Pelosi Hospitalized After Sustaining an Injury in Europe

Both houses of Congress approved the amendment in 1972, but it was not ratified by the states in time to be added to the Constitution. Ms. Gillibrand has been pushing a legal theory that the deadline for ratification is irrelevant and unconstitutional. All that remains, she argues, is for Mr. Biden to direct the national archivist, who is responsible for the certification and publication of constitutional amendments, to publish the E.R.A. as the 28th Amendment.

The move would almost certainly invite a legal challenge that would land in the Supreme Court. But Ms. Gillibrand wants Mr. Biden to use his presidential power while he still has it to force the issue, effectively daring Republicans to wage a legal battle to take away equal rights for women.

Ms. Gillibrand’s is just one of the many entreaties Democrats in Congress are making to Mr. Biden in the waning hours of his term to take bold action before President-elect Donald J. Trump and an all-Republican Congress take over in January. Some are pressing him to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Others are pushing for more clemency grants for incarcerated people.

Ms. Gillibrand has pleaded her E.R.A. case at every available opportunity. The third-term New Yorker has met with Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff, and Anita Dunn, a former top adviser to Mr. Biden. Her request is for a five-minute meeting with Mr. Biden himself. She has used passing 30-second interactions in photo lines to personally pitch the president, so far to no avail.

Ms. Gillibrand has presented White House officials with fat binders full of legal research and polling, which have on the cover a printout of Mr. Biden posing as if he is on a Taylor Swift Eras Tour poster. (E.R.A. — get it?)

Ms. Gillibrand sat down with Minyon Moore, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s top advisers and confidantes, to persuade Ms. Harris to champion the E.R.A. and asked her to speak to other White House officials about it. Still, nothing happened.

Undeterred, Ms. Gillibrand has continued to text and harangue and flatter, all in service of procuring a brief meeting with Mr. Biden to make a more comprehensive pitch. She said she was staying hopeful, even as she grew more frantic with less time left to get her meeting.

“I’ve never done more legal analysis and work since I was a lawyer,” Ms. Gillibrand said. So far, she has been strung along.

“It’s ‘I’ll get back to you; I’ll get back to you.’ Everyone always says, ‘We love your arguments.’ I never know what the ‘but’ is.”

The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Ms. Gillibrand’s efforts, or whether the president was considering taking action.

The issue of the E.R.A., which was first proposed by women’s suffragists in 1923, is politically simple and legally complicated.

The Constitution states that proposed amendments must be passed by two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states. It makes no mention of a deadline for ratification, but Congress in modern times has typically included a seven-year clock for the states to sign on.

The House and the Senate approved the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 with a seven-year deadline, and then when it had yet to be ratified by enough states by 1979, extended the deadline to 1982. By then, only 35 states had ratified it — still short of the three-quarters requirement. Since then, three more states — Nevada, Illinois and Virginia — have ratified the amendment, surpassing the threshold. But some other states have since rescinded their ratifications.

Conservative opponents have argued that the deadline was binding and the amendment is effectively dead. The Trump administration’s Justice Department instructed the archivist to take no action on the E.R.A. when Virginia in 2020 became the 38th and final state to ratify it.

The timeline issue has left the amendment in limbo. Many legal scholars, as well as attorneys general in 23 states, have argued that since there is no reference to a ratification deadline in the Constitution and no precedent for any state successfully reversing its approval, neither issue should stand in the way of the E.R.A. becoming the 28th Amendment and the law of the land.

The amendment has taken on greater urgency for many Democrats since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned abortion rights. Ms. Gillibrand and other abortion rights advocates argue that Mr. Biden has one last opportunity to enshrine reproductive rights into law for millions of women, and that there are strong constitutional and political arguments for him to do so.

Ms. Gillibrand said she was not dissuaded by the possibility that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court might strike down the amendment.

“This will ultimately be decided by the courts, but this is a moment in time where we should stand up for what we’re for,” she said. “If you’re waiting for the people you don’t like on the court to die, we’re all going to be dead. That’s too long to wait.”

Republicans have generally called the measure gratuitous, arguing that equal protections for women are included in the 14th Amendment. But they, too, have conceded that adopting the amendment could provide a new legal basis for protecting abortion after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and said it should be opposed as a way to protect the lives of the unborn.

On Monday night, at the lightly attended White House Christmas party for members of Congress, Ms. Gillibrand said she tried again to press the issue when it was her turn to take a holiday photo with the Bidens.

“We know all about it,” Jill Biden, the first lady, assured her, expressing support for the idea. When Ms. Gillibrand approached Mr. Biden last summer on a photo line, he responded, “So you want me to make a big deal out of it?”

Ms. Gillibrand has even recruited former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the cause, and Mrs. Clinton has also spoken to the archivist, she said.

As they lobby for action, Ms. Gillibrand and other lawmakers are also trying to appeal to Mr. Biden’s ego, contending that amending the Constitution to explicitly bar sex discrimination could burnish his damaged legacy.

“I’ve been working really hard just on the audience of one, trying to make the case to him personally, to say, ‘I want this to be part of your legacy as a president I respect and admire; you should make this part of your legacy,’” she said. “I’m trying to give them all the legal reasons and political reasons.”

A new survey by Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, showed strong support for Mr. Biden taking action and that doing so would “cause a significant, positive shift among voters in terms of how they think Americans will look back on Biden’s presidency.” About 61 percent of likely voters, including about 87 percent of Democrats, said they supported Mr. Biden taking action to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment.

The poll also showed a 30-point increase in the percentage of voters who said they would look back on Mr. Biden’s presidency more favorably if he were to take action on the amendment.

Kate Kelly, the senior director of the women’s initiative at the Center for American Progress, who has been working on the issue for a decade, said she hoped that Mr. Biden and Democrats would not argue themselves out of taking action.

“This is the closest we’ve ever come for it being considered,” Ms. Kelly said. “I always tell people, ‘Think of what the other side would do if they were one signature away from changing the Constitution.’ We need that energy.”

Ms. Gillibrand is hopeful, even as she grows more frantic with less time left to get her meeting. Last month, 45 senators, including Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, signed a letter to Mr. Biden calling on him to take action on the E.R.A.

“Inaction is action,” they wrote. “We must answer the call to uphold equality and strengthen women’s rights by certifying the E.R.A. We urge you to direct the archivist to publish the E.R.A. as the 28th Amendment without further delay.”

A group of about 100 House Democrats is also expected to send a similar letter to Mr. Biden, urging him to take action in the final days of his presidency.

“To President Biden: Take action now,” Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, said at a rally last week outside the Capitol. “You have the opportunity to make equal rights a defining part of your legacy. All it takes is your signature.”

The official said that Ms. Harris was not expected to focus on President-elect Donald J. Trump, but that she would emphasize that young people’s leadership is more necessary than ever and remind them that young people have been at the forefront of pivotal moments in American history.

Ms. Harris’s remarks are expected to echo the message she sent to the demographic last month in her concession speech at Howard University.

“Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place,” she said on Nov. 6. “You have power. You have power. And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”

In the weeks since her defeat, Ms. Harris has not made many major appearances. After taking a brief vacation to Hawaii, she has dropped in to surprise Black legislators at a conference, swore in newly elected senators, signed legislation that instructed Congress to posthumously bestow Representative Shirley Chisholm with a Congressional Gold Medal and gave brief remarks at the Tribal Nations Summit.

Her speech on Tuesday comes as the Biden administration tries to highlight its accomplishments in its final weeks. President Biden this week delivered an address highlighting his economic achievements in what the White House called a “legacy speech,” where he defended his proposals to reshape American manufacturing and cautioned that Mr. Trump’s economic vision would hurt working-class Americans.

Throughout her tenure, Ms. Harris has led the administration’s outreach to young people, including a nationwide college tour and meeting with young activists. On Tuesday, she is expected to share stories of some of the young leaders and entrepreneurs she has met who have worked on issues such as climate, gun violence prevention, reproductive freedom, voting rights and entrepreneurship.

His planned donation was first reported by Fox News.

Earlier this week, the tech giants Amazon and Meta said they were each putting $1 million into the inaugural fund.

Mr. Trump and Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, have clashed in recent years. Mr. Trump has criticized the Amazon founder over reporting in The Washington Post, which is owned by Mr. Bezos. But more recently, Mr. Bezos has praised Mr. Trump on social media and said he was “very optimistic” about the incoming Trump administration.

Mr. Trump has long been critical of Meta’s social media platforms, saying they censor conservative viewpoints. But in recent weeks, its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Altman and OpenAI recently hired key executives who previously worked for Democratic administrations.

This summer, OpenAI named Chris Lehane, a lawyer who served in the Clinton White House, as its vice president of global affairs. Its new chief economist, Aaron Chatterji, known as Ronnie, served as a senior economist in President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Biden.

The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies deny the claims.

The invitation highlighted how Mr. Penny’s case has become a cause for Republicans, who have criticized the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for prosecuting the case.

“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Mr. Vance said in a post on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

After the jury delivered its unanimous verdict this week, Mr. Vance said that it had been a “scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”

The episode that led to Mr. Penny’s trial occurred in May 2023, when he boarded an uptown train and encountered Jordan Neely, a former Michael Jackson impersonator, who yelled about his hunger, wanting to return to jail, and not caring if he lived or died, behavior that some witnesses had described as frightening. Mr. Penny approached Mr. Neely and put him in a chokehold, taking him to the floor. A four-minute video of the encounter quickly circulated online.

The episode became a flashpoint in New York for concerns over homelessness and mental illness, with many city residents criticizing what they saw as a breakdown in the city’s social services that had left Mr. Neely in need of help. Some saw the incident as an indication of danger on the city’s subways and considered Mr. Penny to be protecting fellow passengers. Mr. Penny told detectives that he believed Mr. Neely had posed a threat to others on the train.

The acquittal this week also drew out divergent responses.

As Mr. Vance criticized the prosecution, leaders of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus and Progressive Caucus said in a statement that the decision “highlights a deep-seated societal discomfort with unhoused individuals in need of support, and effectively green-lights ‘vigilante justice’ against the most vulnerable New Yorkers.”

Her late husband forged a close connection with Trump, and his party still runs the Japanese government, though it was hit hard in recent elections. She has also stayed in touch with Melania Trump. After Shinzo Abe was shot to death two years ago in front of a train station in the city of Nara while making a campaign speech, Trump praised him as a great man and leader.

Republicans have praised the jury and criticized the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for pursuing the case. “Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance said in a post on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, have had a rocky history with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump had long harbored frustration with Mr. Bezos over reporting in The Washington Post. During his first administration, Mr. Trump had also questioned whether the U.S. Postal Service gave Amazon a sweetheart deal, and Amazon accused Mr. Trump of improperly pressuring the Pentagon to deny the company a major cloud computing contract.

But over the summer, Mr. Bezos spoke with Mr. Trump after the former president was shot at a campaign event, and on social media he praised Mr. Trump’s “grace and courage under literal fire.” More recently, Mr. Bezos has said that he is “very optimistic” about the incoming Trump administration.

At the DealBook Summit in New York on Dec. 4, Mr. Bezos said that Mr. Trump “seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.”

Amazon also said it would livestream the inauguration next month, as it has done with previous inaugurations. The donation was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Trump said on Thursday that Mr. Bezos, who chairs Amazon’s board, was meeting him next week. Mr. Trump said he wanted to get ideas from Mr. Bezos and other tech leaders.

Gifts to inaugural committees, which do not have contribution limits, are popular among businesses and individuals eager to curry favor with an incoming administration. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee is offering top-tier benefits to donors who contribute $1 million.

Amazon gave $57,746 to Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. The company said the Biden campaign did not accept donations from tech companies in 2020.

“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it,” he wrote. “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.”

The I.L.A. believes ports are using automation to reduce the number of workers needed to handle cargo. But the employers, mainly large shipping companies, say automation is central to their efforts to make U.S. ports cheaper to use and more efficient. The employers’ negotiating group, the United States Maritime Alliance, released a statement on Thursday that said, “We need modern technology that is proven to improve worker safety, boost port efficiency, increase port capacity, and strengthen our supply chains.”

Unions across the labor movement are watching the port dispute to gauge how supportive the Mr. Trump may be of workers in his second term.

I.L.A. workers went on a short strike in October but, after securing a large wage increase, agreed to go back to work until Jan. 15. The union and the port operators said they would to try to reach an agreement on automation and other issues by that date.

Without a deal, the I.L.A. could go back on strike, potentially closing economically crucial ports just a few days before Mr. Trump takes office.

Mr. Trump won a second presidential term with the support of many union members who believed he would act in their interests. Many labor leaders are fearful that he could undermine unions, based on the policies he backed and officials he appointed in his first term. But some unions did not oppose Mr. Trump and even seemed to tacitly back his candidacy by not endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

The I.L.A., which has around 45,000 members, endorsed President Biden in 2020 but did not back Ms. Harris this year. The union has said that its president, Harold J. Daggett, “enjoys a long relationship” with Mr. Trump. Mr. Daggett met with the president-elect on Thursday.

There is one problem, they noted: That is not the mission of Voice of America.

The organization’s charter, signed into law in 1976 by President Gerald Ford, says that Voice of America will “be accurate, objective and comprehensive,” and would represent the whole of the country, not one segment of it.

Mr. Trump’s thoughts about the news media are clear: He calls reporters enemies of the people, derides critical news coverage of him as fake and muses about stripping broadcasters of their licenses. In his quest for control over an independent press, he has chosen Ms. Lake, a 55-year-old former television anchor who, in her post-news career, has lost political campaigns and often disparaged the press.

The choice of Ms. Lake also shows that Mr. Trump wants to install yet another appointee who has forcefully criticized an organization she could soon lead.

A Voice of America journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said on Thursday that many of the 2,000 journalists on staff have worked overseas, including from Russia, China and Iran, where the news is controlled by the state. Many take pride in working for an organization whose journalistic independence has been written into law, that person said.

As with most of Mr. Trump’s transition appointments, the reality of installing Ms. Lake is not as simple as a posting a big reveal on social media.

Here is how the process is supposed to work: In his statement announcing Ms. Lake’s appointment on social media, Mr. Trump added that he would soon name his choice for chief executive of the parent agency of Voice of America, the United States Agency for Global Media. That choice, however, must be confirmed by the Senate.

The appointment of the director of Voice of America usually falls to the chief executive of the U.S.A.G.M., which makes Mr. Trump’s Thursday announcement a reversal of the process as usual.

Lastly, a governing board, made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats and the secretary of state, must approve the appointment of the new Voice of America director.

Michael Abramowitz, who is Voice of America’s current director, assumed his role in April. The broadcaster, which was founded in 1942, has an estimated weekly audience of more than 354 million people, with many of those people listening or watching from overseas, and a budget of some $270 million.

When Mr. Abramowitz, a former director at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who spent 24 years as a reporter and editor for The Washington Post, accepted the job, he said he had been drawn to the outlet’s global reach and its mission to counter propaganda and disinformation coming from authoritarian countries like China, Russia and Iran.

“These countries are waging ferocious information warfare aimed at undermining democracies, aimed at undermining the United States, and we need to fight back,” Mr. Abramowitz said in an interview at the time. “I think that the V.O.A. is one very important tool for the United States government in this information war.”

Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University and a former Washington bureau chief at CNN, got his start as an intern for Voice of America, working on a news feature for listeners who were still learning English. Mr. Sesno said in an interview that the appointment of someone like Ms. Lake, who has called reporters “monsters,” undermined the work of professional journalists who have come from all over the world to gather news for Voice of America.

“Journalists aren’t monsters,” he said. “Journalists are purveyors of information, and by the way, many of them at the Voice of America have stood up to dictatorships and have been victims of repression themselves.”

He added: “Some of those folks come from countries where they or their colleagues or families have been imprisoned or worse. They’re not monsters. They’re heroes.”

Aside from Ms. Lake’s documented disdain for reporters, her brand of politics could be another obstacle for her to overcome — at least for a time. Last year, the Senate approved the creation of the bipartisan International Broadcasting Advisory Board as an extra layer of security against the government installing someone who could politicize Voice of America’s coverage.

That board was created in the wake of Mr. Trump’s first term, after he appointed a conservative filmmaker named Michael Pack to lead the U.S.A.G.M. Mr. Pack, an ally of Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, was confirmed by the Senate in June 2020, a development that caused a flurry of resignations within Voice of America. After Mr. Pack moved to dismiss other employees, he was the subject of a lawsuit accusing him of wrongful terminations.

In 2023, an investigation into Mr. Pack’s conduct found that he abused his authority and misused some $1.6 million in public funding.

In a statement relayed by a Voice of America spokesman on Thursday, Mr. Abramowitz said he welcomed a “smooth transfer of power” at Voice of America and at the U.S.A.G.M. But the statement also noted that he would follow the organization’s protocol.

“I intend to cooperate with the new administration and follow the process put in place for the appointment of the director of V.O.A.,” he said.

The Biden administration did not respond to questions about the selection of Ms. Lake, but John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that he believed that Voice of America should continue to maintain editorial independence.

“President Biden and this entire administration, and that includes me, personally, have great respect for Voice of America and the work that they do here and around the world,” Mr. Kirby said. “We respect that they have an editorial independence, which I think is absolutely vital for them to be able to do their job credibly.”

“All nominees appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee should immediately act to retain all communications with Mr. Epshteyn, provide those materials to the committee well in advance of their hearing date and be prepared to testify regarding any discussions with Mr. Epshteyn about receiving a potential appointment in the incoming administration,” they wrote.

The letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, was addressed to the top two Republicans on the committee, Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the ranking member, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who is in line to lead the panel in January.

Mr. Whitehouse and Mr. Durbin said they had no comment about their plans beyond what was stated in their letter.

Their move comes as Senate Republicans are under pressure to simply give a green light to even Mr. Trump’s most contentious cabinet picks once the new Senate is sworn in. It reflects how Democrats who control the Senate but have only weeks left before Republicans take over are rushing to use their power in the waning days of the current Congress to investigate and push back on the incoming Trump administration. As long as they retain their committee gavels, they can still try to obtain documents and communications.

Mr. Epshteyn did not immediately provide a comment about the letter. He has previously denied the allegations as “false” and “defamatory.” A Trump transition spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter pointed to news accounts in several outlets, including The New York Times, about an internal investigation that Mr. Trump ordered into Mr. Epshteyn’s actions. The investigation found that Mr. Epshteyn, who has a free-floating role with Mr. Trump and has wrangled his legal team for the last three years, sought to charge two prospective job seekers retainer fees, in one case for $100,000, with the expectation that he would talk them up to Mr. Trump on their behalf as he weighed his decisions.

“Mr. Epshteyn reportedly engaged in similar discussions with several other candidates,” the senators wrote.

The most prominent example in the internal Trump investigation was Scott Bessent, Mr. Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, according to people who described the contents of a report summarizing the review.

“News reports state that, given concerns that Mr. Epshteyn used his access to the president-elect to enrich himself, the lawyer leading the transition team’s investigation has recommended ‘that Trump aides sharply constrain’ Epshteyn’s access to the president-elect,” they wrote. “However, questions remain regarding whether any nominees made promises or other assurances to Mr. Epshteyn as a condition of his support.”

Their letter referred to a previously reported account from Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri who ran for Senate in 2022 from the state and was hoping for a military appointment under the new Trump administration. He sent the Trump team an affidavit saying that when he raised the possibility with Mr. Epshteyn, he believed he was being implicitly asked for payment in order to have the discussion. The affidavit was viewed by The Times and authenticated by Mr. Greitens’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore.

Mr. Epshteyn has been in near-constant contact with Mr. Trump since 2022, and was among the aides traveling with him to Washington when Mr. Trump held an Oval Office meeting with President Biden last month. He had a role in pushing some of Mr. Trump’s appointments at the Justice Department and inside the White House. Among those he pushed for was Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general eight days after he was announced, amid questions about a House ethics investigation into allegations that he engaged in illicit drug use and sexual misconduct.

Mr. Epshteyn was a key figure in Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after he lost the 2020 election. He has been indicted, along with others, in a state case in Arizona in connection with putting together a slate of so-called fake electors whose votes would be used to certify Mr. Trump as the winner of that election.

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

“This past year, air travel rebounded to near record highs but cancellations were at record lows — a testament to your excellence and dedication,” Mr. Whitaker wrote in a message to the agency’s employees. “It is not just me who recognizes what you do — the tens of the thousands of people who fly every day do, too.”

Mr. Whitaker is stepping down just as the deputy administrator, Katie Thomson, is also departing, leaving an unexpected leadership void atop an agency that has struggled in recent years to find a leader willing to complete the five-year appointment. He is leaving as the safety regulator contends with a number of issues: the nation’s crumbling aviation infrastructure, the persistent problem of near collisions between commercial planes and manufacturing problems at Boeing.

The storied plane maker’s 737 Max 8 jets were involved in two crashes during Mr. Trump’s first term, killing 346 people. And just months into Mr. Whitaker’s tenure, on Jan. 5, the door plug of an Alaska Airlines plane — a different 737 Max model — blew off in during a flight.

The agency has increased the number of on-site inspectors in the company’s factories, along with slowing their production of commercial jets to allow closer scrutiny of their production.

The F.A.A. also oversees the launch licenses for SpaceX, whose chief executive, Elon Musk, has taken a prominent role advising Mr. Trump. He will co-chair what Mr. Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to slash government spending and reduce regulatory oversight. The F.A.A. faced pressure from Mr. Musk to speed up the review process needed for its Starship rocket flight in October.

Mr. Whitaker took over the agency in October 2023, filling a leadership void that had spanned more than a year after Mr. Trump’s previous pick to lead the F.A.A., the former Delta Air Lines executive Stephen Dickson, stepped down partway through his tenure in March 2022.

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington who leads the Commerce Committee, said in a statement that she hopes that the next administrator will carry on the important work of restoring the F.A.A.’s safety culture and ensuring effective oversight of the aviation sector.

“I’m saddened and surprised to hear of Administrator Whitaker’s decision to step down in January of 2025,” Ms. Cantwell said in a statement. “I know this: If you want to be the leader in aviation, you have to be the leader in aviation safety. I think Administrator Whitaker was living by that motto.”