Yesterday, ICE kidnapped 3 parents outside of Van Nuys Elementary School. Families and students should feel safe at school, not fearful that ICE will tear their family apart. ICE needs to get out of L.A. for good, and must be abolished.

It’s an insane clip to watch… Could hardly believe what I was watching.

BREAKING: the federal search warrant against Ilhan Omar names her as "Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar," indicating that DOJ believes she is present in the United States under a false identity! Revealed in a scheduling order today from DDC

And, just so the little guys don’t get ALL the credit. Me, and the boys, back in the day, in a C-141 airshow at Charleston AFB. Circa 85 or 86. The “Thunder Pigs.”🤣 That’s what we called ourselves. But, we were pretty good for heavy drivers! 😎🇺🇸🔥

This is voter intimidation, plain and simple. Don't let anyone tell you this is about election security. It's about scaring eligible Americans from exercising their right to vote, and it’s not going to work.

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How do authoritarian tactics work? The goal is to create so many threats against you, your family, and your staff that you shut up. They wanna manufacture outrage. They all start repeating the same talking points. The goal is to crush your spirit. That fear becomes contagious. We can't let it.

Most of the time we declare an “Emergency”, it ends up being kind of boring. In the U.S., we “declare an emergency” to get priority handling from Air Traffic Control (ATC). Technically, the correct way to do this is “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday”, but for some reason we don’t do that here. I suspect it’s because that’s associated w/ crashing in the movies, and an emergency isn’t the same as crashing, but that’s just my guess. Mayday is the way the rest of the world does it. Declaring an emergency or calling Mayday commands other traffic on the same frequency to remain silent. The rest of us shut up, this frequency is now reserved for the distressed jet & ATC. ATC will eventually move the distressed jet to a private frequency, as the rest of us still need to talk, but until then, keep your finger off the transmit button. ATC will want to know the nature of the emergency, how much fuel you have aboard (in minutes…how long can you fly?) and how many souls onboard (SOB). As Captain, our final weight numbers come through with the SOB, and I write that down on my yoke note…on a bad day, the FO & I will be counting heads as soon as we get off the jet. I’m going to be the last one off, after I go all the way to the back & sweep forward, looking for stragglers. As I say in my brief: “I’ll sweep forward, we’ll go down the slide, then start counting heads, herding cats & watching for fire trucks”. We’re herding cats because panicked people do unpredictable things. I want them in a single group away from the airplane, but that’s going to be tough to manage. I’m watching for fire trucks because they come barreling at you with high speed & may not see you…more than one person has been killed by a responding truck after successfully evacuating the jet. Anyway, declaring an Emergency (“the E word”) or Mayday is not something done casually. At the same time, it’s something you do when you know things are most likely going to be fine, but there’s a slight chance it’s not, and having those fire trucks waiting for you already would be really nice if it turns into a bad day. There are a lot of emergencies that spin up the whole system & end up being just fine, maybe even the majority, but you don’t want to be that outlier. It’s just that beyond some point, I’m not a fortune teller. The probability of bad things may still be low, but it’s suddenly higher than it usually is. I think many pilots are reluctant to declare an emergency, and can’t blame them; these things usually turn out fine. As soon as I throw out the E word, ATC will move everyone out of my way. They’ll move heaven & earth if needed, and can do some remarkable things to help you. I think of it as a license to do whatever I want…where ATC usually tells me to turn this way or that, or what runway I’ll be assigned for landing, that relationship completely flips & now I tell them what I’m doing. They will make it possible…even if I’m landing opposite direction at a busy airport like Chicago, at the busiest time of day, I know they’ll just say “you got it, cleared to land” and will “roll the fire trucks” (pre-position them at the ends of the runway…they will start chasing me as soon as I pass them). You can declare emergencies for many different reasons. A passenger medical emergency isn’t a threat to anyone else, but you’ll still get priority handling, even if they don’t roll the trucks for that (taxiing to the gate is best in that case, but they’ll clear traffic out of your way on the ground, too). So, always glad to see an emergency come to a safe conclusion, as the majority do. Just wanted to share some background on what that means & why it’s not always a reason to panic.