Bill to repeal ban of civil supersonic flight over land could open door for Boom Supersonic in Greensboro
On Monday, Sen. Ted Budd (R-North Carolina) filed the Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act, a bill that would repeal a ban on overland civil supersonic flight. The bill was co-sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana).
'The race for supersonic dominance between the U.S. and China is already underway and the stakes couldn't be higher,' Budd said. 'To maintain our global leadership in aerospace innovation, we must modernize air travel by lifting the outdated ban on civil supersonic flight. The Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act paves the way to lift decades-old restrictions, allowing for faster air travel. This is a critical step to ensure America leads the next era of aviation.'
PTI congratulates Boom Supersonic on successful supersonic flight
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) introduced a version of the bill in the House of Representatives, which was co-sponsored by Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas). The National Business Aviation Association supports both of these bills.
Boom Supersonic, which intends to build engines for its commercial supersonic jets in Greensboro, has also voiced its support for this legislation, stating that it 'supports revising this regulation to allow supersonic flight that does not create audible sonic booms and to establish a certification pathway for future low-boom aircraft.' They have also expressed their commitment to building a supersonic aircraft in the United States, as they did with their demonstrator, the XB-1, which went supersonic without a 'boom' earlier this year.
'Supersonic flight without an audible sonic boom should obviously be allowed,' Blake Scholl, Founder of Boom Supersonic, said. 'The ban on supersonic has held back progress for more than half a century. I urge Congress to pass the Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act supersonically so we can all enjoy faster flights and maintain American leadership in aviation.'
Boom is investing about $500 million to build Overture, a commercial supersonic jet, in Greensboro and, in January 2023, on a 62-acre site where its so-called 'Superfactory' is . The company, which plans to employ more than 1,700, also has an .
Boom plans to have its first passengers in the air by 2029 and will fly more than 600 'profitable routes' to destinations worldwide with a range of 4,250 nautical miles.
Boom has taken on three partners to design and build which will power the Overture, and now has partnerships with companies to provide
Another partner, Dimensional Energy, is to provide which is as being made from 'renewable biomass and waste resources,' which could be corn, algae or wood products.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
8 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
U.S. and European Union announce a trade framework
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Miami Herald
26 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story
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As the number of immigration arrests in the L.A. region quadrupled from 540 in April to 2,185 in June, seven out of 10 immigrants arrested in June had no criminal conviction - a trend that immigrant advocates say belies administration claims that they are targeting 'heinous illegal alien criminals' who represent a threat to public safety. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of ICE data from the Deportation Data Project, the proportion of immigrants without criminal convictions arrested in seven counties in and around L.A. has skyrocketed from 35% in April, to 46% in May, and to 69% from June 1 to June 26. Austin Kocher, a geographer and research assistant professor at Syracuse University who specializes in immigration enforcement, said the Trump administration was not being entirely honest about the criminal status of those they were arresting. Officials, he said, followed a strategy of focusing on the minority of violent convicted criminals so they could justify enforcement policies that are proving to be less popular. 'I think they know that if they were honest with the American public that they're arresting people who cook our food, wash dishes in the kitchen, take care of people in nursing homes, people who are just living in part of the community … there's a large segment of the public, including a large segment of Trump's own supporters, who would be uncomfortable and might even oppose those kinds of immigration practices.' 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ICE data shows that about 31% of the immigrants arrested across the L.A. region from June 1 to June 26 had criminal convictions, 11% had pending criminal charges and 58% were classified as 'other immigration violator,' which ICE defines as 'individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action.' The L.A. region's surge in arrests of noncriminals has been more dramatic than the U.S. as a whole: Arrests of immigrants with no criminal convictions climbed nationally from 57% in April to 69% in June. Federal raids here have also been more fiercely contested in Southern California - particularly in L.A. County, where more than 2 million residents are undocumented or living with undocumented family members. 'A core component of their messaging is that this is about public safety, that the people that they are arresting are threats to their communities,' said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. 'But it's hard to maintain that this is all about public safety when you're going out and arresting people who are just going about their lives and working.' Trump never said he would arrest only criminals. Almost as soon as he retook office on Jan. 20, Trump signed a stack of executive orders aimed at drastically curbing immigration. The administration then moved to expand arrests from immigrants who posed a security threat to anyone who entered the country illegally. Yet while officials kept insisting they were focused on violent criminals, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a warning: 'That doesn't mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation's borders are off the table.' As White House chief adviser on border policy Tom Homan put it: 'If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem.' Still, things did not really pick up until May, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE's top field officials to shift to more aggressive tactics: arresting undocumented immigrants, whether or not they had a criminal record. Miller set a new goal: arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day, a quota that immigration experts say is impossible to reach by focusing only on criminals. 'There aren't enough criminal immigrants in the United States to fill their arrest quotas and to get millions and millions of deportations, which is what the president has explicitly promised,' Bier said. 'Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there's half a million removable noncitizens who have criminal convictions in the United States. Most of those are nonviolent: traffic, immigration offenses. It's not millions and millions.' By the time Trump celebrated six months in office, DHS boasted that the Trump administration had already arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants. '70% of ICE arrests,' the agency said in a news release, 'are individuals with criminal convictions or charges.' But that claim no longer appeared to be true. While 78% of undocumented immigrants arrested across the U.S. in April had a criminal conviction or faced a pending charge, that number had plummeted to 57% in June. In L.A., the difference between what Trump officials said and the reality on the ground was more stark: Only 43% of those arrested across the L.A. region had criminal convictions or faced a pending charge. Still, ICE kept insisting it was 'putting the worst first.' As stories circulate across communities about the arrests of law-abiding immigrants, there are signs that support for Trump's deportation agenda is falling. A CBS/YouGov poll published July 20 shows about 56% of those surveyed approved of Trump's handling of immigration in March, but that dropped to 50% in June and 46% in July. About 52% of poll respondents said the Trump administration is trying to deport more people than expected. When asked who the Trump administration is prioritizing for deporting, only 44% said 'dangerous criminals.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have repeatedly accused Trump of conducting a national experiment in Los Angeles. 'The federal government is using California as a playground to test their indiscriminate actions that fulfill unsafe arrest quotas and mass detention goals,' Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom told The Times. 'They are going after every single immigrant, regardless of whether they have a criminal background and without care that they are American citizens, legal status holders and foreign-born, and even targeting native-born U.S. citizens.' 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It has threatened to withhold federal funds to California due to its 'sanctuary state' law, which limits county jails from coordinating with ICE except in cases involving immigrants convicted of a serious crime or felonies such as murder, rape, robbery or arson. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department requested California counties, including L.A., provide data on all jail inmates who are not U.S. citizens in an effort to help federal immigration agents prioritize those who have committed crimes. 'Although every illegal alien by definition violates federal law,' the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release, 'those who go on to commit crimes after doing so show that they pose a heightened risk to our Nation's safety and security.' As Americans are bombarded with dueling narratives of good vs. bad immigrants, Kocher believes the question we have to grapple with is not 'What does the data say?' Instead, we should ask: 'How do we meaningfully distinguish between immigrants with serious criminal convictions and immigrants who are peacefully living their lives?' 'I don't think it's reasonable, or helpful, to represent everyone as criminals - or everyone as saints,' Kocher said. 'Probably the fundamental question, which is also a question that plagues our criminal justice system, is whether our legal system is capable of distinguishing between people who are genuine public safety threats and people who are simply caught up in the bureaucracy.' The data, Kocher said, show that ICE is currently unable or unwilling to make that distinction. 'If we don't like the way that the system is working, we might want to rethink whether we want a system where people who are simply living in the country following laws, working in their economy, should actually have a pathway to stay,' Kocher said. 'And the only way to do that is actually to change the laws.' In the rush to blast out mugshots of some of the most criminal L.A. immigrants, the Trump administration left out a key part of the story. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, its staff notified ICE on May 5 of Veneracion's pending release after he had served nearly 30 years in prison for the crimes of assault with intent to commit rape and sexual penetration with a foreign object with force. But ICE failed to pick up Veneracion and canceled its hold on him May 19, a day before he was released on parole. A few weeks later, as ICE amped up its raids, federal agents arrested Veneracion on June 7 at the ICE office in L.A. The very next day, DHS shared his mugshot in a news release titled 'President Trump is Stepping Up Where Democrats Won't.' The same document celebrated the capture of Phan, who served nearly 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder. CDCR said the Board of Parole Hearings coordinated with ICE after Phan was granted parole in 2022. Phan was released that year to ICE custody. But those details did not stop Trump officials from taking credit for his arrest and blaming California leaders for letting Phan loose. 'It is sickening that Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass continue to protect violent criminal illegal aliens at the expense of the safety of American citizens and communities,' DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Miami Herald
26 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Harvard nemesis wants Trump's college crusade to reach every campus
Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who has been influential in the White House's efforts to reshape higher education, now wants to expand the campaign well beyond the elite schools that have borne the brunt of the pressure. Rufo says the Education Department is considering a proposal that would ensure all U.S. universities that receive federal funding - the vast majority - adopt many of the same conditions that Columbia University agreed to in a deal this week. He sees the plan, which he first outlined with the Manhattan Institute this month, as a way to swiftly broaden President Donald Trump's higher-education agenda. 'I know for a fact that it circulated through the White House and through the Department of Education,' Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in an interview in Gig Harbor, Washington, where he lives and works. The Trump administration has used federal funding as leverage to press schools to align with its priorities, from battling campus antisemitism to reassessing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This week, the White House finalized a $221 million agreement with Columbia that imposes new conditions tied to these issues, the first such deal with an Ivy League school. Harvard, a primary target, is fighting the administration's efforts in court even as it negotiates a possible settlement. Talks are underway with Cornell University, Northwestern and Brown to reinstate previously frozen funds, while institutions such as Duke and Johns Hopkins are facing mounting pressure as grant suspensions threaten to disrupt research programs and international student pipelines. Under Rufo's proposal, schools would be subject to demands including purging their institutions of diversity initiatives or other programs focused on specific minority groups; harsh and swift disciplinary measures for student protesters; the publicization of demographic data in admissions decisions; and hiring conservative faculty. The terms would be baked into universities' contracts with federal agencies for research funding - and, if taken a step further, could be incorporated into the powerful accreditation system that determines colleges' eligibility to receive federal financial aid. 'Columbia has its unique issues, Harvard has its own unique issues. But after you go through the list of the next six or seven universities, there has to be a point where there's a general, blanket policy,' said Rufo, 40. 'The particular negotiations, in that sense, are just the opening bid.' Secretary of Education Linda McMahon appeared to endorse the proposal last week when she congratulated Rufo in a post on X and called the plan 'a compelling roadmap to restore integrity and rigor to the American academy.' When reached for comment, an Education Department spokesperson referred Bloomberg to McMahon's post and said there was no mention of implementation plans. But Rufo said he is optimistic that the statement will turn into policy sometime in the next few months. 'This set of principles is a fairly reasonable compromise,' Rufo said. 'I think the president should just impose it as a condition.' The efforts are already spreading piecemeal to an increasingly broad swath of higher education. On Wednesday, the Education Department announced civil rights investigations into scholarship programs at five colleges, including the University of Michigan, the University of Miami and the University of Nebraska Omaha. A series of federal investigations at George Mason University, a regional public college in Virginia, seem aimed at forcing out president Gregory Washington over his past support for DEI initiatives - a move that successfully led to University of Virginia president Jim Ryan's resignation last month. But while they've been indirectly affected by the chaos, most of the country's patchwork of 4,000 colleges and universities have escaped direct federal threats. Robert Kelchen, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said the administration is clearly laying the groundwork for a more wide-ranging attack on higher education. 'I think they're trying to move in that direction, especially on things like DEI,' he said. 'It's clear the administration is using every lever they can think of.' Rufo isn't a White House adviser or a federal employee, but he has strong influence among conservative education reformers, including many currently working for the Trump administration. He rose to prominence crusading against DEI programs and played an instrumental role in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' education agenda in 2023. His profile rose higher still after he spearheaded a public campaign to oust former Harvard president Claudine Gay over plagiarism allegations - one of the initial seismic reverberations of the campaign to change higher education. One of Rufo's main proposals is tied to accreditors, historically powerful but until recently largely uncontroversial entities that focus on ensuring educational quality and financial health. They also are responsible for determining if institutions are eligible for federal student aid. Rufo said the White House should 'turn the screws' on accreditors and then use them as a proxy for reform. 'We want to say that every accreditor needs to have these minimum principles and enforce them at universities,' he said. Trump has called accreditation his 'secret weapon,' and in April he issued an executive order calling for reform. He threatened to strip federal recognition from accreditors 'engaging in unlawful discrimination in violation of federal law.' For Rufo, the stakes of that order are clear: Accreditors must enforce the conservative view of antidiscrimination law, including by ensuring colleges aren't engaging in DEI initiatives. Almost every accreditor has already eliminated language in their standards around diversity and inclusion, but Rufo said they should go a step further and adopt some version of the standards laid out in his proposal. 'The goal is to extend all of this basically to federal financial aid,' Kelchen said. 'The administration so far has not gone after that, maybe because it could be seen as political overreach. But they can work through the accreditors to do that.' If that happens, Rufo said it would 'shift the whole university sector on a new course.' 'That's my goal: To change the culture of the institutions as a whole,' he said. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
