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The cockpit voice recorder of an Air Canada Express jet captured how the air traffic control tower at New York’s LaGuardia Airport failed to recognize that it had granted permission for both the plane and an emergency vehicle to use the same runway before their deadly collision late Sunday, federal officials said.

At a news conference Tuesday, National Transportation Safety Board officials shared a timeline of events heard during the last three minutes of audio from the recorder, which investigators recovered at the crash site Monday by cutting a hole through the roof of the plane.

The LaGuardia air traffic controller granted permission for an emergency vehicle to cross the runway, but about two minutes earlier, officials said, another controller had cleared the flight to land on the same runway. The controller instructed the emergency vehicle to stop at least twice, according to officials’ summary, but it was too late.

The NTSB officials said breakdowns across both the air traffic control staff and aviation safety technology at LaGuardia may have contributed to the collision, which happened about 11:40 p.m. Sunday, killing two pilots and leaving dozens of passengers injured. The agency’s probe is ongoing, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters, and investigators have yet to interview the air traffic controllers or the two firefighters who were in the emergency vehicle Sunday night.

Officials have not publicly identified the pilots who were killed in the crash. Most of the people taken to the hospital afterward have been released. Both firefighters were in stable condition, officials said Monday.

Though there were two air traffic controllers working the night shift during Sunday’s crash, one appeared to have dual responsibilities, which is typical during overnight shifts, officials said. And while LaGuardia, one of the busiest airports in the United States, has a surveillance system intended to help air traffic controllers track aircraft and vehicles and ultimately prevent collisions, that system did not send an alert to the tower Sunday, officials said, probably because the emergency vehicle was not equipped with a device that would have helped trigger one.

In the tower Sunday, officials said, were one local controller, managing active runways and LaGuardia’s airspace, and a “controller in charge” responsible for the safety of operations. One of them was also functioning as the “ground controller,” directing all movement on taxiways rather than active runways, officials said.

While the ground controller is sometimes its own position, it is standard procedure at LaGuardia to combine those responsibilities with another position during the night shift, Homendy said. She said it was unclear as of Tuesday afternoon which of the two controllers was also handling ground movements.

They were both working a shift that typically spans from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., when air traffic controllers have historically experienced fatigue, Homendy said.

“We have no indication that was a factor here, but it is a shift that we have been focused on in past investigations,” she said.

The cockpit voice recorder had more than 25 hours of good-quality audio, which will be fully transcribed Wednesday, Homendy said.

Its last few minutes capture overlapping instructions from the control tower – and calls for the vehicle to stop crossing – moments before the crash.

About two minutes and 22 seconds before the cockpit recording ends, the flight crew checked in with LaGuardia. Five seconds later, the tower cleared the plane to land on Runway 4, adding that it was second in line for landing.

Shortly after, the flight crew began adjusting the plane’s flaps to prepare for landing. One minute and 12 seconds before the recording ends, the crew told the tower they had completed their landing checklist.

At one minute and three seconds, the emergency vehicle, which was responding to an issue with a separate aircraft, made a radio transmission – but it was “stepped on,” meaning someone else was communicating on the same frequency and the transmission was disrupted, according to the NTSB. Doug Brazy, an NTSB aviation accident investigator who is leading the LaGuardia probe, said investigators have not yet identified the source of the overlapping transmission.

Twenty seconds before the recording ends, the tower granted permission for the emergency vehicle to cross Runway 4. By then, the plane was only about 100 feet from the ground.

Eight seconds later, the tower told a different aircraft, a Frontier Airlines flight, to hold its position. At the same time, the Air Canada Express flight was about 30 feet above ground.

Three seconds after that, the controller told the vehicle to stop. One second later, the recording captured what was probably the sound of the plane’s gear touching down on the runway, the NTSB said.

Four seconds before the recording ended, the controller told the vehicle to stop again. By that time, it was too late.

There were other vehicles behind the firefighting truck that did not begin to cross the runway, Homendy said, but she did not share how many there were.

The vehicle that collided with the plane did not have a transponder, she said, meaning LaGuardia’s surveillance system did not have information on its exact location and movement the way it would have for the aircraft.

Air traffic control audio posted to LiveATC.com, a website that broadcasts tower communications in real-time, captured some of the crash’s aftermath.

Just over 15 minutes after the crash, a controller told a pilot that he tried to prevent the collision, according to the recording.

“I tried to reach out to ’em … and we were dealing with an emergency earlier, and I messed up,” the controller said.

“No, man, you did the best you could,” the pilot responded.

(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Praveena Somasundaram 

New York City apartment residents are being put on notice of a potential strike by building staff as soon as next month as the union representing the workers and an advisory board to building owners negotiate a new labor contract.

Property owners are alerting occupants of 3,500 co-ops, condos and apartment buildings across the five boroughs that services will decrease if a work suspension begins on April 21. That’s the day after the four-year-old contract expires for nearly 34,000 doormen, porters and maintenance workers.

If there’s a strike, residents will need to wear badges to enter buildings, non-emergency renovation work will stop and moving in or out of the buildings will halt, according to notices sent this month to residents at three separate buildings.

The Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, or RAB, says the city’s housing industry faces the prospect of diminished income with a potential freeze on rent increases looming for about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, seeking to deliver on his campaign promise to freeze rents, last month announced six new appointments to the nine-member panel that governs rent-stabilized units.

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Contract positions

The RAB is asking the workers to contribute to their health-care premiums and to form a “Tier II” classification for future employees hired under the new contract, according to a statement released Tuesday.

The union – 32BJ SEIU – called RAB’s latest offer “insulting,” according to a statement from the labor organization. The union says workers in the proposed new tier would earn less than their counterparts and that RAB wants to use more temporary staff, according to the statement.

“Our members are fighting to live with dignity in the city they serve every day,” Manny Pastreich, 32BJ SEIU’s president, said in the statement. “Through snowstorms, global pandemics, and even in the face of violence, our members are there. We won’t let the real estate industry cut costs on the backs of these essential workers.”

Representatives from RAB and 32BJ SEIU declined to provide the specific wage increases they’re seeking while negotiations continue. The union wants to maintain workers’ health insurance that’s fully covered by employers, wage increases that keep up with inflation, stronger pension benefits and better working conditions and paid leave.

The talks come as working families contend with high grocery costs, rising gasoline prices and other affordability issues. A strike would mean thousands of buildings throughout the city would have to scale back day-to-day operations that keep apartments in good repair, ensure packages get delivered to residential units, oversee moves into and out of buildings and allow construction workers to renovate apartments.

The parties are set to meet again on March 30 to continue negotiating. The two sides avoided a strike in 2022 by reaching a deal that boosted annual wages by an average of 3% over four years, along with a one-time bonus of $3,000.

The last work stoppage by door workers was in 1991 and members have yet to vote on such a move, according to the union. The average doorperson or porter earns about $62,000 a year, according to RAB.

“To keep the industry strong going forward, we must continue to work together to negotiate a fair contract that ensures its long-term sustainability,” Howard Rothschild, RAB’s president, said in a statement Tuesday.

(c) 2026, Bloomberg · Michelle Kaske 

President Donald Trump showed a classified map he retained from his first term in office to passengers on a 2022 private plane flight and retained another record so sensitive that only six high-ranking government officials had access to it, according to a prosecution memo released to Congress this week.

The Justice Department shared those findings, detailed in a January 2023 briefing document written by then-special counsel Jack Smith’s team, with lawmakers as they conduct a review of Smith’s now-abandoned efforts to prosecute Trump.

The memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, was penned as investigators moved toward indicting Trump on charges of illegally retaining sensitive government material after he left the White House. It offers a snapshot of an early moment in Smith’s investigation and adds new shading to the public understanding of Smith’s probes, even as a final report on his findings remains under court seal.

The memo, for instance, reveals that Smith’s team gathered at least some evidence to suggest that Trump had retained classified material pertinent to his personal business interests and that prosecutors were investigating whether his decision to hold on to those records was motivated by financial gain.

The eventual indictment – filed against Trump five months after the memo was written – did not mention Trump’s business interests as a possible motive. That could suggest prosecutors ultimately concluded they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that theory at trial. It is also not uncommon for prosecutors to leave some allegations out of their initial charging documents, even if they intend to prove them later at trial.

The memo recounts an alleged incident in which Trump, on a June 2022 flight to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, allegedly shared a classified map with passengers. Among them, according to the memo, was Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Trump’s super PAC, who has since become Trump’s White House chief of staff. The memo did not detail what the map showed.

Smith’s 2023 indictment of Trump included a similar claim that Trump in 2021 had shown others a classified map tied to a military operation and boasted that he had access to a “plan of attack” that the Pentagon had prepared for him.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and maintained that he was entitled to keep classified records when he left the White House in 2021. The case Smith filed against him was dismissed by a federal judge in Florida, who cited issues with Smith’s appointment as special counsel, before it could go to trial.

Smith was appealing that decision when Trump was elected to a second term in 2024, prompting him to abandon his efforts in line with Justice Department policies preventing the prosecution of a sitting president.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson on Wednesday panned the conclusions detailed in the newly released memo from Smith’s team.

“President Trump did nothing wrong, which is why he easily defeated the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against him and then won nearly 80 million votes in a landslide election victory,” she said in a statement.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, cited the memo in a Wednesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi in which he demanded more information on its allegations, including a full manifest of the passengers aboard Trump’s plane for that 2022 flight.

“It is now clear that DOJ is in possession of evidence that President Trump has already endangered national security to further the interests of Trump family businesses,” Raskin wrote. “It is time for you to stop the cover-up and allow the American people to know what secrets he betrayed and how he may have cashed in on them.”

Smith has been largely barred from publicly discussing the efforts of his investigative team in the classified-documents investigation. Last year, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon – the same judge who dismissed the case – issued an order preventing the release of Smith’s final report on the probe, saying doing so would unfairly damage the rights of people, including Trump, who had not been convicted at trial.

She made that order permanent at the request of Trump and his former co-defendants last month and additionally barred the public release of “any information or conclusions” from Smith’s findings in the classified-documents case.

Raskin suggested Wednesday that the Justice Department may have inadvertently included Smith’s memo in a larger batch of documents from Smith’s investigations of Trump that it has released in coordination with congressional Republicans over the past year.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, House and Senate Republicans have released scores of what Raskin described Wednesday as “cherry-picked” records from Smith’s probes in an effort to discredit his work as politically motivated.

Released documents have included records revealing that Smith’s team – as part of its separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election – sought phone records from Republican senators and Trump allies including Wiles and Kash Patel, now FBI director, during the years Trump was out of office.

Republicans have sought to paint that move as evidence Smith was pursuing a partisan vendetta. But the former special counsel has defended the decision as a routine investigative step as he was building a conspiracy case against Trump and investigating whom he was communicating with in the weeks after his election loss.

Raskin, in his letter to Bondi on Wednesday, suggested the coordinated dissemination of documents from Smith’s probes by the Justice Department and congressional Republicans in recent months has violated the spirit – and possibly the letter – of Cannon’s orders.

“Apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith (despite constantly coming up empty-handed), you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon,” he wrote.

A Justice Department spokesperson rejected that assertion in a statement dismissing Raskin’s letter as little more than “a cheap political stunt.”

“We understand that [Raskin], much like Jack Smith, is blinded by hatred of President Trump,” it read. “However, he needs to get his facts straight – this Department of Justice is the most transparent in history in part because of our efforts to expose the weaponization of the Biden administration in full compliance with the law and the court.”

For his own part, Smith in testimony before Congress earlier this year defended his investigations and stood by his conclusion that Trump “willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.”

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee in January. “No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did.”

(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Jeremy Roebuck, Maegan Vazquez 

President Donald Trump has installed a statue of Christopher Columbus on the White House grounds, his latest effort to remake the presidential campus and celebrate the famed and controversial explorer.

The statue is outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where it is visible from Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 17th Street NW. The White House had considered putting the statue on the South Lawn, The Washington Post reported in February.

The piece is a reconstruction of a statue that President Ronald Reagan unveiled in Baltimore in 1984. After it was dumped into the city’s harbor by protesters in 2020 as a racial reckoning swept the country, a group of Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support from local charities and federal grant funding.

“Destroyed July 4, 2020,” reads a panel affixed to the base of the sculpture. “Resurrected 2022.”

The panel also says that the sculpture was gifted to the White House last year and that Trump rededicated it in October.

“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero. And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. The New York Times first reported Sunday that the statue had been installed.

The Columbus statue is just one of numerous sculptures that Trump has taken steps to place on the White House grounds and on other federal land. Several statues of revolutionary-era political leaders now stand in the White House’s Rose Garden, and the president is planning a large sculpture garden to commemorate 250 famous Americans, a project that he has dubbed the Garden of Heroes – and that could be erected in Washington’s West Potomac Park.

Trump is also planning to install a towering bronze statue of Caesar Rodney – a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an enslaver – on a plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. The Rodney statue has been gathering dust in storage after being removed from public view in Delaware during the 2020 racial justice protests.

Trump condemned efforts in 2020 to tear down statues of Columbus and other historical figures, issuing an executive order that called those actions an “assault on our collective national memory” and creating a task force to rebuild monuments.

Columbus was long celebrated for his voyage in 1492 to the Americas, which opened up trade routes with Europe and built his reputation as a heroic discoverer. The Italian explorer’s journey also set the stage for colonization and enslavement, and academics and activists in recent years have called for an end to honoring him, noting the brutal treatment of Native people that followed his arrival on the continent.

Some U.S. states now recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day; Joe Biden in 2021 became the first president to mark the holiday.

Trump has framed his moves to honor Columbus as a political act. He campaigned in 2024 on promises to celebrate Columbus Day, and in October he signed a presidential proclamation to recognize Columbus as “the original American hero” and commemorate the annual holiday.

“You Italians are going to love me,” Trump said at a political rally last year, adding that Italian Americans had been “badly treated” by past efforts to remove Columbus Day and that he would restore the holiday.

Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates, was involved in efforts to recover the Columbus statue from the Baltimore harbor. He praised Trump’s plan to install it at the White House in an email to The Washington Post last month.

“This world is full of haters and screamers who want to silence our voices, our values, and our votes,” Mangione wrote. “President Trump is standing up to them because it is the right thing to do and I applaud his courage in doing so.”

Others have panned Trump’s plan, saying that installing a statue of the explorer would generate controversy. Jeff Miron, the vice president for research at the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think tank, said that museums, documentarians and other outside groups are better positioned than the White House is to “present a complete perspective on Columbus.”

“President Trump’s decision to erect a Christopher Columbus statue at the White House exemplifies why government shouldn’t be in the statue business at all,” Miron said in a statement last month.

(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Dan Diamond, Olivia George 

Air travelers across the United States are facing some of the longest security lines in the history of the Transportation Security Administration, with certain passengers waiting more than four and a half hours to pass through checkpoints, a senior official told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, TSA acting administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said the agency is struggling to maintain operations, noting that it is “being forced to consolidate” and warning that smaller airports could face closures if staffing shortages persist.

“It is a fluid, challenging and unpredictable situation. We understand this is frustrating and disruptive,” she added. “This is unacceptable.”

McNeill disclosed that more than 480 Transportation Security Officers have resigned during the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown, and cautioned that the number continues to rise.

She also highlighted a sharp increase in absenteeism among remaining personnel. On Sunday, the nationwide call-out rate reached 11.76%, the highest level recorded since the shutdown began on Feb. 14. At certain airports, absentee rates have surged to between 40% and 50%.

By comparison, before the partial shutdown, call-out rates hovered around 2%, according to McNeill’s deputy, Adam Stahl.

In additional testimony, McNeill said incidents of assaults against TSA officers have risen dramatically, increasing by 500%.

The acting administrator credited President Trump with helping ease the strain by deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to assist at airports nationwide.

She explained that these agents are currently handling “non-specialized screening functions.”

“We’ve been spending time training them the last few days,” McNeill claimed. “And we’re seeing relief, signs of early relief at the airports.

“It’s been incredibly helpful to alleviate the burden on our workforce. And we’re getting positive feedback from passengers and our field leadership.”

Despite the short-term assistance, McNeill warned that the prolonged shutdown could have serious consequences for aviation security, including the agency’s ability to prevent potential terrorist threats.

She pointed to the extensive six-month training process required for Transportation Security Officers, expressing concern that staffing shortages could hinder readiness for major upcoming events, including the 2026 World Cup, which is set to begin in June and conclude with the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19.

“As the shutdown drags on, we will likely see our attrition rates continue to spike, which means that we may not have the adequate headcount to staff the airports that are supporting the FIFA locations adequately,” she explained.

“The ongoing shutdown is also impacting our ability to procure and deploy technology, from checkpoint technology to some of our counter UAS [unmanned aerial vehicle] technology, in advance of the FIFA World Cup,” McNeill continued. “So we’re really running short on time.”

{Matzav.com}

A new AP-NORC survey finds that most Americans believe recent U.S. military operations against Iran have exceeded appropriate limits, while a growing number are anxious about the cost of gasoline as the conflict continues.

Now entering its fourth week, the war involving the United States and Israel is beginning to pose political challenges for President Trump, even as his overall approval ratings remain largely unchanged, according to data from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Although the administration has increased its military presence in the Middle East, including additional ships and personnel, roughly 59% of Americans say the U.S. response in Iran has been excessive.

At the same time, economic concerns are rising. About 45% of respondents say they are “extremely” or “very” worried about affording gas in the coming months, a notable increase from 30% in a similar poll conducted shortly after Trump’s reelection, when he had pledged to lower living costs.

There is broad agreement on at least one major policy goal: preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Approximately two-thirds of Americans say this objective should be considered “extremely” or “very” important. However, a similar proportion also prioritizes keeping domestic oil and gas prices from climbing, creating a potential conflict in policy priorities for the administration.

About 40% of adults in the U.S. continue to approve of Trump’s job performance, a figure that has remained stable since last month. His approval ratings on foreign policy are slightly lower but have also shown little change.

Trump has not clearly outlined his next move regarding Iran. While issuing strong warnings, he has also suggested that diplomacy could still bring an end to the fighting. Many Americans, however, remain uneasy about his judgment when it comes to using military force overseas, and there is broad opposition to more aggressive steps such as deploying ground troops.

Concern about fuel prices cuts across party lines, with large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats saying it is important to prevent increases at the pump.

Around three-quarters of Republicans and roughly two-thirds of Democrats say keeping oil and gas prices stable should be a top priority. Still, the level of concern differs significantly between the parties. Only about 30% of Republicans say they are “extremely” or “very” worried about paying for gas in the near future, compared to about 60% of Democrats.

Republicans also place greater emphasis on stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. While about two-thirds of Americans overall view that goal as highly important, roughly 80% of Republicans say it is at least “very” important, compared with about half of Democrats.

The war has also fueled debate over the role of Israel in U.S. foreign policy, particularly after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advocated for military action against Iran. Only about 40% of Americans say preventing Iran from threatening Israel should be a major priority.

Even fewer Americans support the idea of regime change in Iran. About 30% say it is at least “very” important for the U.S. to replace Iran’s government with one more aligned with American interests.

Public opinion on the military campaign itself shows a clear divide. About 90% of Democrats and 60% of independents believe the U.S. strikes in Iran have “gone too far.”

Republicans are more split. Roughly half say the level of military action has been “about right,” while relatively few support escalation. Only about 20% believe the U.S. has not gone far enough, while around one-quarter say it has already exceeded appropriate limits.

Previous AP-NORC polling has shown that about 60% of Americans feel Trump has “gone too far” on various issues, including tariffs and executive authority. That figure closely mirrors his overall approval rating, suggesting that while his approach to Iran is unpopular, it aligns with broader perceptions of his presidency.

Further escalation could shift those views. Around 60% of Americans say they “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, including about 80% of Democrats and roughly half of Republicans. Opposition is also notable when it comes to airstrikes targeting Iranian leadership or military infrastructure, with just under half opposed, about 30% in favor, and another 30% undecided.

Trust in Trump’s decision-making on military matters remains limited. About half of U.S. adults say they have “only a little” trust or “none at all” in his ability to make the right choices regarding the use of force abroad, consistent with findings from a February poll.

Roughly 34% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of foreign policy, nearly unchanged from 36% earlier this year. That level of support has remained steady despite a series of controversial actions, including tensions over Greenland and a strike on Venezuela.

Similarly, the new poll shows that about 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the situation with Iran, closely matching his broader foreign policy ratings.

{Matzav.com}