Raw Story

Salvage crews on Monday recovered part of the fuselage of a passenger plane that plunged into the Potomac River last week after colliding with a US Army helicopter, killing 67 people.

A large crane assisted by a smaller one gingerly pulled the twisted wreckage of the Bombardier CRJ-700 operated by American Eagle airlines out of the water and placed it on a barge.

An engine from the regional passenger jet was also recovered from the icy waters.

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Sixty passengers on the plane and four crew members were killed in Wednesday's accident along with three soldiers aboard the US Army Black Hawk helicopter.

Fifty-five bodies have been recovered and identified so far, according to local authorities, who have expressed confidence they will locate all of the victims.

"We will absolutely stay here and search until such point as we have everybody," Washington fire chief John Donnelly said Sunday.

The plane was on a flight from Wichita, Kansas, to Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington when the collision occurred.

President Donald Trump was quick to blame diversity hiring policies for the accident although no evidence has emerged that they were responsible.

According to US media reports, the control tower at the busy airport may have been understaffed at the time of the accident.

The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to compile a preliminary report within 30 days, although a full investigation could take a year.

National security expert Marcy Wheeler dropped the hammer on a pro-Trump commentator who proclaimed victory over President Donald Trump largely caving on one of his signature issues.

At the last minute on Monday, Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced a deal that postponed tariffs on Mexico for a month in return for Sheinbaum sending 10,000 troops to secure her side of the border with the United States — with Trump seemingly unaware that Mexico did the same for former President Joe Biden after he took office. Social media users quickly pointed that out to Trump.

But far-right commentator Matt Walsh had a different perspective on the matter in a post to X.

"No country in Latin America has any power or leverage over the United States. There is literally nothing they can do when we make demands. We hold all the cards. They have none. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, or delusional," he wrote. "There is a VERY small list of countries that have real power in the world and who we actually have to negotiate with. None of them are in Central or South America."

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Wheeler, who runs the security analysis blog EmptyWheel, replied to Walsh with a reality check.

"Oh honey. You're sitting in a puddle of your own drool," she wrote. "Trump got his a-- handed to him, by a woman. And you poor boys are so stupid you don't even know she gave him what Joe Biden got years ago. PLEASE for the sake of your self-respect stop drooling."

Trump's deal to postpone tariffs on Mexico does not affect the tariffs against Canada and China, which are still moving forward and prompting legal action and retaliation threats from both countries.

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters from the Oval Office on Monday about his trade tariffs and his talk with Canadian and Mexican leadership — and signed an executive order establishing a sovereign wealth fund for the nation.

But his news conference was littered with comments that left onlookers wondering if he knew what was happening.

It started when he asked a staffer which executive order he was signing. Then he was bombarded with questions including what he thought of markets tanking after he announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over the weekend, and about Elon Musk's closing of the office housing the U.S. Agency of International Development. He was also questioned over Musk's accessing the personal data of government employees.

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Those who watched couldn't help but ridicule as the president struggled to answer — and they fact-checked his statements.

Journalist Aaron Rupar called out a Trump claim that 300,000 Americans die annually from fentanyl overdoses — even though Trump's own executive order on tariffs to China cites 75,000 deaths from the drug. "This is a lie," he wrote.

Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding linked the sovereign wealth fund order to authoritarian regimes. "Kings and dictators have sovereign wealth funds," he wrote.

"Trump is again doing that weird thing where he signs executive orders that need to be explained to him just before he signs them," pointed out Rupar.

On tariffs, policy director Ned Resnikoff pointed out on BlueSky, "Neither the mainstream press nor our political system seem to have digested the fact that the U.S. president is trying to illegally annex a NATO ally using economic coercion."

And on Musk's activities, legal analyst Bradley Moss said it's clear: "He has no idea what Elon is doing. He let loose Elon to go wild."

Ex-conservative columnist Jen Rubin replied, "Musk is running the government. Trump is a feeble figurehead."

Radio show host Nicole Sandler summed up order signing event with, "Delay, whine, lie. Blather, wince, repeat."

"Donald Trump just criticized the existing trade deal, and asked, "Who the hell came up with some of these trade deals?" I'll just leave this here," wrote author and activist Majid M. Padellan, better known as BrooklynDad on X. The screen capture he posted showed Trump was the one who signed the "new NAFTA" trade deal during his first term.

A former FBI official sent a warning Monday on MSNBC to President Donald Trump's nominee to head the FBI, saying he's about to walk into an agency that "won't work for him."

Last week, the new Trump government began purging the FBI and teased more cuts are on the way. Among those who could be fired are FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, which means roughly three-fourths of the FBI could be fired.

Speaking to MSNBC on Monday morning, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi said Kash Patel is set for a showdown against his own people.

Such actions endanger American national security, he said, and make the U.S. "less safe" as the FBI is currently "tracking multiple terror plots in the United States."

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Firing the directors of the Washington, D.C., and Miami field offices and identifying 5,000-6,000 agents is "simply politicizing a revenge action against those agents here."

It's not only dangerous but "demoralizing," he said.

"There is absolute dismay over this. Some of these leaders who are going out the door were highly respected veterans. Some, by the way, are not eligible for retirement, meaning they will not be able to put food on their table until this is somehow resolved. We all know this is an illegal action."

He continued that the problem is that it may take a year or two for the issue to be resolved in court.

"The other thing I see happening, which is interesting, is there's traditionally been some tension between field offices and headquarters," he said. "So when the field first heard, hey, a bunch of suits were walked out of headquarters, they kind of shrugged."

"But now that they're the thousands of agents are in peril, that their jobs are in peril in the field, that's got their attention. And Kash Patel, if he gets confirmed, is going to walk into an agency that literally will not want to work for him," Figliuzzi closed.

See his full comments below or at the link here.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) held a news conference outside the United States Agency for International Development headquarters and confirmed that security guards had been told not to let employees in the building after operations were halted under the guidance of billionaire Elon Musk, chair of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

"About 20 years ago, when I first came to work for the federal government, I walked through these doors right behind me," Kim told reporters after trying to get into the building on Monday. "It was really tough today walking through these same doors 20-some years later only to see it shut down to employees."

Kim said he received calls "all weekend long" from USAID employees who had been told not to show up for work.

"In fact, I went inside trying to speak to the acting administrator, [Jason] Gray," he explained. "Unfortunately, I was not able to meet with him, and I'm going to continue to try today to be able to meet with the acting administrator because I want to hear straight from him... You know, you have mysterious people within this new administration sending out emails across the entirety of USAID telling them not to show up."

"I talked to the security guard just in there. He said he has been given specific orders to prevent employees of USAID from entering the building today, and I just find that to be absolutely ridiculous. You know this is no way to govern. This is no way to treat public servants," the senator continued.

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"Well, I certainly hope Congress takes action because what is happening here is illegal," he added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Tuesday that President Donald Trump named him as acting director of USAID. Multiple reports said the Trump administration intended to merge USAID with the Department of State.

Watch the video below from C-SPAN.

Donald Trump may have miscalculated just how much financial "pain" Americans are willing to tolerate due to his sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, according to a new article in The Washington Post.

Trump posted about the tariffs over the weekend, writing, “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!) BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

Canada then announced retaliatory tariffs, prompting Fox News to produce a list of 23 goods that will have Americans digging deeper into their pockets. They include, "crude oil, beer, avocados, maple syrup, ground beef, cooking oil, and cars.

Trump campaigned on "bringing prices down," so the "pain" he mentioned may surprise his voters, argued Washington Post senior political reporter Aaron Blake.

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Blake cited a YouGov survey showing 29 percent of Americans wanted tariffs increased, 27 percent wanted them to remain the same, and 18 percent wanted them decreased.

"But then we get to the rub," Blake wrote. "The pollster followed up by asking those who supported higher tariffs whether they still wanted them 'even if that leads to higher prices for American consumers. Only about half of those who said they wanted increased tariffs — 52 percent — stood by that position."

In addition, Blake cited a Reuters-Ipsos poll that showed just 9 percent of Americans “strongly” supported increasing tariffs if prices rose.

"In other words, this is something that not many Americans appear to be clamoring for nearly as much as Trump is. And it’s also something that could catch them off-guard in a way that’s very personal to them — especially given Trump’s sales pitch treated the tariffs as a win-win with virtually no downside," Blake wrote, adding, "Now we find out just how much 'pain' his supporters are willing to tolerate."

Read The Washington Post article here.