U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference at Newark Airport in New Jersey on Monday to talk about the government shutdown, which is currently on its sixth day. And it was filled with misinformation about why the government has shut down and what it’s going to take to open things back up.
If the shutdown continues, air traffic controllers won’t get their paychecks on time next week but will still be required to work, as they’re deemed essential employees. The workers have been promised that they’ll get back pay whenever the government opens again, but it’s unclear when that might happen since there’s no deal in sight.
And Duffy is trying to blame the Democrats, even though Republicans control both the House and the Senate as well as the presidency. Duffy claims that Democrats won’t vote for the Republican bill because they want health care for undocumented immigrants.
“Just keep the government open and funded, and we have time to continue the conversation. But to be held hostage for healthcare for illegals, I don’t think makes sense,” Duffy said.
The claim that Democrats are fighting for health care for “illegals” isn’t true, as countless articles have pointed out. In reality, Democrats want funding restored for Medicaid that was cut by President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” back in July. About 1.4 million legal immigrants will lose their health care, according to KFF.
Democrats are also trying to restore Affordable Care Act subsidies that were cut under the bill. Premiums are expected to rise by 100% or more for many of the 24 million Americans who buy ACA coverage, according to KFF. Employers are warning that everyone is about to pay much higher insurance premiums next year, with an average increase of about 9%, according to the New York Times.
The reality is that Republicans have cut essential services and attempted to dictate the content of bills without any form of compromise with the Democrats, who are needed to pass legislation that requires 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans need at least 8 votes from Senate Democrats to reopen the government. And the “take it or leave it” approach isn’t working for Republicans.
There’s also the question of whether any concessions the Democrats may be able to extract in any deal to reopen the government would be honored, since President Trump has unilaterally decided to cut things like USAID, against the wishes of Congress and long-established laws. Trump has been practicing something called impoundment, which is the theory that presidents can just not spend money that’s been allocated by Congress. A law was passed in 1974 to combat Richard Nixon’s excessive use of impoundment, and many members of the Trump regime reportedly believe Trump doesn’t need to abide by the law.
The money that’s currently working its way through the system, in the Department of Transportation and elsewhere, is going to dry up very soon. Duffy said that funding for the Essential Air Service, a program dating back to the 1970s that provides federal funding to small and regional airports, was going to run out on Thursday, but DOT found money to keep it up through Sunday.
The Essential Air Service program was started in order to subsidize unprofitable routes that airlines wouldn’t otherwise service, but there’s been controversy over the program over the decades. Trump has paid lip service to the program, though Republicans recently proposed slashing the Essential Air Service by $308 million, according to Bloomberg.
The president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the union that represents air traffic controllers, stressed that it’s not unsafe for Americans to get on a plane right now, even with all the chaos. Nick Daniels appeared on Fox News over the weekend to talk about the shutdown.
“It is safe to fly,” Daniels said on Sunday. “The American men and women that serve as our air traffic controllers, they’re showing up to work. They’re going to do every single thing they can.”
During the press conference on Monday, Duffy said there had been a slight uptick in air traffic controllers calling in sick and explained that he didn’t want any of them to need to find second jobs like driving for Uber. The last government shutdown, which happened in 2019 during Trump’s first term, saw more and more air traffic controllers call in sick as it dragged on an people missed paychecks. That shutdown lasted for 35 days.
Duffy was asked by reporters about disruptions with TSA, though that agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security and not the Department of Transportation. For its part, TSA has maintained very similar talking points about the Democrats being to blame for this shutdown.
“Beginning midnight October 1st, funding for much of the Federal Government will have expired due to the partisan politics of left-wing politicians,” TSA tweeted last week.
“While TSA is prepared to continue screening about 2.5M passengers a day, an extended shutdown could mean longer wait times at airports. We kindly ask for our passengers’ patience during this time,” TSA wrote.
Another complicating factor in the negotiations between Democrats and Republicans is President Trump’s continued invasion of U.S. cities with masked men who are abducting anyone who doesn’t look white enough, along with his use of the National Guard. A judge ordered Trump not to use the Oregon National Guard to deploy to Portland so he called up National Guard troops from California to do it anyway. Something similar has happened in Chicago, with Trump calling up troops from Texas.
It doesn’t look like there will be any end to the government shutdown soon, but it’s unclear what would break up the logjam during these unprecedented times. Trump posted an AI video of himself last week tossing a “Trump 2028” hat onto Hakeem Jeffries’ head. And another one of OMB Director Russ Vought as the Grim Reaper, coming to slash jobs.
All of which is to say that it’s hard to take the Republicans seriously as they warn about vital government jobs in one breath and joke about firing as many people as another in the next.
