Boeing should face some major fines for this, and additional regulation is going to be needed to make sure this doesn't happen in the future.

This all seems to come down to the fact they wanted to avoid having to retrain pilots ($$$), so these automation changes were kept in the dark.

The crew before them dealt with this same problem but they successfully cut out the trim system. They got lucky and they should have been more vocal in expressing the fault outside of just a post-flight note about it.

The fact that the 737 can auto-trim itself beyond manual elevator authority, due to a SINGLE faulty AOA sensor, is mind-boggling and scary.