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Grilled by Senate, Boeing CEO admits to “serious missteps” on safety

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Grilled by Senate, Boeing CEO admits to “serious missteps” on safety

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Wednesday about current and planned changes the company is making, including safety.

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Under sharp questioning from U.S. Senators Wednesday, the CEO of Boeing acknowledged a lax safety culture existed at the aircraft manufacturer but denied workers on Boeing’s factory floors were being pressured to speed up lagging production.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who was appointed to his post just last August, appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill. The hearing, titled “Safety First: Restoring Boeing’s Status as a Great American Manufacturer,”” focused on the steps the company has taken to address production deficiencies and safety issues that led to the door plug blow out incident on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9 jet in January last year.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators found that four critical bolts needed to secure the door plug in place were not reinstalled at the Boeing factory in Renton, Wash., leading the door plug to blow out of the fuselage of the plane in mid-air, causing a rapid depressurization in the cabin of the passenger jet. None of the 177 passengers and crew members on board were seriously hurt.

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But Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the Commerce Committee, says “the incident produced fresh doubt about Boeing’s ability to safely build planes.”

“Efforts to cut corners in production or to move to the next production phase before necessary parts arrived have led to unacceptable failures,” Cruz said at the start of the committee hearing. He then went on to criticize Boeing’s “insufficient oversight” of its suppliers and of its own manufacturing process, which Cruz says led to “an unsustainable lack of safety culture at Boeing.”

In response, Ortberg acknowledged the company “has made serious missteps in recent years, and it is unacceptable.” But he insists the aerospace giant has “made sweeping changes to the people, processes, and overall structure of our company” to improve safety.

In regards to the specific failures that led to the door plug blowing out in flight, Ortberg took responsibility and vowed to fix the problems on the factory floor.

“It’s unacceptable that an aircraft left our factory without that door plug properly installed,” Ortberg told the Senate panel, adding, “and let me just make that perfectly clear, that can never, never happen again.”

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Since the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration has capped Boeing’s production of 737 MAX jetliners, its best selling plane in company history, at 38 planes per month. But Ortberg acknowledged in Wednesday’s hearing that the airplane manufacturer isn’t even producing planes at that rate yet, and is about two years behind in delivering ordered 737 MAX airplanes to its airline customers.

Under questioning, Ortberg acknowledged that he’d like to eventually increase the rate of production to 38 by the end of the year, but he insisted the company is not in a rush to do so, nor is he pressuring factory employees to speed up their work.

“Look, I want to be clear, I’ve not provided financial guidance to Wall Street for the performance of the company, I’ve not provided guidance on how many aircraft we’re going to deliver, I’ve gone and gotten financial coverage so that we can allow our production system to heal,” Ortberg said. “I’m not pressuring the team to go fast. I’m pressuring the team to do it right.”

Boeing’s safety protocols and lax safety culture were already under intense scrutiny following the crashes of two 737 Max passenger jets just five months apart in 2018 and 2019 that killed a total of 346 people.

Several family members of those killed in the crashes attended the hearing. They held up photos of their brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and children who died.

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Many say they want Boeing and the company’s top officials, especially those involved in the design and certification process of the 737 Max, held criminally accountable for the aircraft’s design and production flaws and for deceiving safety regulators.

Ortberg told senators Wednesday that the company is in talks with the Justice Department in hopes of reaching a revised plea agreement to resolve a criminal fraud charge. Boeing is accused of misleading the FAA about a flawed flight control system that investigators blame in part for causing the MAX crashes.

“I want this resolved as fast as anybody,” Ortberg told the committee. “Hopefully, we’ll have a new agreement here soon.”

Last July, the company agreed to plead guilty to one count of criminal fraud conspiracy and to pay a $243 million fine and an additional $455 million on compliance and safety programs. But in December, the Texas federal judge overseeing the base rejected the deal, and last week, he set a June 23 trial date for the company.

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Video: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting

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Video: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting

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The New York Times sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office for an exclusive interview just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis. Our White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs explains how the president reacted to the shooting.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov and Coleman Lowndes

January 8, 2026

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Community reacts to ICE shooting in Minnesota. And, RFK Jr. unveils new food pyramid

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Community reacts to ICE shooting in Minnesota. And, RFK Jr. unveils new food pyramid

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today’s top stories

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman, yesterday. Multiple observers captured the shooting on video, and community members demanded accountability. Minnesota law enforcement officials and the FBI are investigating the fatal shooting, which the Trump administration says was an act of self-defense. Meanwhile, the mayor has accused the officer of reckless use of power and demanded that ICE get out of Minneapolis.

People demonstrate during a vigil at the site where a woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier in the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026. An immigration officer in Minneapolis shot dead a woman on Wednesday, triggering outrage from local leaders even as President Trump claimed the officer acted in self-defense. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey deemed the government’s allegation that the woman was attacking federal agents “bullshit,” and called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducting a second day of mass raids to leave Minneapolis.

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  • 🎧 Caitlin Callenson recorded the shooting and says officers gave Good multiple conflicting instructions while she was in her vehicle. Callenson says Good was already unresponsive when officers pulled her from the car. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the officer was struck by the vehicle and acted in self-defense. In the video NPR reviewed, the officer doesn’t seem to be hit and was seen walking after he fired the shots, NPR’s Meg Anderson tells Up First. Anderson says it has been mostly peaceful in Minneapolis, but there is a lot of anger and tension because protesters want ICE out of the city.

U.S. forces yesterday seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the north Atlantic between Iceland and Britain after a two-week chase. The tanker was originally headed to Venezuela, but it changed course to avoid the U.S. ships. This action comes as the Trump administration begins releasing new information about its plans for Venezuela’s oil industry.

  • 🎧 It has been a dramatic week for U.S. operations in Venezuela, NPR’s Greg Myre says, prompting critics to ask if a real plan for the road ahead exists. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that the U.S. does have a strategy to stabilize Venezuela, and much of it seems to involve oil. Rubio said the U.S. would take control of up to 50 million barrels of oil from the country. Myre says the Trump administration appears to have a multipronged strategy that involves taking over the country’s oil, selling it on the world market and pressuring U.S. oil companies to enter Venezuela.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released new dietary guidelines for Americans yesterday that focus on promoting whole foods, proteins and healthy fats. The guidance, which he says aims to “revolutionize our food culture,” comes with a new food pyramid, which replaces the current MyPlate symbol.

  • 🎧 “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid,” Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert who was on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tells NPR’s Allison Aubrey. Gardner says the new food structure, which features red meat and saturated fats at the top, contradicts decades of evidence and research. Poor eating habits and the standard American diet are widely considered to cause chronic disease. Aubrey says the new guidelines alone won’t change people’s eating habits, but they will be highly influential. This guidance will shape the offerings in school meals and on military bases, and determine what’s allowed in federal nutrition programs.

Special series

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Trump has tried to bury the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR built a visual archive of the attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. “Chapter 4: The investigation” shows how federal investigators found the rioters and built the largest criminal case in U.S. history.

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Political leaders, including Trump, called for rioters to face justice for their actions on Jan. 6. This request came because so few people were arrested during the attack. The extremists who led the riot remained free, and some threatened further violence. The government launched the largest federal investigation in American history, resulting in the arrest of over 1,500 individuals from all 50 states. The most serious cases were made by prosecutors against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. For their roles in planning the attack against the U.S., some extremists were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Take a look at the Jan. 6 prosecutions by the numbers, including the highest sentence received.

To learn more, explore NPR’s database of federal criminal cases from Jan. 6. You can also see more of NPR’s reporting on the topic.

Deep dive

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Trump takes 325 milligrams of daily aspirin, which is four times the recommended 81 milligrams of low-dose aspirin used for cardiovascular disease prevention. The president revealed this detail in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published last week. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that anyone over 60 not start a daily dose of aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease if they don’t already have an underlying problem. The group said it’s reasonable to stop preventive aspirin in people already taking it around age 75 years. Trump is 79. This is what you should know about aspirin and cardiac health:

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  • 💊 Doctors often prescribe the low dose of aspirin because there’s no benefit to taking a higher dose, according to a large study published in 2021.
  • 💊 Some people, including adults who have undergone heart bypass surgery and those who have had a heart attack, should take the advised dose of the drug for their entire life.
  • 💊 While safer than other blood thinners, the drug — even at low doses — raises the risk of bleeding in the stomach and brain. But these adverse events are unlikely to cause death.

3 things to know before you go

When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.

When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.

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  1. Young, terminally ill ants will send out an altruistic “kill me” signal to worker ants, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. With this strategy, the sick ants sacrifice themselves for the good of their colony.
  2. In this week’s Far-Flung Postcards series, you can spot a real, lone California sequoia tree in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris. Napoleon III transformed the park from a former landfill into one of the French capital’s greenest escapes.
  3. The ACLU and several authors have sued Utah over its “sensitive materials” book law, which has now banned 22 books in K-12 schools. Among the books on the ban list are The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (via KUER)

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

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Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.

This morning, we learned that an ICE officer shot and killed someone in Minneapolis. We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV. And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.

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Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.

By Jiawei Wang

January 8, 2026

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