US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Anyone who calls all public sector people lazy or entitled, remember ATCs are government workers do work extremely hard and most log extensive overtime. These are government workers and they are American Heros through and through
Wonder how that changed the perception and the desire to become an ATC. Did it have a measurable impact, with folks avoiding that line of work. Or, it hasn't really made much of a difference? The idea is if many are retiring but we're graduating or hiring just as many or more, that's not that bad.
The problem is that tax collection also happens with congressional approval.
Individual airports should be capable of financing their local ATC as they see fit, be it their own airport fees or, IDK, a surcharge on hamburgers sold in the local McD or a gift from a wealthy sponsor; and they should only have a duty to maintain certain technical standards.
See: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-108162
And I do not use "fucking around" lightly. The FAA's repeatedly delayed and ineffective upgrade effort makes even the original healthcare.gov look like the Apollo program.
In the US system, any revenue collection needs to be authorized by Congress. In fact, it is one of the arguments currently being argued in front of the Supreme Court about the tariffs.
It would make routing a tonne more complex tho
If the fees are paid by any pilot passing through the ARTCC's zone, regardless of whether they use ATC, then it wouldn't be fair for the single engine piper putzing around over his backyard.
If the fees are paid by only pilots who use ATC, then pilots will stop voluntarily using ATC, leading to decreased overall safety.
This is a silly decision because transportation networks are important for the rest of the country to be able to be economically viable.
What if you collect too much? The fund is subject to appropriations.
> financing their local ATC as they see fit
We already use mileage based overflight fees:
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/international_aviation/overf...
You lower fees the next year.
Is there some reason you _don't_ want this system to have slightly more funding than it "needs?"
Quarterly/annual financial reports are available at their site:
* https://www.navcanada.ca/en/corporate/investor-relations/fin...
* https://www.navcanada.ca/en/corporate/service-charges.aspx
https://globalnews.ca/news/11354998/air-traffic-controller-s...
I wonder if this is because bigger airports near major cities and businesses would basically be subsidizing tons of airports in the middle of nowhere, and some people don't want to admit that?
There are something like 530 ATC towers in the USA out of 5000 or so public airports. 20,000 if we include anything that can be described as an airstrip.
Your wider point still stands though, probably something like 20% of the airports handle 80% of the traffic.
This ensures that the system is self sustaining. Also as demand increases then revenue to run the system would also increase.
Doesn’t it take two to have a disagreement?
No, they would be glad to increase fares so that the flying customers pay for the service themselves. Currently, ATC is subsidized by all tax payers. Your method moves the burden to only those that pay for fares. I'm just pointing it out not saying it is good/bad.
US airlines made approximately zero total profit from 1990-2023.
> ...it's much more efficient than the alternatives
I guess this depends on the definition of efficient and for what measurement.
And if you add the value to the customers, then it's through the roof.
Maybe the reverse is more clear: if air travel didn't exist, it would have a huge economic impact; a clear proof of the value creation. Airlines just happen to capture essentially 0% of it.
Trains carry much more weight, are more fuel efficient, are safer, generally experience fewer delays and cancelations, and door-to-door are faster for shorter trips (<450 miles).
Safety: since 1964, the Shinkansen has carried over 10 billion passengers without a single passenger fatality from a crash or derailment.
Speed: for trips < 450 miles, trains win because of security, ATC, taxiing, etc.
The majority of travel is not over water. It may be that trains' other advantages are preferable even for longer trips where a train would be slower.
For whom? Historically, aviation has not been a profitable industry over its lifetime[0]. The companies that still fly are basically just a combination of "survivorship bias" and "newbies still somehow subsidized".
We're looking at today's companies like you'd look at the half-season cast of Squid Game and thinking "this group seems to be thriving, I guess". That only works if you disregard everything that's happened before now and what will likely happen for the rest of the season.
[0]: https://aviationstrategy.aero/newsletter/Jun-2015/1/Airline-...
Efficiency by what metric? Energy per distance travelled? Energy per kilogram moved (per kilometer?)? Time? CO2 emissions?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
* https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
For distances <120 km, cars are often quicker than trains, and for >900km planes are, but in between trains are often quickest (assuming infrastructure is actually present).
Well they are the ones flying why do I have to subsidize them?
I'm obviously borderline joking, but you get the point.
This is a fundamental failure state that it is impossible for any realistic governmental structure to protect against. The best we can do is put in place safeguards to make it harder.
And...we did. It's just that over the past 40 years or so (and increasingly so over the past 15ish), those safeguards have been systematically eroded by the Republican Party, both socially and legally.
Is the number of retiring ATCs higher than normal? I assume it is, but the article doesn't mention the baseline. It's hard for me to understand the scale of the issue from this article alone.
https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
> Entry-level applicants must complete required training courses and spend several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. Applicants are paid while in training. After graduating the academy, individuals are placed in locations across the country and must gain 2-3 years additional training, both classroom and on-the-job experience, before becoming a certified professional controller. This rigorous training includes close supervision and evaluation by senior controllers that ensures controllers are competent, professional, know their airspace environment and can deal with the pressures and high pace of the job.
Controllers in training have been quitting because of the shutdown.
Flights to Los Angeles Airport halted due to air traffic controller shortage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45715771 - October 2025
> The shutdown is having real consequences, as some students at the controller academy have already decided to abandon the profession because they don’t want to work in a job they won’t be paid for, Duffy said. That will only make it harder for the FAA to hire enough controllers to eliminate the shortage, since training takes years. He said that the government is only a week or two away from running out of money to pay students at the academy.
Air traffic controller shortages cause widespread flight delays amid government shutdown - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/air-traffic-controller-... - November 1st, 2025
> “Currently nearly 50 percent of major air traffic control facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 90 percent of air traffic controllers are out at New York–area facilities,” the FAA said in a statement posted on X on Friday evening.
(think in systems)
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
It’s not unique to the US however, I think maybe we are all approaching the end of the line for current political/civil systems without further work that no one seems interested in taking.
The tail isn’t wagging the dog anymore, the tail(s) are the dog at this point.
The shutdown is a temporary budget squabble in a stable democracy; a banal political stunt that has happened every few years for the past few decades.
Rome’s dysfunction meant civil wars, assassinations, generals seizing poWer, private armies, and uprising (in a fundamentally different society where, incidentally, over 25% of the population was slaves.)
There has been over 2000 years of history since Rome… when a the only analogy a person can come up with is some half-baked allusion to the Roman Empire/Republic it’s a good bet said person lacks a sense of history, knowledge of current events, and common sense.
Sorry to be harsh.
I expect if you don’t think this is going to get bad you’re not paying attention.
Feel free to panic and tear your hair out… that’s what both sides do. Boring. The post, however, make some pretentious analogy to the Roman Republic. The analogy was silly. That’s all. It’s just an annoying variant of Godwins law: Rome or Hitler… the only two analogies available to those ignorant of history.
I made an observation that the present day is rhyming with history. You’re now raising Godwin’s law.
Good job.
You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.
It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
The judicial branch is composed of Judges who are confirmed by the Senate… not the executive branch.
And there are no ‘Legislative branch’ appointees.
I assume you mean the executive branch is making appointments to the executive branch? Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
At this point, I’d even prefer the Girl Scouts.
I’d classify things like FDA/FAA as legislative parts of the governments but maybe that’s wrong.
Also I don’t see other governments shutting down regularly with a cheer squad saying yeah this is nothing to worry about, our democracy is 100% A OK.
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.
(Note this works identically well regardless of which side of the aisle you read it as being about.)
The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
> If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government.
How is that in any way shape or form “existential”? Existential means “if they fail they cease to exist or matter”, not “if they fail they don’t get to whatever the fuck they want”.
They've made a pretty unprecedented bet on unilateral party-line action and the legislative branch significantly deferring to the executive. I'm sure they're concerned about what the party looks like trying to transition back to a more normal way of doing business, especially given what their voters are now primed to expect. I agree this should not be existential, but I also don't understand congressional Republicans putting themselves in this situation in the first place, so clearly I'm not looking at the situation the same way they are.
Also, there are higher emergencies than allowing planes to fly.
The last 10-20 years feel like a massive lost opportunity to invest in some of these improvements and forward-thinking planning. In the last few years, it feels like catastrophic decision after decision.
I can't help but look at the state of America and feel like I'm looking at an inexperienced amateur player taking a relatively strong game position and slowly throwing it away. Crumbling infrastructure, weak citizen cohesion and education, intentional weakening of our own national and cyber security in more than one way, not to mention all the harm being done to our reputation and relationships with other countries.
It feels like we are in a weaker position then ever: militaristically, economically, scientifically, and so on. Meanwhile the threats of China and Russia and what could happen in the next few years are quite concerning.
I'm pretty pessimistic right now. I know the world and the US is not as simple as a strategy game, but tons of principles from strategy games well-understood by experienced players sure could help with more wise use of resources. Attention and time are also incredibly valuable resources that feel like they are being thrown away right now.
Getting into a major conflict could help unify The People and put focus on more important problems in the country, but as far as I'm concerned, I think all the other NATO countries would be the ones holding the war effort together. I'm just ranting at this point though.
There are a lot of problems that can be solved over decades, but we can no longer even fathom such a thing, much less put together the will power to see such projects through.
I agree though, the next 3 years are going to be him insisting things are great. China will probably try for Taiwan after he leaves and he'll just continue to say things like they wouldn't have done it if he was in office. And sure that's partly true, because why not just wait a year until he's gone, then China can really split the electorate on what we should do.
Politicians should have to play several hundred hours of 4X games (Civ 4/5/6/7, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) before they're allowed to run for office.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X
If they can't beat some of these videos at the highest difficulty settings they should not be allowed to break things IRL.
On a flip side - politics is deeply social game. My mental image of gamers is very opposite of social (yes I know many games nowadays are social).
On the flip-flip side, the US has a president which seems to have a high 'charisma score' and very little grasp on reality.
Being able to wrap your head around the interconnectedness of resources in something as simple as a video game is just one factor. I'd like to know how much candidates can deal with the complexities with something as 'simple' as video game society: they could suck at it, and that could be fine if they have other qualities, but it could be a useful data point.
The thing is, a game is a tool with a surface-level set of rules, and a ton of implicit belief systems of how the (game) world works.
You could say someone might become a shrewd negotiator by playing Monopoly, but that is based on a narrow set of winning negotiation strategies which either the game builders have consciously built their game around, or emerge due to their cultural/personal biases or even come up unexpectedly from the rules of the game.
So filtering your leader(s) this way requires agreement that the ideology promoted by the game(s) is what the people want to live under.
Civilization, for one, has scientific and cultural victory conditions, and not just military. Stellaris takes economic and technological factors into account.
But the main skill in being able to "win" is the ability to balance various needs of the population: economic, technology, happiness, crime, foreign threats. And it may not even be able "winning" but about how you play the game: all potential candidates could be given several randomly generated seed, and their gameplay is available for evaluation. Some seeds could be militaristic species, others pacifists; some capitalists, some collectivists; etc, with the expectation that you don't (necessarily) play how you'd like the society to be, but role play as the species at it is: so you may be a pacifist, but you have to play as a militarist if that's what the species is in-game.
If you can't wrap your head around the interconnectedness of resources in something as simple as a video game, what chance do you have IRL?
Further, this can be a filter and not the filter.
Countries used to routinely go on domination quests for land and resources. They used to go find exotic lands and claim them as their own. They used to harvest resources and enslave the losers.
Now, not so much. If you watched it zoomed out as a game, you'd assume the powerful players all got bored with it and gave up.
Of course, realizing it's not a game but real people, you realize the world collectively is probably in a better place. But it also means powerful countries giving up power, which is weird to see happen.
This is not a golden age to look back on fondly. That was colonialism. That was the world wars. That was the bleakest era in human history.
That doesn't mean power games don't exist anymore though. The order that prevents regression to the above is held in place by peaceful competition and a threat that nobody wants to relive those horrific experiences. Yet the leaders lived through these horrors are gone, replaced by their children who seem to not have a healthy fear of the depths of depravity humans can fall to. Instead focused on personal wealth accumulation to the exclusion of all else, and if the structures that prevent global war are in the way of that well they need to go.
It's simply not in the United States' best interest to go colonizing militarily, nor is it in other countries' if the sole super power is providing stability.
Some of this is due to changes in technology. For example as farming improved with the green revolution shear land area counted for less, and shipping and refrigeration allow longer distance imports.
So rather than land area control you see more localized strategic resource control. Things like mines, oil fields, shipping lanes etc.
To me the most wild thing about our current circumstance is the abstraction away from the real with financialization. Pretending that money basically has unlimited optionality and liquidity in the future without having to manage, maintain and develop the resources, capabilities, infrastructure, and environment for the long future not just the next few quarters.
Especially when it comes to investing for retirement. So much people are delegating their excess to grow the "market" which by in large is destroying the foundations for that very retirement by chasing maximal growth of money while destroying the underlying systems (healthcare, housing, social and environmental stability).
Maybe this is the best we can do due to adversarial constraints and the current system state. But that is a pretty depressing thought.
Ultimately I think where we end up after his second term is he leaves, he says he did a great job and his supporters believe him. But we have problems. And he has this fantastic blessing of controlling all 3 branches of government, which he is wasting by grabbing power and solving NONE of them. So really we just wasted 4 years. And where the world is right now it's probably the worst 4 years we could ever waste.
On the other hand, it's not only USA really.
Russia with their czarist structure of power and control hasn't really had an economy that's more sustainable than USSR ever pretended to have, and their government keeps digging the country further in the grave as we speak. Russia can be a nuisance to its neighbours by their size alone but as their failing offensive in Ukraine shows they don't really give much to worry about in their peer countries of similar size and position.
Europe is running around like a group of headless chicken pecking eachother with minimal ability to make decisions cohesively and in unison, and many larger European countries are trampling knee deep in the mud when you compare to their heydays.
China is indebted, lacking energy, yet wants to expand their projection of military power but having enough to do with their current neighbours and desperately needing to maintain trade relations around the world means that, at best, the ruling party can only think about it. Unlike some other peer nation states I think they just might ultimately be wise enough to understand their position themselves, too, despite the desire to posture hard.
Further, I can name many countries that are, in relative terms, doing similarly stupid things now that they didn't do before and few that have actually managed to preserve some common sense but they're either small enough to not matter a squat on the global stage or they aren't interested in global power in the first place.
Not that USA isn't actively destroying the very relations that did help them extend their power across the globe cheaply through allies, working to weaken the dollar, and in internal affairs shooting themselves in the foot at a rate that could make even Russia jealous, but USA is still pretty good in comparison to their competition. There's no serious contender for USA at the moment and won't be any time soon even if USA keeps hitting even lower and lower bars of statehood.
I'm more pessimistic than optimistic about the future but the reason is that it seems the world as a whole has enshittified themselves down to a level that would have seemed even theoretically impossible by the key players only a few decades ago.
They also have a great advantage in their communistic structure. If they decide on a big project, pivot, allocation of resources for long-term strategy, they just do it. You don't have to convince citizens or states. They just do it if it makes strategic sense.
Those benefits often seem to outweigh the issues of citizen happiness, cohesion, government support. China has gotten incredibly good at controlling their citizens such that dissent seems like a pretty small issue for them to deal with.
As I understand, China is facing some difficulty scaling up food production for strong food security. I'm not familiar with their issues regarding power generation, but I'm curious to know more. While I'm not surprised they are indebted, like almost every other country in the world, I don't see that stopping them from ignoring the rest of the world when they don't think anyone else can stop them. Whenever tensions reach a breaking point.
On top of all that, China seems to have a lot of good talent, particular in the technology sector. We are at the precipice of an AI and drone-enabled world war, and if a country were to make vast strides in that technology to get ahead of peers, the power differential could be quite scary. And if any country has the industry and resources to produce tons of such weapons at scale, I'd expect it to be China, maybe with some help from their allies.
That or you pay the ones who’ve resigned a shit load of money.
It astounds me how quickly they are breaking things that took decades or more to build.
Interpretation: none from me. Don’t shoot the messenger.
In a way we have an idea what to expect. When Reagan fired the controllers in 1981/2, AFAIK there were no major incidents with air travel. But I think Military Controllers were brought in to cover the holes the firing left.
This time, I thought I saw Military Controllers are unable to cover or were told not to cover. so I guess we will see how this plays out with a set of crazy people in charge of the US.
Gov't 401k is called TSP, and like regular 401k plans it's not accessible (without penalties) until you're 59 1/2. Social Security also has a minimum age (62) before you can start receiving benefits. ATC can access FERS earlier than other federal employees because of their mandatory retirement age (56) which is below MRA under FERS (57 for most people now). They can get their pension at age 50 with 20 years of ATC time or any age with 25 years of ATC time (some other services also get this benefit and count towards that).
And an important point there, because ATCs retire before 59 1/2 and before 62 by necessity (56 is the oldest they can be), they won't get their TSP or Social Security for several more years.
Pensions are being held up for people who are retiring right now as the people processing retirements are also furloughed (I don't think all, but it's impacted friends of mine with delays to processing). Retirements are already slow to process and occasionally people end up waiting 6+ months to get their pension (they should get back pay in that case, but it's still months without income).
He's jumping in front of the bullet by trying to stop SNAP under a goofy theory that Democrats actually care if people go hungry. Many Republicans have this strange but deeply-held crazy belief that Democrats are motivated by ideology rather than the same money that they themselves are motivated by, so they always think threatening to cut the baby in half will work.
And he's busy building a ballroom. People are really loving flights getting cancelled and more expensive, hard to blame that on immigrant fent terrorist antifa; and if there's anything that middle-class people hate, it's minor inconvenience.
Dems don't have to say anything (in fact it's better if they don't say anything) or do anything. Just watch the poll numbers go up and the donations from health insurers go up. All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks. But the Republicans are fighting to make it worse.
Um, no, we don't.
Remember recission panels? Remember not being able to get insurance if you had sleep apnea (aka pre-existing condition)? I can go on and on about exactly how insurance sucked shit before the ACA.
The ACA could be better, and it was supposed to be adjusted over time. The problem is that we've got an entire party in the US who sole solution to the problems in the ACA is "Destroy it all" without providing a single alternative or improvement.
From the very beginning they talked of "Death Panels", that quite literally already existed in insurance companies. And on zero basis, the ACA has no such thing!
Laws are irrelevant if they are not enforced. Laws are being very slowly or very selectively enforced these days, while some of the powers that be are flagrantly breaking laws.
> Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
Theoretically, yes. Just regular pay plus OT that they are owed. No bonus or extra compensation.
Also, most of these folks can fairly easily get low interest loans from banks or credit cards that will be due when they get back pay.
Part of this story is not being told, but I’m not sure what part.
Were these folks who were about to retire anyway?
Were these folks who plan on getting hired back when the government reopens?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the complete story is being told here (not necessarily with malice or intent).
Air traffic controllers are famously a group of people who were just mass fired for striking. These days the laws in the US actually protect the airlines from them by making it illegal for them to strike.
when an traffic controller quits, what job can they go to? clearly not another airport
It's a service provided to the public. Seems like a natural fit for being run by government. The only thing is this funding situation for this government is dumb. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
Er, to avoid it being used as leverage during government infighting?
I don't understand this part of your reasoning. It sounds like you are saying it is a service provided to the public therefore it is a natural fit for being run by the government. Do I understand your reasoning right?
Because if so: A lot of services are provided to the public. For example baking bread. Should every baker be a government employee?
With bread, maybe I only like certain types of bread. Maybe I don't want bread. It makes sense for there to be a market with diverse offerings. If bread inputs get expensive maybe everyone pivots to eating potatoes.
In contrast if you want to fly out of a major city there's one major airport, and you need air traffic control. It's a uniform service that is required. The same sort of market structure is not really viable.
This is very much not true. People who don’t own or operate aircraft don’t need air traffic control.
> and there's zero choices
Probably what you are saying here is that air traffic control is a natural monopoly. You can’t have two (or more) paralel systems issuing clearances at the same time in the same airspace. That would be madness.
But what I’m saying is not that we should have some crazy capitalist system where rival air traffic controllers compete with each other in the same airspace. What I’m talking about is a system where air traffic control services are provided by a private company. A private company which is funded by service charges to aircraft operators, and one whose operations are regulated by the government.
You can argue why that is not possible, but this is exactly how Canada’s air traffic control is organised. There the air traffic controllers are employed by a non-profit corporation which is funded by service charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada
Similarly air traffic controllers in the UK are employed by the NATS which is a public-private partnership.
Germany has a similar structure with Deutsche Flugsicherung, or switzerland with Skyguide (formerly known as Swisscontrol).
When you are arguing why it cannot work, you are arguing against all these examples.
Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense, tho possibly you still have the shutdowns of a union strike.
Kind of reminds me about how people slip up and occasionally call BC Ferries a crown corporation, and are corrected that no, actually BC Ferries is an independent, company, simply one with the sole monopoly contract to provide ferry service that is 100% owned by BC Ferry Authority, which is... owned by the Province and whose board is 44% selected by the Province (another 44% by municipalities, who are creatures of the Province).
(boy sure does sound like a crown corporation...)
Big benefit is to separate the regulator from the regulated entity. That alone could probably stop the kind of group thinking which let them route a busy helicopter route through a busy landing corridor with inadequate procedural controls.
Other big benefit is to make the flight operators pay directly for the services the flight operators need. We are not paying their fuel from taxes, why do we pay for air navigation services from taxes?
> Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense
That is why it is brought up, yes. That is the most direct benefit at this moment.
Also people who ride on airplanes.
It is a clear service which certain companies and individuals need. Why don’t we let them pay for it.
This is not some crazy fringe idea. This is how it works in Canada. Here are the current prices to operate a flight in or over Canada: https://www.navcanada.ca/en/customer-guide-to-charges---effe...
Are you flying a Boeing 747-400 from Seatle to London return overflying Canada? That will be $5,370.78 please. It consist of $66.10 for oceanic services and $5,304.68 for enroute services.
Are you flying an Embraer 175 from Halifax to St John return? Good on ya. That will be $1,608.04. Pleasure doing busines.
I mean, yeah, I do.
Also a very good point, especially given I have a brother-in-law who knows someone killed by a plane crashing into their home.
Now, should more productive parts of the country be subsidizing air travel in less productive parts of the country? That's for you to decide.
I would say "no", personally. In the absence of a subsidy, the network of the rural airports would likely become sparser, but the surviving ones would have better economy and, as a result, infrastructure too.
I can just imagine the hilarity if air-space was sold off to the highest bidder and then some of the smaller airports may decide to host advertising blimps in their share of the airspace and then charge plane companies extra to navigate around them.
This is a disaster in the making.
Recent history shows that a lot of the old rules, about persuasion and enabling actions, don't currently apply.
He’s really not a very skilled politician at all.
And of course, Trump is beyond deep fried, he’s a full blown dementia patient. He has no ability to navigate Congress. He even gave away his party’s leverage by fighting against SNAP payments, giving Democrats no reason to back down.
Fun fact, the only two presidents without government shutdowns since the modern budget process began have been Joe Biden and George W. Bush.
Joe Biden in particular was a master at navigating Congress and has relationships all over the place across the aisle. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is a really legitimate accomplishment in that sense.
Good faith could be assumed in some other countries, and those relationships could, subsuquently, be less vital. But that's not the political environment America has found itself in.
Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi were in their prime extremely shrewd strategic leaders.
Someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started off young and somewhat isolated but has quickly turned into someone who is one of the most important leaders of the party before age 40.
The impression I get is that Mike Johnson was not picked for his skills or connections, but because he was someone who his party’s factions didn’t have an existing hate relationship with.
You can say he refuses to compromise, but clearly so does the other side, hence the impasse.
Imagine trying to explain to Trump that you can't destroy the filibuster because too many of your colleagues might lose an election. It's like telling a five year old that he can't have desert because he hasn't eaten the vegetables. He doesn't want to eat the vegetables, you are a bad person because rather than agreeing with him you're acting as if he's wrong, which is inconceivable.
Some of Trump's advisors may have the idea that they can rig the 2026 elections and so it won't matter. A big problem is that some of these advisors also assured senators that they'd locked down 2020 and that didn't go so well.
To Trump this seems irrelevant. Why should he care about Susan Collins? She's not even hot, and hasn't given him any cool trinkets. So what if she loses to some Democrat? They're both losers, Trump is the ultimate and his people have told him that over 600% of people support Trump, if she loses that's her fault.
So that's a problem, a recurring problem and so far this term the solution has generally been to ignore Trump's useless suggestions but not do anything he explicitly forbids. Trouble is, Trump doesn't care about the shutdown but the at-risk Republican senators do care.
I also think he’s smart enough to realise people think he’s dumb. So he says scrap filibuster as a way to sow the seeds that there’s tension where there really isn’t.
Maybe it’s too much 4D chess but he is a master manipulator of media/public opinion.
AFAIK this kind of situation is a result of a novel interpretation by an AG of a much older law some time around 1980. I don't think it's ever been tested in court, and we'd operated for decades under the old interpretation before then.
Trump could just say "we're going back to the old interpretation" and at-minimum buy several months of runway while court challenges happened (if they even did). This would be among the least questionable "stretches" (to be very generous) of presidential power he'd exercised.
Then the trump administration said "funding allocations from Congress are limits, and we do not have to spend that much on these programs if there is not a need"
And then stopped funding things anyway.
Trump is hosting Great Gatsby parties, traveling, golfing, and doing everything except trying to end the shutdown. He doesn't seem to care that much that it is happening. And the entire reason it is happening is because Trump's Big Beautiful Bill did not contain Affordable Care Act subsidies.
It is incorrect to say that what is happening is common under all administrations. This dysfunction is uniquely Trumpian.
They're not really, especially at this scale. Since they became a thing when Carter was President, Biden and George W. Bush had 0. Reagan had 3, but only for 6 days total and George H. W. Bush had 1 for 3 days. Clinton had 2 for 28 days total and Obama had 1 for 16 days total.
Clinton and Obama's records are a bit more significant, but Trump so far across his 2 terms, 1 of which is less than a year in, has had 3 shutdowns for 77 total days so far. Or to put it another way, out of the 130 days of shutdown that have even happened since they became a thing 45 years ago, ~60% of them have happened in the 5 years Trump has been president. If you do the math, that's roughly 10x worse government uptime. Notably, those are also the only shutdowns that have happened with one party controlling the Presidency, the House, and the Senate.
I'm still not saying this is definitively the Trump administration's fault, but any way you look at it that is not a great record.
How is it not?
The budget requires 60 votes, not a simple majority. Thus it's up to the majority party to present a bill that will win 60 votes.
Some important stuff in major democracies is designed to require way more than simple majority.
In Italy, e.g. the president is elected by the parliament, but the quorum required is two thirds of votes.
This is very important because it forces all governments to find a suitable candidate that is as unbiased and trustable as possible by the overwhelming majority of the representatives.
While elections of the president can drag for very long, even for months, I can't but say we italians have been blessed with great presidents. Each one stepped up to represent italians and never political interests.
> The budget requires 60 votes, not a simple majority. Thus it's up to the majority party to present a bill that will win 60 votes.
It's up to the majority party to do so, but not up to the President to facilitate it, even if he's a member of the majority party. Of course he should help find a solution and has some responsibility if that doesn't happen. But Congressional Republicans could work out a compromise with Democrats with or without the President's involvement, and as long as they have enough votes to override a veto they can come up with a compromise even if the President actively opposes it.
This is only true if Congress treats the President just as the head of a co-equal branch of government, which is not always the case and is definitely not the case for current Congressional Republicans. The fact that they defer to the President so much effectively shifts more responsibility to the executive branch, but I'm not sure congress isn't still to blame even if they abdicate their responsibility.
Trump has called for the Senate to remove the filibuster, which would allow for the government to reopen with a simple majority instead of needing more votes from Democrats
One could say the only endgame is unilateral control
But this is an issue with Congress which Trump does not control. The Senate is not considering getting rid of the filibuster because of the threat its used in favor of Democrats after midterms
Republicans have to budge on this right? Health insurance is already dire in this country, you cant fuck it up even more. The working class is the biggest part of the citizenry, and we are in an affordability crisis
I have seen people who still don't seem to understand the (extremely) simple "there's no such thing as a free lunch" part of economics and genuinely still think that the tariffs are going to be paid purely by China, because apparently they don't realize that for-profit businesses bake all overhead (including taxes and tariffs) into the total cost. It really isn't that complicated, but I guess the distortion field around "owning the left" makes them turn off this logic.
I think you mean it shouldn't matter.
> A Representative represents everyone in their district
In theory, maybe; in practice, very much not; its one of the strongest arguments for having a system that has proportional representation (whether with small multimember districts or at-large proportionality or a hybrid system like Mixed Member Proportional.)
They need to start campaigning for midterms now, and to be generous towards those populist worker-friendly Republicans and especially those that are threats to Republican incumbents. That means campaigning on something other than illegal immigration and trans. It also means that shutdown misery will be part of what they'll be campaigning on, so everything Trump is doing now will backfire. He cut his base out from under him with H1Bs, Israel and Epstein, so as terrible as they are, Democrats have a chance to get to popularity parity or even turn the tables right now.
Trump also gasses when he starts losing control of the situation. He lost at the end of his last term because everything was going wrong; he looked tired, and like he had lost interest in the job completely. A dragged-out shutdown will weigh him down and bore him like covid did. He doesn't even care about ACA tax credits.
I think those areas would probably need air traffic controllers.
there are uncontrolled airports with runways large enough for jets.. like Alpine Wyoming.
[1] Just a tiny two seat thing, I don't come from billionaires, it wasn't a cool private jet.
putting aside weather that is true or not and just assume it to be true for the later argument
then it is the perfect chance to replace a public service the country depends on by a billionaire controlled private company
thats how you convert a country to an oligarchy, bit by bit replacing essential parts with entities privately owned and (most importantly) controlled by a few people so that a country "has to" depend on them to function and they can use it as leverage to force through their interests
to be fair, this might not be the intend here. A lot of the shutdown seem more blind ideological driven then well calculated, but it's a potential danger anyway
That's... concerning to anyone who has tried or witnessed a trivial rewrite. Let me hold some hope in the institutions that be to stop this from being hastily deployed.
kinda the norm for musk ideas
He is wrong about that.
That being said... there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick in terms of efficiency gains for the current system.
However, many smaller FBO-serving towers are staffed by Contract Controllers, who are employed by private companies holding FAA contracts.
These contract controllers generally continue to receive their pay during a shutdown, shielding them from the immediate financial crisis affecting their federal counterparts.
In the current electorate, Democrats are supported by a majority of both low-income and high-income voters. Republicans even it out by having a majority of the middle income voters, especially those without a college degree.
It didn't use to be like this. But now it is.
What happened to Elon Musk taking over Air Traffic Control? Whole new system? Grok controlled ATC?
Of course you’d still sometimes need a human in the loop, but you could get by with much less staff
It’s always the people with no experience in a domain thinking any profession can be automated away except theirs.
In many places most day-to-day atc operations are already automated and the work is largely data-entry/answering service on the radio. We’re starting to get to the point where speech recognition is better than humans, so it would be perfectly fine to have humans communicate routine atc stuff with a robot.
Of course we’ll need humans available to react to emergencies.
I read it as pajamas. And I bet you enjoy burgers with chips rather than fries.
But the point still stands.
While I agree that “pajamas” is the most common meaning of PJs, there is a certain socio-economic class in the US in which “PJs” is used far more often in speech to refer to private jets than pajamas.
I’m a “language guy”, and it was a new one to me when I started spending more time around people who were referring to, and often users of, PJs.
While the person you were responding to took a crass line, their linguistic intent was very clear to me.
> A similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. A comparison based on such similarity.
I don't want to spoil the suspense, but I'll say that I do see the logic in hoping that a quick fire would call everyone's attention to the fire hazard. What you're failing to ask here is "What could possibly go wrong with this plan?"
American Democracy appears to be the same as second generation wealth: unappreciated until gone. Make Functional Governance Great Again. I wish it were not so.
If the house burns down, we'll be both poor and surrounded (and led) by neo-Nazis.
But I agree that it's always been a pathetic cosplay. Most "patriots" I've met are by far the least patriotic and actively hate their fellow countrymen.
Islands do make easy targets, though—they’re hard to move and they’re hard to hide.
The imaginary people with the power to go take a private island in this fantasy scenario are the same people with the existing power to be on one.
How are you planning to go storm those beaches?
Anybody with a $200 drone and a chip on their shoulder. All I’m saying is: if there is widespread civil unrest, billionaires are going to find themselves with giant targets on their backs.
A desperate country with an extremely strong military is not a great situation for anyone.
I worry more. I am certain, for all bad things the US did, the multipolar world will be much much worse. You think the other power players are better? No way.
We helped Europe and Asia rebuild after WWII instead of conquering them. To the extent that our previous enemies in Germany and Japan now have some of the strongest economies in the world.
There have certainly been wars, often with dubious justification or horrific results, but good luck finding any superpower in history that hasn't gotten into bad wars. Unlike the US, most of the time those other superpowers used war for territorial expansion, like Russia is doing in Ukraine today.
You can dream of your utopian world order all you want, but at some point you have to judge the US against the alternative instead of the almighty.
"Terribly" is definitely a fair assessment.
> who has ever ruled it better?
Blatant whataboutism.
> instead of conquering them
"I protected them in so many ways, cared for them as if they were my own children. But to this day, is there a single statue of me on Bajor?"
You'll be back, time will tell
You'll remember that I served you well
Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!
On an absolute scale, every world power in history and humanity in general has been terrible. Endless injustices and atrocities since the very start.
That’s just not a very useful way to look at things though.
I think any country will see this, despite all the wishing in the world.
What do you think their goals with the power are? To make your life miserable? No, clearly, all they care about is the wealth and it's profits. Which they're already swallowing whole.
You _already_ live in their prison.
If push comes to shove we're not going to get an authoritarian takeover, we're going to get a military coup. Unless they wake up and realize they need the guys with the hardware to do their whole fascist takeover thing.
It seems to me like this is ideal for them. They break the law to pay for the stuff they want, let everything else rot. Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
Republicans control all three branches of government. What can Democrats do except filibuster and budgetary maneuvers like they're already doing?
Democrats already tried (briefly) going along with the inhumane BBB and Republicans kept cutting and disregarding the law anyway.
Insurance premiums on the rise? Thank Trump for that. No planes for Thanksgiving? Blame Vance. Etc.
Yet too many live in filter bubbles and take the talking points they're given. My conservative parents sound very reasonable when they react to unfiltered news, at least in the moment. But then the talking points arrive and they down play or change their outlook completely. It's like a Borg mind which sometimes has high latency.
And I can relate. I lived with that mindset. Teaching myself to twist information to fit the worldview and compartmentalize to dodge the dissonance. Visiting only the safe outlets who would reinforce the comfortable and familiar perspective. Thankfully public schools, the Internet, patient coworkers, and curiosity popped my bubble.
They have publicly said that the only thing they are negotiating for is one more year of health care subsidies. That’s a noble goal, but the country voted, and they don’t want affordable healthcare. If the Democrats ever have power again, then they can make policy again as well.
Can we say those voting for Trump in 2024 were saying they don't want affordable healthcare? There were many issues on the table and it wasn't a landslide.
The thing is, the last time the Republicans shut down the government for whatever pet project it was they wanted, I was furious. They lost the last election, yet they were trying to jam their agenda into law anyway through, essentially, blackmail. I'm not so hypocritical that I would be okay with it now because it's "my side". My side is functioning democracy at this point, and that's what the Democrats are risking with this shutdown.
Which side is yours? Hopefully not the side fighting in n court to take back SNAP benefits already distributed to needy families.
How are the Democrats putting democracy at risk when they cannot control any branch of government? And all their attempts to appease Republicans end up with Republicans pushing further anyway?
They want flights cancelled. They want people to starve. They want the FDA and the CDC shut down. They want chaos. More chaos is more excuse to take more control. It’s the classic fascist playbook. See : Reichstag fire.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/politics/shutdown-congress-fe...
This country is founded on the principle of being able to spot the pretexts (tariffs, terror-driven deportation, selective refugee status of whites fleeing black majorities, dissolving of social nets, rampant corruption) to monarchy-authoritarian leadership.
It will happen all over again here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...
We're all migrants here, we're really the enforced guests of Native Americans whose land we occupy.
1. The budget doesn't include some insane, unvotable measure. I don't hold any sympathy for either of the parties, but as an external it seems that the majority and the president have been voted on top of repealing the affordable care act and the opposition is weaponizing the budget on topics that voters have already expressed themselves against.
2. Being unable to spend or spend vacations with family are not things that historically lead to unrests.
So imho, no, Occam's razor suggests me this is simply business as usual, but with the usual increasing polarization and extremism we're seeing all around the world.
Its much more stupid than this. People voted MAGA to get rid of Obamacare, but same dont even realize it IS the ACA. Jimmy Kimmel Live did whole bit around that in 2017 and it still holds true today.
But having 10%+ of all Americans panicking after missing a few meals is also enough to topple a country. There’s not a whole lot that can unify the different political factions of the US, but going hungry gets people focused on necessity and to deprioritize the shallow / vapid aspects of politics.
Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear.
I currently think this government shutdown is unlikely to do that to the US because politicians have had lots of practice making each shutdown less impactful for most Americans, but the longer we go, the more likely we are to find some high value thing the US government does that Americans don’t want to live without.
Why China's? What you said is true in any corner of the globe.
In imperial china it's a cultural/religious thing.
Famines always represented a sign that the ruling party wasn't wanted "by the skies" anymore.
In any case, ain't nobody ever gonna starve in modern china.
But then, maybe they're not rational.
They are acting according to the expected responses to the stimuli they create. The problem is that the culture, society, previous legislation/jurisprudence, and the parliamentary rules they voted in all make the calculus of predicting what is rational for them uncertain.
I would be speechless if a conspiracy theory comes true, and the American state is actually captured by the Russians. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish it, but as a fan of the series The Americans, it will be epic..
I'd say Trump not being an explicit asset gets them 90% of what they're after, with almost no downsides