Who, or what, is to blame for the mid-air crash between an American Airlines passenger jet and a US military helicopter above the Potomac River? Was it a freak accident, the result of a moment’s inattention in some of the most tightly controlled and confined airspace in the United States? Was it a staff shortage at Reagan National airport’s air traffic control tower?

Or was the tragic Washington DC collision, which killed 64 jet passengers and aircrew and three soldiers, caused by *spins wheel of far-right talking points* hiring practices which prioritised diversity, equity, and inclusion?

In the time since the crash, which happened on Wednesday evening local time, more information regarding the jet and the helicopter’s final movements has been coming to light. Evidence suggests that the helicopter was in contact with the air traffic control tower, had been alerted to the presence of the passenger jet and was instructed to pass behind it – but it’s unclear whether the helicopter pilot saw the precise plane indicated by air traffic control.

A preliminary report by the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has said that staffing levels at Reagan National airport’s air traffic control tower were “not normal” at the time of the collision. It appears that a single controller was responsible for directing traffic for both helicopters and planes, a job that would ordinarily be divided between more than one person.

Two black boxes, which were recovered from the American Airlines flight and contain flight data and voice recordings from the cockpit, have been sent to a lab for analysis. The National Transportation Safety Board will publish a preliminary report within 30 days. It’ll be some time before anyone can say for certain what exactly caused the crash. Not to be deterred from making sweeping political statements in line with his personal agenda, however, was the ever-empathetic Donald Trump.

“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first … and their politics was even worse,” Trump said at a White House press briefing on Thursday. The president pointed a stubby finger at the Democrats’ embrace of DEI, stating (without evidence) that “it just could have been” the FAA’s efforts to widen the hiring pool that caused the crash. Similarly, Vice-President JD Vance claimed – again without showing his working – that hundreds of people had sued the government because “they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the colour of their skin”.

It’s obviously gross in the extreme for a president to weaponise a disaster, which killed scores of people, to shift the blame onto minorities. But beyond Wednesday’s crash, the Maga assault on DEI threatens to tie progressives ever closer to corporate liberals.

After the US retail giant Target said it would be rolling back DEI initiatives, former Ohio state senator and Bernie Sanders ally Nina Turner announced that her organisation would lead a boycott of the company. Meanwhile the civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton organised a “buy-in” at Costco this week as a reward for the company’s continued support for DEI policies. Costco is currently embroiled in a labour dispute with the Teamsters union, who have accused the store of “illegal and reckless behaviour” and refusing to share its record $7.4bn profits with workers, but I guess it’s nice that they’ll keep selling rainbow cake pops for Pride month.

This article was adapted from Ash’s weekly newsletter The Cortado. To get her piping hot analysis delivered straight to your inbox, click here.