Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Final 3 Minutes: A Breakdown in Communication Before the LaGuardia Crash
Final 3 Minutes: A Breakdown in Communication Before the LaGuardia Crash
Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
"On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board provided new details of the final minutes before an Air Canada jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
The timeline from federal investigators and air traffic audio reviewed by The New York Times both suggest that the controllers may have been distracted before the crash, which killed the plane’s two pilots and left dozens injured late Sunday.
Here are critical moments leading up to the deadliest collision at the airport in more than three decades:
Several minutes before crash
A United Airlines flight requests assistance
Aerial image by Nearmap The New York Times
Air traffic controllers were responding to an emergency with United Airlines Flight 2384 several minutes before the crash, posing a possible distraction to air traffic controllers.
After being on the tarmac for over two hours, the United flight, bound for Chicago, had aborted its first takeoff attempt at 10:40 p.m. Passengers were told the plane had “a transient issue,” according to a passenger who requested anonymity in order to protect her privacy.
The pilots made a second attempt at takeoff about 40 minutes later and aborted again.
At 11:31 p.m., United flight had declared an emergency and requested a gate assignment, according to air traffic control audio reviewed by The Times. An odor on the plane had sickened members of the flight crew.
Four minutes later, the plane was assigned a gate and told to wait for emergency responders.
1-3 minutes before crash
Air Canada flight cleared to land
Aerial image by Nearmap The New York Times
Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was set to land at LaGuardia Airport when the approach controller, who manages flights as they near the airport, ordered the airplane to contact the control tower, National Transportation Safety Board officials said on Tuesday.
The flight crew began lowering the landing gear. The plane was cleared to land on Runway 4 and advised that it was No. 2 for landing, said Doug Brazy, a senior aviation accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
One minute and 26 seconds before the crash, an electronic callout indicated that the plane was 1,000 feet from the ground.
A passenger told The Times that a flight attendant warned the passengers to leave any luggage behind if the plane made an emergency landing. It’s unclear why this warning was made.
20-28 seconds before crash
Fire truck cleared to cross runway
Emergency response
vehicles cleared
to cross runway
Aerial image by Nearmap The New York Times
Around 11:37 p.m., or 25 seconds before the crash, “Truck 1” made a request to cross Runway 4 at Taxiway D, the same runway that the Air Canada jet was set to land on. The request was made to respond to the emergency with the United Airlines plane.
Five seconds later, the truck, which later crashed with the jet, was cleared to enter the runway, officials said. An air traffic controller quickly responded: “Truck 1 and company, cross 4 at Delta.”
12-17 seconds before crash
Fire truck approaches runway as Air Canada jet is landing
The officers aboard “Truck 1” read back the runway clearance. That’s a mandatory practice to ensure that the message was received correctly, and to verify that both the air traffic controllers and the recipient of the information understood the instructions.
Five seconds later, the plane was 30 feet above the ground, and the tower instructed a Frontier Airlines aircraft to hold its position.
Air Canada flight and fire truck collide
Air Canada jet lands
at 11:37 p.m.
Several other
fire trucks
in line
Fire truck
crossing
runway
Aerial image by Nearmap The New York Times
Video: @305topgun, via X
LaGuardia Airport has a “Runway Status Lights” system that includes red runway entrance lights at taxiway and runway crossings. The lights, which are set in the pavement, activate automatically when high-speed traffic is on the runway or approaching it.
While there is speculation about whether the fire truck ran a red runway status light, a Times analysis of the crash footage suggests the lights on Runway 4 appeared to be functioning properly when the fire truck entered the runway.
By design, the lights can go dark a couple of seconds before a landing or taking-off plane passes the intersection. The truck may have entered the runway in that brief window. What remains unknown is whether the crew members heard the controller’s instruction to stop, and, if so, why they proceeded regardless. The lights do not replace clearances given by the air traffic controllers.
Emergency response vehicles
approach the runway
Runway entrance
lights on
Other vehicles
remain in position
Fire truck
enters the runway
Runway entrance
lights off
Video: @305topgun, via X The New York Times
Nine seconds before the collision, an air traffic controller instructed “Truck 1” to stop. There were other vehicles behind the fire truck that did not proceed to the runway.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” the controller said. Sounds consistent with the plane’s landing gear slamming against the pavement could be heard in the audio from the cockpit voice recorder.
Four seconds before the regional jet plowed into the fire truck, the controller again said, “Stop, Truck 1, stop!”
Investigators have not determined whether the operators of the fire truck heard orders to stop before colliding with the Air Canada flight."
When a Narcissist Goes to War
When a Narcissist Goes to War
"If you can set aside both the unconstitutionality and the immorality of President Trump’s unprovoked war on Iran and focus on the operation itself, it is hard not to be bewildered by the utter lack of real planning, or even basic strategic thinking, that has gone into it.
Neither Trump nor his aides, according to recent reporting, planned for Iran to target shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. They also do not seem to have planned for serious and sustained retaliation against America’s gulf state allies. They did not plan for an energy crisis and the potential disruption to the global economy, and they did not plan for America’s European allies to, by and large, reject their call for support.
To read about the administration’s decision-making process is to learn that it did not really plan for or expect much in the way of anything that now defines the war. This raises two obvious questions: What did they plan for? And what exactly did they expect to happen?
It appears that both the president and the White House expected token resistance, followed by the collapse of the Iranian regime, the installation of a pro-American government — or at least one we could tolerate — and a return to the status quo ante: a replay, in essence, of the president’s first intervention of the year, in Venezuela. Now that this replay fantasy has collided with a more complex, indeterminate and difficult reality, Trump is unable to explain his objectives or even give the country a sense of when the war might end. He told Fox News radio that he would “feel it in my bones.” Let’s just say that that is a far cry from traditional political leadership during wartime.
If anything, Trump is caught in a classic escalation spiral. When one approach fails (in this case, the initial airstrikes), he moves to the next. When that fails, he bids higher. And when escalation still doesn’t produce the desired result — when he faces the choice between accepting defeat or stalemate or going even further — he goes further. Which is how we have arrived closer and closer to the use of ground troops: Thousands of Marines — and now paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne — are headed to the Middle East as Trump weighs a new offensive tied to either the Strait of Hormuz or Iranian nuclear materials.
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It should be said that at no point has Congress either authorized this war or provided funding for ground operations. For his part, the president is either bragging about an incoming deal — “They’re going to make a deal,” he said of the Iranian leadership in a news conference on Tuesday — or threatening attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. “If I want to take down that power plant, that very big, powerful power plant, they can’t do a thing about it,” Trump said during the same news conference.
What’s striking is how familiar this pattern feels. The administration did not expect the public to be repelled by DOGE. It did not expect outrage over the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It did not expect Democrats to respond to threats of partisan gerrymandering with their own push to wring as many Democratic seats as possible out of so-called blue states. The administration certainly did not expect the mass mobilizations against the deployment of National Guard troops and the use of ICE and Customs and Border Protection as a roving paramilitary force. Minnesota in particular appears to have caught them entirely off guard — a tendency toward docility, it seems, is their base-line assumption about everyone they oppose.
Which raises another key question: Why can’t the White House see what others could easily predict? None of this should have been a surprise. Anyone capable of thinking through the actions of other people — of imagining their perspectives and of recognizing that they have agency — should have been able to anticipate these outcomes and plan accordingly. And in the case of the war in Iran, the president ignored counsel that warned of something like the current situation.
This gets to the real problem. Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him. He is a consummate narcissist, and he is, without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office. Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds.
Every presidential administration takes on the character of its principal, and this one is no different. Like Trump, the White House does not in fact seem to understand that other people have agency, too. It sees itself the same way the president sees himself: as the protagonist of the universe, with everyone else acting either as a supporting character or a nonplayable one — extras with no will of their own.
And so, whenever other people do act of their own accord, both the president and his administration find themselves flat-footed. For their opponents, this represents an opportunity.
The White House’s inability to grasp the agency of others — its apparent lack of a theory of mind for everyone outside its walls — gives Democrats, especially, a distinct advantage. They can seize the initiative, knowing the president will struggle to respond in a constructive way. We have already seen this with the current partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, where Trump has thus far refused to budge, as if his stubborn intransigence will bend the world to his desires. The result has been chaos in the nation’s airports and a decline in the president’s standing with the American public.
By virtue of his position, Trump is a dangerous figure. But he is also a weak and deeply unpopular president. The upshot of his impenetrable egotism, for his opponents, is that there are plenty of opportunities to make him weaker and even more unpopular. For as much as he is in love with violence — for as much as he clearly wants to terrorize the nation into submission — he is also cursed with a kind of blindness. He cannot see that his opposition is real. He cannot see that it can act.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Trump, Who Calls Mail-in Voting ‘Cheating,’ Just Voted by Mail
Trump, Who Calls Mail-in Voting ‘Cheating,’ Just Voted by Mail
“President Trump, who has criticized mail-in voting, voted by mail in a Florida special election. Despite his claims of widespread voter fraud, Trump has used mail-in voting himself and supports exceptions for illness, disability, military service, or travel. The SAVE Act, which Trump supports, aims to restrict mail-in voting and increase voter identification requirements.
President Trump has long fixated on mail-in voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. But he recently used the method in a Florida special election.
President Trump, who has long railed against mail-in voting — including on Monday, when he called it “mail-in-cheating” — used the method himself in a Florida special election scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
According to voter records on the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, Mr. Trump voted by mail in Palm Beach County, home to his Mar-a-Lago Club. Records show he has been registered to vote there since 2019 — and that he mailed his ballot at least one other time, in 2020.
The website noted that Mr. Trump’s voter status was “by mail ballot” and that it had been counted in the special election that will determine whether Democrat Emily Gregory or Republican Jon Maples, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, will represent Mr. Trump’s district in the Florida state house.
Mr. Trump’s most recent vote, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as the president torpedoed negotiations to end the partial government shutdownto demand Republican lawmakers pass legislation called the SAVE Act that would stiffen voter identification requirements and make mail-in voting significantly more difficult.
The White House said in a statement that the legislation was not designed to eliminate mail-in voting. “The SAVE America Act has common-sense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel — but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed,” the statement said. “As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.”
During an appearance in Memphis, Tenn., on Monday, he argued that the voter identification bill was essential to national security. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.”
Also on Monday, the Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law, a decision that could upend mail-in voting throughout the country. A decision in the case, brought by the Republican Party, is expected by late June or early July. It could affect hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots for hotly contested congressional races in November.
Mr. Trump has long fixated on mail-in-voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, and has called the SAVE Act one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in the country’s history. During his State of the Union address, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “cheating is rampant in our elections” and called for “no more crooked mail-in ballots,” though states that vote entirely by mail see very little fraud.
Mr. Trump has called for some exceptions for mail-in voting, such as when voters are ill, disabled, traveling or in the military. But it is unclear why Mr. Trump chose to mail his ballot for this week’s Florida’s special election. He has spent the last two weekends in West Palm Beach during the early voting period, which started on March 14 and ended on Sunday.
According to the elections website, his polling location is within a 15-minute drive of both his residence and his golf club.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.“
Trump Faces Blowback on Easing Iran Oil Sanctions
Trump Faces Blowback on Easing Iran Oil Sanctions
“The Trump administration is facing backlash for temporarily lifting sanctions on Iranian oil, potentially giving Iran a $14 billion windfall. This move, intended to boost global oil supplies and ease energy prices, contradicts Trump’s past criticism of the Obama administration’s sanctions relief for Iran. While Treasury Secretary Bessent argues this will reduce Iran’s ability to profit from restricted oil sales, critics question the effectiveness of the plan and its implications for U.S. foreign policy.
President Trump once assailed the Obama administration for making cash payments to Iran. Now he supports sanctions relief that could give the country a $14 billion windfall.
An agreement by the Obama administration to send $1.7 billion to Tehran around the same time that it reached a sweeping deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program drew fierce backlash from Republicans, including Donald J. Trump.
A decade later, the Trump administration is on the defensive as it tries to justify temporarily lifting sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that is currently sitting at sea. With oil prices hovering around $100 a barrel, the sanctions relief, which is intended to boost global supplies of crude to ease energy prices, could give Iran a $14 billion windfall at the same time the United States is waging a war on the country.
“The result of all of this is they are conceding the fact that the Iranians have leverage over whether the U.S. can continue to prosecute the war,” said Richard Nephew, a former State Department and National Security Council official in the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement. “You have gone to the Iranians and told them, ‘You have our Achilles’ heel.’”
He added: “This is asking them to please, please, please sell oil because the market is going haywire.”
Oil prices have surged since the United States and Israel attacked Iran, posing an economic and political liability for Mr. Trump ahead of the midterm elections. As a result, his administration has been pursuing every option to mitigate the fallout. According to AAA, average U.S. gas prices are $3.95 per gallon, up from $2.94 a month ago.
But the Trump administration has struggled to articulate the logic of the “general license” that the Treasury Department issued late Friday. The sanctions exemption allows Iranian oil to be sold to most countries, including the United States, for the next month. The sanctions relief for Iran followed a similar reprieve this month allowing Russian oil that is currently at sea to be sold.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who announced the Iran exemption, described the move as an act of martial artistry.
“In essence, we are jiujitsuing the Iranians,” Mr. Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday. “We are using their own oil against them.”
If freeing up Iranian oil successfully lowers global crude prices and buys the United States more time to topple the Iranian government, Mr. Bessent’s plan could prove to be fruitful. However, it is not clear that easing Iran oil sanctions will lower prices or how expanding the pool of potential buyers of its oil will prevent Iran from profiting from the volatility caused by the war.
Mr. Bessent appeared to argue that by infusing global markets with more Iranian oil, it will reduce the amount of money that Iran could get by selling restricted oil to countries such as China at a discounted price if global prices climb even higher. He also said the United States would be able to track those transactions and block the money from reaching Iranian accounts.
“At Treasury when this oil goes to — if it goes to Indonesia, if it goes to Japan, if it goes to Korea, we have a much better line of sight and are able to block accounts that the oil goes into,” Mr. Bessent said.
However, the license that Treasury issued did not appear to indicate that the transactions could be blocked by the United States. The sanctions exemptions continue to forbid Iranian oil to be sold to North Korea, Cuba or parts of Ukraine that are occupied by Russia. It applies to oil loaded on vessels as of March 20 and extends until April 19.
Iran exports most of its oil to China, and much of it is transported on its “shadow fleet” of tankers that seek to evade U.S. sanctions. Because Iranian oil exports operate largely in a gray market, it is not clear how much of its crude that is at sea is available to be diverted to other countries.
If the Treasury Department plans to ultimately block the transactions, it could deter Iran from selling oil to other nations and undercut Mr. Bessent’s argument that the plan will boost oil supplies.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a group that urges a close U.S. partnership with Israel and confrontation with Iran, noted that the licensecontained “no escrow mechanism and no obvious restrictions on payment channels.”
Asked on NBC about the ultimate effect of the sanctions relief on oil prices, Mr. Bessent called the question “terrible framing.”
The Treasury Department and the White House had no comment on Mr. Bessent’s remarks.
Mr. Trump said on Monday that he did not believe Iran would get much money from additional oil sales and that he wanted as much oil as possible to be available.
“Any small amount of money that Iran gets is not going to have any difference in this war,” Mr. Trump said as he left the White House. “But I want to have the system be lubricated.”
Democrats have been quick to point out the irony of Mr. Trump’s offering Iran what could amount to billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions relief while the fighting continues.
In 2016, when Mr. Trump was a presidential candidate, he called the first $400 million installment of the $1.7 billion payment to Iran a “scandal” and blamed his opponent, Hillary Clinton, for supporting it. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who was then a Republican senator from Florida, described transfer of funds as an “outrage.” On social media, “pallets of cash” trended as an attack on Democrats.
“I remember when my Republican colleagues blasted Barack Obama over $400m tied to hostages and an old debt with Iran,” Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, wrote on X. “Where’s the outrage now?”
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat who has been sharply critical of the Trump administration, posted a photo of Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unloading a truck full of cash. The caption read: “Remember when MAGA melted down over Obama’s imaginary ‘pallets of cash’ to Iran? Now Trump’s doing it for real — and not a peep.”
Mr. Trump’s attacks on former President Barack Obama over the payments to Iran were fresh in his mind last week. Recalling his decision to terminate the nuclear deal with Iran during his first term, Mr. Trump likened the payments made by the Obama administration to a “ransom” and revived his criticism that cash was drawn from U.S. banks and flown to Iran on Boeing 757 planes.
The payments to Iran at that time were intended to put to rest a dispute over a $400 million arms deal that Washington had reached with Iran when the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was still in power. When he was overthrown in 1979, the United States stopped delivery of the weapons but never returned the money.
The Obama administration determined that it had to repay the money in cash because banks were concerned about violating sanctions by executing a wire transfer.
“Remember when they sent Boeing 757s over there, loaded with cash?” Mr. Trump said, three days before lifting sanctions on Iran. “That’s not going to happen with Trump.”
Tony Romm contributed reporting.
Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter for The Times, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters.“
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