The White House is now asking people in power to forget the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Two planes bumped wings while taxiing on the runway at Reagan National Airport Thursday, marking yet another critical safety failure at one of the nation’s major airports. One of the planes carried several U.S. lawmakers, including Representative Josh Gottheimer, who blamed the incident on the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming that slashes to the agency “weaken our skies and public safety.”

But the White House outright rejected Gottheimer’s explanation, insisting without evidence that the New Jersey representative was “wrong.”

“There have been no cuts to air traffic controllers, safety personnel, or safety-critical positions at the FAA,” the White House official X account posted.

That is, however, not exactly honest—even according to Trump’s own officials. In February, the administration erased 400 FAA roles, including positions that supported air safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the cuts that time, though he attempted to minimize them by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which Duffy claimed employs some 45,000 workers.

Other representatives aboard the plane shared their experiences, similarly arguing that the White House was distorting the safety of America’s air travel.

“You felt it, and you saw the wing actually flapping up and down, so you knew there was a strong contact there,” Representative Adriano Espaillat told CNN. “They told us that they were going to take us back to the gate. We waited a little bit, we saw some emergency vehicles near us, and then they took us back to the gate.”

When asked if he believed that the White House was attempting to deceive the public about the health of America’s airports, Espaillat said, “They’re downsizing, they want to misguide us about that, but this is an agency that in particular, this airport, has seen already tragic incidents where many people died.” Espaillat said, “They should be beefed up to a level where everyone feels secure.”

“I thought about going Amtrak,” he added, calling the episode “dangerous.”

It’s just the most recent of critical errors occurring at Reagan National Airport. Last week, a physical fight broke out in the air traffic control tower at the politico-favorite airport, resulting in one supervisor being arrested and charged with assault and battery, as well as a managerial shakeup that saw three air traffic control managers being forced out of their roles.

In January, a midair crash between an American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over the airport killed 67 people—the first major deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner since 2009.

The Trump administration’s basis for seeking to strip pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil of his green card amounts to this: He didn’t do anything illegal, but he holds beliefs that go against “core American interests.” 

In a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by the Associated Press, the government alleged that keeping Khalil in the country would undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

Otherwise, the memo states, Khalil’s actions were “lawful.” 

“Condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote.

A federal judge, Jamee Comans, had ordered the government to provide evidence by 5 p.m. Wednesday for its justification to deport Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent and Columbia University graduate who was a spokesperson for student activists at the university during protests last year against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. A hearing is scheduled Friday on whether his detention can continue.

Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, said in a joint statement that  “immigration authorities have finally admitted that they have no case whatsoever against him.”

“There is not a single shred of proof that Mahmoud’s presence in America poses any threat,” the statement reads.

When asked if the government had any additional evidence against Khalil, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, provided an emailed statement to the AP stating that “DHS did file evidence, but immigration court dockets are not available to the public.”

Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen due to give birth this month, has been held in a detention center in Louisiana after being arrested and detained by immigration agents last month at his university-owned residence. Khalil wrote in a letter last month from Louisiana that his detention was a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”​​ 

Administration officials have alleged that Khalil’s actions support Hamas but failed to provide any evidence in any court filings. That may very well help Khalil, as Comens said Tuesday that if the government’s evidence doesn’t support his deportation, “then I am going to terminate the case on Friday.”

President Donald Trump falsely suggested Thursday that autism may be caused by a “shot,” parroting his anti-vax health secretary. 

During a Cabinet meeting, the president discussed an increase in the rate of autism diagnoses, but seemed to invent some statistics to do it. 

“It was one in 10,000 children had autism, and now it’s one in 31. Not 31,000, 31,” Trump said. 

In reality, about one in 36 children aged 8 years old have been identified with autism spectrum disorder, according to the

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