| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Memories And Resolve
00:13:43
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unidentified
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The Senate convenes and will vote later in the morning on whether to advance six funding bills to avert a government shutdown on Friday. | |
| Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he will not vote to fund the Homeland Security Department without immigration enforcement reforms in the wake of the Minnesota killings. | ||
| And on C-SPAN 3, the Senate Intelligence Committee takes up the nomination for Army Lieutenant General Joshua Rudd to lead the National Security Agency. | ||
| That's at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Watch live coverage of these events also on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and at c-span.org. | ||
| Friday, on C-SPAN CEASFIRE, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, join host Dasha Burns for a bipartisan conversation with two U.S. mayors on the tough issues facing American cities, including immigration enforcement and affordability. | ||
| Bridging the divide in American politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| The victims of Flight 5342, the January 29th mid-air collision with a U.S. Army helicopter, were remembered at a memorial honoring their memories on the one-year anniversary of the fatal collision over the Potomac River. | ||
| Good evening, and thank you all for being here tonight. | ||
| We gather not for an easy reason, but for a deeply important one. | ||
| We're here to remember the 67-the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, family members, and loved ones who were tragically taken from us on the night of January 29th. | ||
| Before we begin, I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to honor their lives and their souls. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Though they are no longer with us in the way that we wish they could be, I truly believe they are in this room tonight. | ||
| Their presence in the love that surrounds us, in the memories we carry, and in the resolve that has brought us all together. | ||
| My name is Olivia Rinaldi. | ||
| I'm a White House reporter for CBS News, and I was there on the night of the crash. | ||
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unidentified
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It's a memory I will never forget. | |
| It was all hands on deck from the first responders, many of whom are in this room tonight, who did not hesitate. | ||
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unidentified
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They did not waver. | |
| They charged towards the site into that frigid, icy water, to try to save as many lives as humanly possible. | ||
| They answered a call that no one ever hopes to receive, and they did so with courage, urgency, and selflessness. | ||
| In the face of chaos and heartbreak, they showed us what service truly looks like. | ||
| Inside the airport, families waited near the baggage claim, near the doors, holding on to hope for loved ones that would never come home. | ||
| Those images stay with you, and they certainly have stayed with me. | ||
| I met Laura O'John and A.B. Hunter several weeks later at a congressional hearing in Washington. | ||
| Their cousin, Peter Livingston, his wife Donna, and their two daughters, Everly and Olydia, were on board American Airlines Flight 5342. | ||
| Amy, Laura, and Rachel came to Washington to do what their families in their grief could not. | ||
| To seek accountability and to demand answers for why 67 lives were lost that night. | ||
| Over the past few years, excuse me, over the past year, these families, bound together by unimaginable loss, became powerful agents for change. | ||
| While navigating their own grief and reshaping their lives around what can never be replaced, they used precious time off to return to Washington again and again to advocate for reforms to ensure that no other families have to stand where they stand right now. | ||
| We are here tonight to remember the 67 and to honor the lives they lived and the love that they left behind. | ||
| But we are also here to recognize those who, in the years since the crash, have worked tirelessly to ensure that their legacy is one of meaning, action, and change. | ||
| We are here to pay tribute to the unsung heroes who stood beside these families long after the headlines faded. | ||
| And we are here to thank the first responders who ran toward the danger, who gave everything they could, and still carry this night with them. | ||
| In the months that followed the tragedy, it was the strength, courage, and perseverance of these families that shone through, even in the darkest of moments. | ||
| And with that, it is my honor to introduce you to Amy, Laura, and Rachel. | ||
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unidentified
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Good evening. | |
| My name is Laura O'Jean, and tonight I stand here alongside two of my cousins, Amy Hunter and Rachel Ferris. | ||
| Some of you may know us as the Livingston Cousins. | ||
| For those who do not, as Olivia just said, our cousin Peter, his wife Donna, and their two daughters, Everly and Olivia, Alydia, were on flight 5342. | ||
| Like so many families here tonight, our lives were forever changed in an instant one year ago. | ||
| In the days and weeks that followed our tragedy, as we tried to make sense of the unimaginable, our families came together. | ||
| Families who had never met before, found themselves connected by loss, by love, and by the shared work of figuring out how to move forward. | ||
| Tonight, as we honor the 67, we remember the lives that were lost, not as a number, but as people. | ||
| People who spent their free time working with dog rescues, quilting, traveling, and hunting with friends. | ||
| Supportive parents and coaches doing everything they could for their young athletes chasing their figure-skating dreams. | ||
| Some were just beginning to build their families, their careers. | ||
| Some shared their voices, spreading faith and positivity over the radio. | ||
| Others were business professionals, leaders, educators, and innovators, building companies, mentoring others, and contributing to their communities. | ||
| Trailblazers carving new paths. | ||
| Incredibly smart, generous people with so much to offer the world, and deeply loved by so many. | ||
| As we have traversed this past year, many of us have leaned on different sources of strength. | ||
| For some, that has been faith, trusting that God is present even in the moments we don't understand. | ||
| For others, it has been community, service, or the people standing beside us. | ||
| Each of us has found the strength to keep going, and that shared support has helped us accept a new reality, a reality we never asked for, and we move forward together. | ||
| Getting through this year has been a collective effort, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our families and friends who have given us the strength to keep moving forward. | ||
| Amy. | ||
| Tonight, on behalf of the families, we want to publicly acknowledge and thank each of you, the first responders and agencies who rushed towards tragedy to try and help our loved ones. | ||
| You arrived in the midst of chaos, danger, and uncertainty, doing everything possible to rescue, to recover, to care. | ||
| And when the initial response ended, you kept coming back, searching, working, and ensuring that every one of our loved ones was ultimately returned home to us. | ||
| That commitment means more to our families than words can express. | ||
| Even in the darkness, moments like a firefighter standing guard over a fallen soldier reminds us of humanity at its best. | ||
| We also want to acknowledge something that is often left unsaid. | ||
| No one is ever truly prepared to respond to a catastrophe like this. | ||
| We know the weight of what you saw, what you experienced, and what you carried with you does not simply fade when the scene is cleared. | ||
| And yet you're willing to bear that trauma in service of others. | ||
| For that, we are deeply, deeply grateful. | ||
| There is a quote from Mr. Rogers that many of us have held on to in difficult times. | ||
| He said, when I was a boy, I would see scary things on the news. | ||
| My mother would say to me, look for the helpers. | ||
| You will always find people who are helping. | ||
| On January 29th, we found the helpers. | ||
| For the past 364 days, we've been finding the helpers. | ||
| Tonight is about remembrance and gratitude. | ||
| It is also about love and what love asks of us after loss. | ||
| When something like this happens, there's a natural urge for all of us to want the pain to end in the moment, to hope what happened was unthinkable, unrepeatable, or somehow behind us. | ||
| But for the families here tonight and for many of the helpers who rush towards danger, love doesn't allow us to stop there. | ||
| Honoring the 67 means more than remembering who they were. | ||
| It means allowing their lives and our love for them to shape what we choose to do going forward. | ||
| Over the past year, many families here have learned far more than we have ever expected to about aviation safety, oversight, and risk. | ||
| Not because we wanted to, but because love compelled us to. | ||
| And what we've learned has made one thing clear. | ||
| Preventing future tragedies takes sustained attention, shared accountability, and the courage to act early and consistently before lives are lost. | ||
| Advocacy for us is not about anger or blame. | ||
| It is an act of care. | ||
| Care for future passengers. | ||
| Care for the professionals who work every day to keep people safe. | ||
| Care for families we will never meet. | ||
| We cannot change what happened, but love does not end with remembrance. | ||
| It moves us to protect others. | ||
| That is how love carries forward, not only in memory but in action, not only in grief, but in resolve. | ||
| And to everyone here tonight, we invite you to join us in remembering the lives of those we love, in offering gratitude to those who've helped, and in carrying this work forward together. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| It is now my honor to introduce Doug Lane, someone whose strength I am truly in awe of. | ||
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unidentified
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For those of you who don't know Doug, he lost his wife Christine and his son Spencer on the night of January 29th. | |
| They were on their way home from the U.S. Figure Skating National Development Camp. | ||
| Doug has shown some incredible compassion and resilience, so please give him a warm welcome. | ||
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unidentified
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Hello, my name is Doug Lane. | |
| I lost my wife Christine and my 16-year-old son Spencer on flight 5342. | ||
| In the days following the collision, many of us who lost loved ones made our way to a hotel right down the road from here in Bethesda, Maryland. | ||
| It was there that we met some of the unsung heroes that we honoured earlier, including the extraordinary team, the NTSB, as well as the amazing people at the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. | ||
|
Meeting Each Other
00:07:50
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unidentified
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And what we quickly realized was that we were part of something special. | |
| It was where, in addition to meeting those people, we all met, many of us met each other for the first time. | ||
| And through that, what we realized is that while we were powerless in that moment to help our loved ones, we were not powerless to help each other. | ||
| So that's what we did. | ||
| And we've been doing that ever since. | ||
| We stay connected through an online messaging platform daily. | ||
| We meet for weekly calls, video calls. | ||
| Some of those calls are just focused on connecting and supporting one another. | ||
| Others are focused on organizing, learning, and advocating for change. | ||
| Our family group is now 118 people strong, and together we've accomplished some truly remarkable things over the past year. | ||
| This very event was entirely conceived, funded, planned, and executed by members of our family group. | ||
| An extraordinary testament to what the power and power of collective purpose and love can do. | ||
| We've also made meaningful progress towards our mission of making the skies safer for all in honor of those we lost. | ||
| The people you'll hear from next have been among our most valued partners on that journey. | ||
| Chairman Ted Cruz and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell of the Senate Commerce Committee worked across party lines to develop the ROTAR Act, an ambitious bipartisan set of safety reforms that will finally turn long overdue NTSB recommendations into law. | ||
| The ROTAR Act passed the U.S. Senate unanimously in December and now awaits action by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. | ||
| Please call your congressmen and urge them to take action immediately. | ||
| One congressman that you don't need to call is Congressman Don Bayer, who has been one of our strongest voices in the House of Representatives, and he'll be joined by Aaliyah Gaskins, Mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, to share something special they've been working on together. | ||
| And as we saw on full display yesterday, Jennifer Hamindy, chair of the NTSB, has inspired all of us through her leadership, tenacity, and unwavering commitment to keeping families safe as they move through life. | ||
| And finally, our first speaker, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, confronted the tragedy of Flight 5342 on his very first day of the job. | ||
| Since then, he has offered our families candor, respect, and a true seat at the table as we've worked together to ensure that something like this never happens again. | ||
| Please join me in welcoming Secretary Duffy to the stage. | ||
| Well, I first want to say I am humbled to be with all of you tonight. | ||
| A year ago, none of us knew each other. | ||
| Families didn't know each other. | ||
| We didn't know the first responders. | ||
| You didn't know the policymakers. | ||
| A country hadn't come together around the horrible tragedy that would take place a day later. | ||
| And tonight, we mourn the loss of your loved ones, your neighbors, your friends. | ||
| But we also come together to celebrate them as well. | ||
| And I know the families, it's got to be hard to go through the videos and the pictures of the ones you lost, but I've got to tell you, you did an amazing job. | ||
| The video was absolutely remarkable. | ||
| Thank you for sharing those private moments with all of us. | ||
| It's a video that shows life, hope, dreams. | ||
| It shows the future of the people that we lost. | ||
| It makes it that much more painful as we come together on this night to celebrate their lives that are no longer with us. | ||
| I was only a day on the job, and I've learned a lot, and I know you all have learned a lot as well. | ||
| We've learned a lot in the last year. | ||
| I spent those first hours with the acting administrator of the FA, Chris Rushlow, who's here tonight and did a fantastic job that night leading the FAA with Lee McKenna as well. | ||
| Both of them were steadfast partners. | ||
| But as the tragedy unfolded and we took a look at what kind of systems we had and what went wrong, I want to thank all of you because you had a number of choices. | ||
| What were you going to do? | ||
| Obviously you were angry. | ||
| You couldn't comprehend how could this happen? | ||
| Who could let this happen? | ||
| Why didn't someone do something? | ||
| And you had choices. | ||
| And you made a choice to pay it forward, to pay it forward in a way that some other family wouldn't have to go through what your family went through. | ||
| And you channeled it into positive energy to make a difference. | ||
| And I want to thank you for that because you have made a difference. | ||
| And I want to talk about a couple of the things that have happened in the last year. | ||
| And so with the NTSB, who's here tonight, and Chair Jennifer Homody, on the day after, we came together and made a decision with the FAA that we were going to ban fixed-wing cross traffic in DCA, the cause of this crash. | ||
| We were going to stop it no more. | ||
| I'm going to tell you, there was some pressure to bring this back. | ||
| We're like, no, it's not coming back. | ||
| But then we said, if this could happen in D.C., could this happen somewhere else? | ||
| Is someone else at risk? | ||
| And so we used AI technology to look at what kind of reports have come in to identify other dangerous airspaces that we need to address. | ||
| And we found several, and we all worked together and addressed those issues that we use modern-day tools to find, but modern-day tools that should have been used on the months and years before this tragedy took place. | ||
| As Doug said, we're not helpless to help each other and help ourselves. | ||
| And that is why my colleague and I, Senator Cruz, are dedicated to the passage of the ROTA Act. | ||
| And we don't just mean in the United States Senate. | ||
| mean we want it on the president's desk and we want it on the president's desk as soon as possible. | ||
|
Reflection Fight
00:07:28
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| And as somebody who knows what this fight is all about, I can just tell you that the paper today said something incredibly important. | ||
| The NTSB has been saying things for a long time and nobody's been listening, but Jennifer Homody got it over the goal line and she basically made it clear we need to change the FAA and it too needs to be a more accountable organization to the safety and lives of our loved ones. | ||
| So thank you, Jennifer, for doing your job. | ||
| And we too have to continue to evangelize, to continue to tell our fellow Americans that this unbelievable loss that we've suffered. | ||
| And Christina, thank you for Mikey's photo. | ||
| Thank you for constantly sharing and sending me little messages by text. | ||
| I'm thinking this woman lost her son and she's texting me. | ||
| She's texting me to tell me these things. | ||
| And when I see the beauty of all those families, the joy, the love, the celebration of life, and to think that that has been stolen from all of us, | ||
| all I know is that just as you've transformed yourself into a powerful organization to speak about the need for aviation safety, you are going to help everybody in the United States understand this problem and get it over the gold line so that our future will be safer. | ||
| But trust me, trust me, I'm never going to forget your loved ones. | ||
| God bless all of you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good evening. | |
| Governor Spanberger, Mr. Secretary, Senators. | ||
| Tonight we gather with broken hearts to mourn the 67 beautiful people whose journeys ended far too soon. | ||
| Parents and children, partners and friends, colleagues and neighbors, they carry dreams, responsibilities, laughter, love, and their absence leaves a silence that we can never fully fill. | ||
| You know, life isn't just loss, but life is a lot of loss. | ||
| I read once that tragedy has no meaning, that we can't just stare at it long enough to figure out, to understand it. | ||
| Rather, it's to us, the living, to give this unspeakable abomination meaning, to come together in loving to deepen our faith, in believing more deeply to love more abundantly. | ||
| In moments of profound loss, we're tested. | ||
| We honor ourselves, figuring out how to honor those we've lost and how to carry forward their memory with dignity and with care. | ||
| Our community has always been a place defined by compassion, resilience, by the belief that we show up for one another, especially in times like these. | ||
| There will be much more to do in the months to come, including passing the Roader Act in the House, both to honor the lives lost and do everything we can to make sure that this never happens again. | ||
| And we will stand with the families and the loved ones in every step of the way. | ||
| Tonight, we want to share a step in taking the honor of the lives lost and provide a space for remembrance and reflection. | ||
| Let me give you the mayor of the city of Alexandria, Aaliyah Gaskin. | ||
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unidentified
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Good evening, everyone. | |
| I want to thank you first and foremost for having me tonight, not only to mourn with you, but to join with you in the fight for a more accountable future. | ||
| As Mayor of the City of Alexandria, I can tell you that for many Alexandrians, the tragic events of January 29th, 2025 were deeply personal. | ||
| Personal because DCA is right in our backyard, and so it was many of our first responders from our police department and our fire department that were first on the scene. | ||
| But personal more so because so many Alexandrians lost their teammates, their classmates, their friends, and neighbors. | ||
| And so I know there are no words that can take away the pain of that day or the pain that you are carrying each and every day. | ||
| But I can tell you that Alexandria is responding in the only way we know how, with love and with a commitment to honor your loved ones. | ||
| And so we will be creating a memorial in River Great Park on the banks of the Potomac River. | ||
| This site where the river begins to meet and moves slowly forward will be a place of remembrance and reflection. | ||
| We're grateful for Congressman Bayer as well as all of the families that have worked with us. | ||
| This memorial will include a bench. | ||
| It will also include a plaque with each of the 67 names that were lost on that horrific day. | ||
| Every name will be acknowledged, every life will be remembered, and every story will be told. | ||
| And so it is our hope that in love, this place will also be a promise, a promise that when you come, you will see new trees to represent your family members. | ||
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unidentified
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You will feel a sense of peace, and you will know that your loved ones and each of you will forever be in our hearts. | |
| And that in your grief, in your times of reflection, and in your fight for more accountability, Alexandria will always be with you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think it's Senator Cruz. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for inviting us at the NTSB to take part in such a special night. | ||
| The invitation for tonight said this evening was designed as a moment of unity, a time for us all to come together, a moment of remembrance, a chance to honor those we lost, those who will forever remain in our hearts, in my heart. | ||
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Zero Is Our Goal
00:15:32
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| A moment of gratitude, certainly for the first responders, the unsung heroes, law enforcement, fire officials, dive teams, the DC Office of Medical Examiner, federal, state, and local agencies, and of course, our Transportation Disaster Assistance team who support families in crisis after tragedy. | ||
| But also, a moment of gratitude for all of you. | ||
| I've said this many times, but it's worth repeating. | ||
| You're an inspiration to all of us. | ||
| You have, and I said this yesterday, you have, in the wake of absolute devastation, shown remarkable selflessness, courageously advocating for important reforms to improve aviation safety. | ||
| But the invitation also talked about a moment of resolve, which is what I want to talk about tonight. | ||
| Last night, we completed our year-long investigation, issuing 74 findings and 50 recommendations aimed at preventing similar suffering for other families. | ||
| That was just the first step. | ||
| Now, the important work, the hard work, begins. | ||
| That means relentlessly, vigorously pursuing safety change. | ||
| That means doing everything, absolutely everything in our power collectively to make sure the lessons learned from this devastating tragedy turn into lives saved. | ||
| Our recommendations are voluntary. | ||
| Real safety change occurs only when they're acted on. | ||
| Otherwise, they're simply words on a page. | ||
| I mentioned yesterday our investigation of Colgan Air Flight 3407. | ||
| 50 people died. | ||
| I mentioned our investigation of American Airlines Flight 587. | ||
| 260 people aboard the plane died, five on the ground. | ||
| One was 17 years ago, the other was 2001. | ||
| Between those two investigations, we issued 40 safety recommendations, every single one of them aimed at preventing tragedy from reoccurring. | ||
| Today, 13 of them remain in an unacceptable status, meaning zero action. | ||
| Almost half. | ||
| Sometimes there's immediate progress. | ||
| Sometimes it takes years. | ||
| Other times it takes decades. | ||
| All that is to say enduring change can take time. | ||
| Making the system-wide changes we need doesn't come easy. | ||
| We may have a very long, uphill battle before us. | ||
| And yet I'm hopeful. | ||
| That may surprise some of you, but it's true. | ||
| Because as I look around, I see who's in the fight with the NTSB. | ||
| You, I see governors. | ||
| I see fellow members of the NTSB. | ||
| I see secretary. | ||
| I see senators, deputy administrator. | ||
| I, Liam, Chief Counsel. | ||
| A few years ago, I read an article that stuck with me, and it has stuck with me many times when I talk about road safety. | ||
| This was from a road safety advocate, and she wrote, if ending car crash deaths is our actual goal and not just a catchphrase, we will treat collisions as both an outrage and a tragedy. | ||
| And more important, an opportunity to talk about how to build a world where there are no accidents. | ||
| She goes on to say we can do so much more than mourn and shrug and cast blame after people die. | ||
| Instead, we can radically expand the radius of our compassion and urgently pursue life-saving strategies outside our comfort zone. | ||
| Because if we don't, zero will forever remain out of our reach. | ||
| I'd say the same for aviation. | ||
| We at the NTSB believe zero is the only acceptable number of lives lost in transportation and all throughout transportation. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| Some people say it's not attainable. | ||
| I say that's not true. | ||
| Because if we don't have zero as our goal, that means we are accepting that some people should die. | ||
| So how do we get there? | ||
| By urgently pursuing life-saving strategies outside of our comfort zone. | ||
| Strategies like the ones we recommended based on our investigation. | ||
| But those of us in the aviation community need, must, be unafraid to acknowledge that these systemic failures that led to this tragedy are ours to fix, even if they predate us. | ||
| Unafraid to take accountability, unafraid to be 100% honest in acknowledging what went wrong and 100% committed to fixing it. | ||
| Unafraid to ensure that no more families endure such tremendous loss. | ||
| Unafraid to fight for their sons and daughters, their spouses and partners, their parents, their friends, their colleagues and classmates, their coaches and teammates, their union brothers and sisters, And I say that because some of your loved ones were union brothers and sisters. | ||
| I come from the labor movement. | ||
| I was a Teamster, and we have a saying, I know you know it, mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living. | ||
| Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living. | ||
| To me, that means accepting zero is the only goal. | ||
| It means implementing all of the NTSB's aviation safety recommendations, not just those we issued this week. | ||
| Earlier, I said I was hopeful, and I am. | ||
| Because again, as I look around, I see in everyone's faces the recognition that safety is a shared responsibility. | ||
| We must do this together. | ||
| It's going to take all of us. | ||
| You cannot and should not, should never, ever do this alone. | ||
| Powerful safety champions are with you, champions like Secretary Duffy, champions like Senator Cruz, champions like Senator Cantwell, and so many more. | ||
| I am with you. | ||
| The NTSB is with you. | ||
| That is our agency's mission. | ||
| That is my mission. | ||
| And I commit to you that the NTSB will never, ever give up. | ||
| We will never give up until every single one of our safety recommendations are fully implemented. | ||
| Until there's no longer a need for our recommendations, until there's no longer a need for the NTSB, until we have a safe transportation system for all, until there are zero grieving families. | ||
| Today, we remember your loved ones. | ||
| But today, we demand action. | ||
| Today and every day to come, we commit, we commit to fighting like hell for safety in their memory. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. Good evening. | |
| Tonight is a solemn evening. | ||
| One year ago tomorrow, tragedy struck just a few miles from here over the Potomac River. | ||
| 67 souls were tragically lost in a single instant. | ||
| Every one of those lives lost mattered. | ||
| Every person lost is missed terribly. | ||
| Unfortunately, for so many in this audience tonight, it is a loss that you carry with you every single day. | ||
| Yet amid unimaginable grief over the past year, we've also witnessed extraordinary strength. | ||
| We've seen resilience, courage, and determination. | ||
| Instead of turning inward, you chose to stand up, to speak out, and to insist that we do everything humanly possible to ensure that no other family would endure the pain that you have faced. | ||
| Over the past year, I've had the privilege of meeting with many of you, caring about your loved ones, your stories, your frustrations, and your hopes. | ||
| And it has helped shape the work we have done and only strengthened my resolve. | ||
| I remember meeting with Tim and Sherry Lilly the week of the crash and many of the family members of others lost several times since. | ||
| After the crash, it became clear that serious gaps had allowed this accident to happen. | ||
| Gaps in oversight, in coordination, and regulation that allowed an area of intolerable risk to persist. | ||
| I know this isn't a political event and that policy is not the focus, but I want to convey a very real message. | ||
| In Congress, we have made serious progress in advancing the Rotor Act, bipartisan aviation safety legislation. | ||
| We're very close to having it become law. | ||
| Thanks to the effort and leadership of many of the families gathered here tonight, the Senate has passed the Rotor Act unanimously, every Republican, every Democrat coming together to speak as one. | ||
| And I'm hopeful that our House colleagues will step forward and pass it as well. | ||
| The reforms being debated would not have happened without the tenacious advocacy from family members here tonight. | ||
| For that, I want to say thank you. | ||
| Thank you for investing your time and energy and grief into action. | ||
| I am committed to seeing this work through, to honoring the lives lost by ensuring that meaningful aviation safety reforms become law. | ||
| While we cannot change the past, we can work together to create a safer future. | ||
| One that honors your loved ones, not just for how they were lost, but for the enduring impact that their lives made. | ||
| Thank you, and may God bless each and every one of you. | ||
| As we come to the close of tonight's program, I want to thank each and every one of you for being here, for showing up, for bearing witness, and for honoring the lives of the 67. | ||
| This night has been about community and what happens when we don't let tragedy be the final word. | ||
| We have heard from the families who have turned their unimaginable grief into purpose, from the first responders who ran towards that danger without hesitation, from advocates who continue to push for answers, accountability, and change so that no other families have to stand where they stand right now. | ||
| While nothing can undo what happened on the night of January 29th, the legacy of the 67 is still being written every day. | ||
| In the courage of their loved ones, in the reforms that are being pursued, and in the collective resolve to do better. | ||
| As you leave here tonight, I hope you carry their memory with you. | ||
| Carry it in the way that you look out for one another, in a way I know the families do. | ||
| In the way you honor service, in the way you choose compassion, even when it is hard. | ||
| May we continue to remember the 67, not only for how they died, but for how they lived and the change their lives continue to inspire. | ||
| Thank you all for being here tonight. | ||
| Thank you for remembering, and thank you for ensuring they are never forgotten. | ||
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Coming Thursday Morning
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up Thursday morning, Dominic Led from the Cato Institute will talk about this Friday's government funding deadline, spending targets, and the national debt. | ||
| Then former Ambassador to NATO Douglas Loot talks about U.S. actions in Venezuela and the United States' current relationship with NATO. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Thursday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Robert Ritchie, known as singer and musician Kid Rock, joined industry executives to testify before a Senate Commerce Subcommittee about combating rising ticket prices and fees. | ||