POLITICS: Pete Buttigieg let DEI cloud air traffic control decisions

It’s official: Biden-era Transportation Secretary “Mayor” Pete Buttigieg really did prioritize “racial equity” when it came to training new air traffic controllers. 

That’s right: The charge made by his successor, Sean Duffy, as well as President Donald Trump, is born out by the facts.

Specifically, the Bidenites had the Federal Aviation Administration shift the top tier for scoring on the Air Traffic Skills Assessment from “best qualified” (85% and up) to “well-qualified” (80% and up) — a common “equity” tactic designed to get more women and minorities into the pool of applicants qualifying to begin training.

And yes, that matters even if graduation standards weren’t lowered, because it clogged the training pipelines with more candidates who’d eventually wash out, needlessly reducing number of new ATCs each year.

It also delayed new classes: That is, you could get a top score on the test and still not be accepted into training for more than a year, as lower-scoring applicants filled so many slots — which further reduced the talent pool, since more of the best candidates would inevitably move down other career paths rather than wait.

All this, simply to (hopefully) wind up with fewer white males keeping planes form colliding.

Diversity in air traffic control has been a leftist preoccupation since the Obama years. A current class-action lawsuit alleges that the Obama FAA threw out test scores completely in favor of a “biographical questionnaire” in 2014 in order to admit more black applicants, whose scores were lower on average. 

All in all, Buttigieg burned $80 billion on DEI initiatives at Transportation — loyally obeying the “whole of government” order “advancing equity” that President Joe Biden issued on his first day in office.

How many other compromises with excellence did that agenda produce?

This scandal isn’t even the deadliest DEI outrage: Dozens of US medical schools for years now have pursued stark racial quotas in admissions, discriminating against white and Asian MD-hopefuls — with many schools even prioritizing “social justice” in what they teach future doctors. 

It’s one thing when, say, a Gender Studies graduate-school programs favors nonwhite candidates for ideological reasons — it’s not right, but nobody’s life is on the line. 

But when it comes to air traffic control or operating rooms, the only thing that matters is competence and excellence.