The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it halved a requirement that U.S. airlines reduce domestic flights at 40 major airports from 6% to 3% starting Saturday to address air traffic control safety concerns after the end of the government shutdown.

Airlines have been pushing for the FAA to end the required cuts entirely and were largely not in compliance with the FAA order that required the 6% cut on Friday. It remains to be seen if they will be in compliance with the 3% order.

“The 3% reduction will remain in place while the FAA monitors system performance throughout the weekend and evaluates whether normal operations can resume,” the FAA said.

Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, said airlines canceled just 2% of overall flights Friday, down from 3.5% on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, air traffic controllers and other FAA employees began receiving back pay equal to about 70% of what they are owed excluding overtime.

Airlines have been privately making the case to the FAA that it is time to end the cuts and some said earlier they plan to cut few or no flights on Saturday, officials told Reuters.

The FAA opted on Wednesday to ease those required cancellations after disruptions due to air traffic control absences declined dramatically as Congress voted to reopen the government after a 43-day shutdown. The FAA had initially planned to hike the cuts to 8% on Thursday and 10% on Friday.

Separately, a group of House Democrats led by Representative Rick Larsen, the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, asked the administration on Friday to turn over the specific safety data and how it compares to the last six months.

United Airlines said it had canceled 134 flights for Friday, or almost 3% of its flights, after cancelling 222 flights on Thursday.

The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels. Many had been working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks even before the shutdown led to them working without pay.

Air traffic absences led to tens of thousands of flight cancellations and delays since October 1, when the 43-day shutdown began.

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Nick Zieminski, William Maclean)

The Trump administration notched a victory when a Kentucky federal judge temporarily blocked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from implementing a rule critics say puts Americans’ financial data at risk.

The 1033 Rule, proposed under President Joe Biden’s CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, requires banks to “make available to consumers, upon request, transaction data and other information concerning a consumer financial product or service that the consumer obtained from the covered entity.”

Forcht Bank, the Kentucky Bankers Association, and the Bank Policy Institute sued to block the rule, saying it exceeded the CFPB’s authority and would force the institutions to hand over large amounts of sensitive data, creating security and liability risks. Judge Danny C. Reeves of the United States District Court for Kentucky concluded the rule could cause more harm than good.

“The public could arguably lose some benefit from the Rule not being enforced at the set compliance deadlines,” said the judge. “However, the plaintiffs also contend that enforcement of the current Rule puts consumers at risk due to security risk as to their banking information.”

The Bank Policy Institute issued a statement saying the organization was grateful for the court’s decision.

“This is a common-sense procedural step,” said the Bank Policy Institute. It “doesn’t interfere with the rulemaking process but ensures banks won’t be forced to invest time and resources preparing for a rule that is currently being rewritten.”

“This preliminary injunction marks a pivotal moment for those who value consumer privacy and limited-government issues,” a source familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire. “The Trump administration now has a unique opportunity to advance a new 1033 rule that gets the government out of the way and unleashes innovation.”

Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, inviting the public to give input to form the basis of the final rule. Once input has been provided, the CFPB will share a draft of the rule.

The CFPB will now solicit comments and data around four key issues related to the implementation of the 1033 rule: who should be allowed to access financial data on a customer’s behalf, whether companies should be allowed to charge data sharing fees, how big are the security risks of sharing financial data, and how big are the privacy risks.

The Bank Policy Institute writes that the current rule “unlawfully mandated banks to share sensitive consumer data with third-party fintechs and aggregators; it required no oversight of third parties using bank customer data,” among other issues.

Earlier this year, Chopra was notified that he had been fired by the president via an email from the White House. President Trump appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lead the agency in interim before handing the reins over to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.

Rethinking the CFPB has been a priority of the Trump administration’s since the start of his term. In February, the White House issued a statement stating that the agency “has long functioned as another woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by so-called elites.”

The Trump administration accused the CFPB of “supporting radical advocacy groups, threatening banks for refusing to lend to illegal immigrants, targeting a Chicago small business after it complained about the city’s rampant crime, and mining American citizens’ personal financial information.”

On The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought discussed the importance of putting a stop to the agency’s ability to weaponize “the tools of financial laws against small mom and pop lenders and other small financial institutions.”