The Biden administration’s war on merit-based hiring reached new heights of recklessness.
Now the full extent of their dangerous social engineering is coming to light.
And Sean Duffy revealed one Biden policy change that put every American in danger.
Biden officials quietly sabotaged aviation safety standards
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy dropped a bombshell during his recent appearance on The Post’s "Pod Force One" podcast with Miranda Devine that should terrify every American who flies.
The Biden administration secretly eliminated the highest testing standards for air traffic controllers in 2023, prioritizing their woke agenda over passenger safety.
Internal Federal Aviation Administration documents confirm that Biden officials scrapped the "best qualified" tier for candidates scoring 85% or above on the Air Traffic Skills Assessment exam.
Instead, they lowered the bar to create a "well qualified" threshold for applicants who managed to score just 80%.
"They lowered the standard from 85% to 80% to be best qualified… to get these young people into the academy," Duffy explained, referring to the FAA training school in Oklahoma City.
The results were predictably disastrous.
The consequences of woke hiring nearly proved deadly
Biden’s diversity-obsessed officials thought they could social engineer their way to better outcomes by simply lowering standards.
Reality had other plans.
"What happened was, they had a substantial washout rate, 30%-plus, because they couldn’t do the work," Duffy revealed.
Think about that for a moment – nearly one-third of the people Biden’s FAA deemed "qualified" to control air traffic couldn’t actually handle the job once they got there.
These aren’t just statistics on a government spreadsheet.
These are the people responsible for safely guiding commercial aircraft carrying hundreds of passengers through some of the busiest airspace in the world.
The Biden administration’s social justice experiment put every single air traveler at risk because they cared more about meeting diversity quotas than ensuring competency.
Under the Biden system, candidates who scored poorly on the entrance exam faced massive delays getting into training.
"If you take the test, you pass it, you got an 82%, it might take you two years to get your seat in the academy," Duffy explained. "Well, if you’re 22 years old, you’re gonna go find a different job. You’re not gonna stick around."
So Biden’s bureaucrats created a system that simultaneously lowered standards AND drove away potential candidates through bureaucratic incompetence.
Trump’s team immediately restored merit-based standards
The contrast between the Biden and Trump approaches couldn’t be more stark.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has completely overhauled the broken system they inherited.
"We’re getting the best scores in the academy first," Duffy announced. "In two months after you take the entrance exam, we’re getting you into the academy."
The new Trump standards prioritize competence over woke ideology.
Under the current system, candidates are divided into four performance tiers: the highest level requires scores of 90% or above, the second tier covers 85% to 89%, the third spans 70% to 84%, and anything below 70% results in rejection.
"If you’re at 98% on that test [or] 94%, you are going to take the top slots as slots become available," Duffy said.
It’s a revolutionary concept – giving the best jobs to the most qualified candidates.
Under Trump’s restored merit-based system, the most competent air traffic controllers can be certified and working in critical positions within a year of graduation.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tried to cover up the scandal
Predictably, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg rushed to defend the Biden administration’s reckless policies when confronted with the evidence.
"Some category change on a pre-admission exam has nothing to do with the standards for becoming a certified ATC," a Buttigieg spokesperson claimed.
That’s exactly the kind of bureaucratic doublespeak Americans have come to expect from Democrat officials who get caught putting ideology ahead of public safety.
The spokesperson even had the audacity to claim this revelation was "a desperate attempt to deflect from their inability to answer the simple question of whether the shortage is getting worse."
Buttigieg himself insisted earlier this year that "we did not change the rigorous standard for becoming a certified air traffic controller."
But the internal documents Duffy revealed prove that statement was either completely uninformed or an outright lie.
The Biden administration absolutely did change the standards – they made them significantly less rigorous to accommodate their social justice agenda.
The deadly consequences of Biden’s diversity obsession
Consider the timing here.
Just weeks after the horrific January 29 aviation disaster at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, we’re learning that Biden officials deliberately weakened the qualifications for the very people responsible for preventing such tragedies.
When that commercial aircraft and military Black Hawk helicopter collided, killing all 67 people on board, Democrats immediately started talking about "systemic failures" and "infrastructure problems."
They conveniently ignored the elephant in the room – their own administration had spent years prioritizing woke hiring policies over aviation safety.
Now Transportation officials are working overtime to fix the controller shortage – but don’t expect them to admit how their own policies made the problem worse.
The FAA plans to bring on over 2,000 new air traffic controllers in 2025, with nearly 9,000 additional hires planned through 2028.
But hiring more controllers won’t solve anything if those controllers aren’t properly qualified for the job.
Biden’s legacy includes deliberately weakening the standards for one of the most critical safety positions in American aviation.
Every time Americans board a commercial flight, they’re trusting their lives to the competence of air traffic controllers.
The Biden administration decided those lives were less important than advancing their woke hiring agenda.
That’s not just incompetent governance – it’s morally indefensible.
Donald Trump and Sean Duffy are working to restore sanity to federal aviation policies.
But the damage from four years of Biden’s social engineering will take time to fully repair.
The American people deserve to know exactly how their government put ideology ahead of their safety – and they deserve leaders who will never let it happen again.
¹ Ryan King, "Biden admin scrapped ‘best-qualified’ standard for air traffic controller academy, docs show," New York Post, August 13, 2025.
