece of the rule of law goes down in flames. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, sustain our podcasting efforts through your paid Indignity subscriptions and tips. Please do keep those coming. Bundle up again, and if nothing too unexpected happens, around here, I mean, not out in the world, stuff's just going to keep happening out there, we will talk again tomorrow.