WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has notified Congress that it is taking the first steps to possibly reopen the shuttered U.S. Embassy in Venezuela as it explores restoring relations with the South American country following the U.S. military raid that ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro.
In a notice to lawmakers dated Monday and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the State Department said it was sending in a regular and growing contingent of temporary staffers to conduct “select” diplomatic functions.
“We are writing to notify the committee of the Department of State’s intent to implement a phased approach to potentially resume Embassy Caracas operations,” the department said in separate but identical letters to 10 House and Senate committees.
The notification, sent to Capitol Hill just two days before Secretary of State Marco Rubio i s due to testify on Venezuela before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the staffers would live and work in a temporary facility while the existing embassy compound is brought up to standard.
It is the first formal notice of the administration’s intent to re-open the embassy in Caracas. Such a move would be key to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have been broken since March 2019 when the embassy was shuttered.
The Trump administration has moved slowly but surely to try to normalize ties with Maduro's successor and current acting President Delcy Rodríguez. However, doing so would require the U.S. to revoke its decision to recognize the Venezuelan parliament elected in 2015 as the legitimate government.
Rodríguez on Tuesday said her government and the Trump administration “have established respectful and courteous channels of communication” since Jan. 3, when Maduro was captured.
She did not address the U.S. government’s first steps to possibly reopen its embassy, but during her televised remarks from a public hospital tour, Rodríguez said she is working with President Donald Trump and Rubio to set “a working agenda.”
Shortly after the military operation that deposed Maduro, a small team from the Venezuela Affairs Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, traveled to Caracas to do an initial survey and appraise the prospects for re-opening the embassy.
Last week, the department named a Bogota-based career U.S. diplomat to serve as the charge d’affaires for Venezuela. In its notification, the department said the first phase would be the expanded deployment of temporary staff to Caracas.
“To support increased temporary duty personnel and the potential resumption of embassy operations, the Department of State may also need to open an interim or temporary facility in Caracas, Venezuela, to accommodate temporary duty personnel or operations while the existing facilities are brought to serviceable condition,” it said.
These diplomats would perform limited “select duties,” including security and management in the first phase, but gradually expand their work “to include consular, political, economic, management, security, and public diplomacy.” In addition, the Venezuela Affairs Unit now located in Bogota would move to Caracas.
Asked about the notice, the State Department replied that it is "is taking steps to prepare for the potential reopening of the embassy in Caracas should that decision be made. The congressional notification is part of that process to allow for those preparations to take place.”
Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks after the signing of a Board of Peace charter during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Transportation Safety Board members were deeply troubled Tuesday over years of ignored warnings about helicopter traffic dangers and other problems, long before an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk collided a year ago, killing 67 people near Washington, D.C.
The placement of a helicopter route in the approach path of Reagan National Airport’s secondary runway created a dangerous airspace and a lack of regular safety risk reviews made it worse, the board said. That was a key factor in the crash along with air traffic controllers’ over reliance on asking helicopter pilots to avoid other aircraft.
Throughout the daylong hearing, investigators emphasized the history of missed opportunities to address the risks. Those include the Federal Aviation Administration denying a 2023 request by a regional supervisor to reduce air traffic at Reagan and the failures to relocate the helicopter route or warn pilots more about the dangers after an eerily similar near miss in 2013.
“I’m sorry for you, as these pages of these reports are written in your family members' blood,” board member Todd Inman told the audience. “I’m sorry that we have to be here.”
Family members listened intently during the hearing. Some were escorted out, including two in tears, as an animation of the flights was displayed on video screens. Others wore black shirts bearing the names of first responder units.
“The negligence of not fixing things that needed to be fixed killed my brother and 66 other people. So I’m not very happy,” Kristen Miller-Zahn, who watched from the front row, said during a break.
Victims’ families say they hope there’s meaningful change in response to the long list of recommendations the NTSB listed Tuesday. The measures seek to improve training and staffing at airports while strengthening safety standards. The recommendations are designed to strengthen a culture of safety at the FAA and Army and reduce the risk of a similar midair collision.
Before hearing from investigators, Inman said “systemic issues across multiple organizations,” not an error by any individual, caused the tragedy.
Everyone aboard the jet, flying from Wichita, Kansas, and the helicopter died when the two aircraft collided and plummeted into the icy Potomac River. It was the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001, and the victims included 28 members of the figure skating community.
The Federal Aviation Administration last week made some changes permanent to ensure helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace around the airport.
NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said she couldn’t believe the FAA didn’t realize the helicopter route in use during the crash didn’t provide adequate separation from planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway. She noted that the FAA had refused to add detailed information about helicopter routes to pilots' charts so they could better understand the risks, and it wouldn't change the helicopter route even after a near miss in 2013.
“We know over time concerns were raised repeatedly, went unheard, squashed — however you want to put it — stuck in red tape and bureaucracy of a very large organization,” Homendy said. “Repeated recommendations over the years.”
Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, said it's troubling to hear how many times the FAA failed to act.
“It was just a shocking dereliction of duty by the FAA. And they have so much work to be done to fix it. And just from my background, I don’t know if the people there are up to it,” Schiavo said.
But just Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a plan to reorganize the FAA and create one single safety office that can track concerns agencywide and enforce the same standards instead of the fragmented approach taken by different silos within FAA.
NTSB investigators said the Army and FAA weren’t sharing all safety data with each other before the crash, and that Army helicopter pilots often weren’t even aware when they were involved in a near-miss around Reagan.
NTSB human performance investigator Katherine Wilson said an air traffic controller felt a “little overwhelmed” when traffic volume increased to 10 aircraft about 10 to 15 minutes before the collision, but then “felt the volume was manageable when one or two helicopters left the airspace.”
Yet about 90 seconds before the collision, Wilson said, “traffic volume increased to a maximum of 12 aircraft consisting of seven airplanes and five helicopters. Radio communication showed that the local controller was shifting focus between airborne, ground and transiting aircraft.”
The workload “reduced his situational awareness,” Wilson said.
NTSB investigators showed a video animation to demonstrate how difficult it would have been for the pilots in both aircraft to spot the other amid the lights of Washington. The animation also showed how the windshields of both aircraft and the helicopter crew’s night vision goggles restricted views.
Ahead of the hearing, Rachel Feres, who lost her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife and two young daughters, said she was hoping for “clarity and urgency” from the NTSB process.
No one else, she said, should have to “wake up to hear that an entire branch of their family tree is gone, or their wife is gone or the child is gone.”
Whether that happens depends on how Congress, the Army and the Trump administration respond after the hearing. A bill, that Homendy has endorsed, would require aircraft to have advanced locator systems to help avoid collisions. The senators who introduced it have said they believe their proposal would address many of the concerns NTSB raised over the past year.
Even before Tuesday, the NTSB had already spelled out many key factors that contributed to the crash. Investigators said controllers in the Reagan tower had been overly reliant on asking pilots to spot other aircraft and maintain visual separation.
The night of the crash, the controller approved the Black Hawk's request to do that twice. However, the investigation has shown that the helicopter pilots likely never spotted the American Airlines plane as the jet circled to land on the little-used secondary runway.
In a statement, the FAA said safety remains its top priority. It has reduced hourly plane arrivals at Reagan airport from 36 to 30 and worked to increase staff in the tower. The agency said it has 22 certified controllers in the tower and eight more in training.
“We will diligently consider any additional recommendations” from the NTSB, the FAA said.
Several high-profile crashes and close calls followed the D.C. collision, alarming the flying public. But NTSB statistics show that the total number of crashes last year was the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, with 1,405 nationwide.
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and White reported from Detroit.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators William Bramble, from left, Captain Van McKenny and Caleb Wagner speak during the hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over a NTSB hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
People attend the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the midair aircraft collision that killed 67 people near Washington Reagan National Airport, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over the NTSB fact-finding hearing on the DCA midair collision accident, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presides over the NTSB fact-finding hearing on the DCA midair collision accident, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Materials Engineer Mike Meadows looks at training samples on a microelectronic microscope in the Materials Laboratory of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), speaks with journalists during a tour of the NTSB's laboratories, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
FILE - Crosses are seen at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the plane crash in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
