The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Wednesday that air traffic will be slashed by 10% in 40 “high-volume” markets beginning on Friday due to the air traffic controller shortages brought on by the record-breaking government shutdown.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference alongside FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford that the FAA is taking “proactive” steps to “keep the airspace safe” as the government shutdown moves into its 37th day.

“In the end, our sole role is to make sure that we keep this airspace as safe as possible,” Duffy said. “There is going to be a 10% reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations,” he added.

🚨 BREAKING: @SecDuffy announces a 10% reduction in scheduled flight capacity at the nation’s top 40 high-traffic markets due to the Democrat Shutdown’s strain on air traffic controllers. pic.twitter.com/g6yJygA96W

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 5, 2025

The air traffic reduction comes just weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, which is typically the busiest travel weekend of the year in the United States. Bedford said the administration would share more information on the 40 markets affected by the 10% reduction at a later time.

The Transportation Secretary said that the decision is “data-based” and focused on areas where air traffic controllers are feeling the most pressure. Duffy did not say where the disruptions should be expected, adding that he and Bedford are set to meet with airline leaders later on Wednesday to discuss the flight reduction.

“Our primary mission at the FAA is to manage airspace in the safest manner possible,” said Bedford. “That is our only focus.”

Bedford added that flight controllers are experiencing increased fatigue as fewer controllers show up to work. As the government shutdown drags on, air traffic controllers have gone weeks without pay, causing some controllers to call in sick so they can seek work elsewhere.

“We do recognize that the controllers have been working fastidiously for the last five weeks with this huge burden over their heads [from] lack of compensation,” Bedford said. “We are starting to see some evidence that fatigue is starting to build in the system in ways we feel we need to work toward relieving some of that pressure.”

Republicans continue to push Democrats to agree to a short-term bill that would immediately fund the government, while negotiations could continue on a larger piece of legislation. Democrats have refused to pass the GOP’s short-term spending plan for five weeks.

Earlier on Wednesday, President Donald Trump urged Republican senators in a White House meeting to terminate the filibuster “this afternoon,” so the party could reopen the government and pass some of the administration’s priorities.

“I think it’s very important. We have to get the country open, and the way we’re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster,” he said. “And it’s possible you’re not going to do that, and I’m going to go by your wishes. You’re smart people. We’re good friends, but it would be a tremendous mistake, it would be a tragic mistake, actually. It’s time.”

GOP Senate leaders appear to be unmoved by Trump’s request to end the filibuster.

“You did it! You really finally did it, you maniacs! You blew it up, damn you!”

The Statue of Liberty is half-buried in the sand now, and Charlton Heston is yelling at it because of what New York City just decided to do.

By an overwhelming margin, New Yorkers handed over the financial center of planet Earth to a Marxist pro-jihadist named Zohran Mamdani, who has never held a real job.

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. We’ll see how it works out for them.

Mamdani is not hiding the ball. He intends to implement major changes in America’s financial center, the financial center of planet Earth. He intends to make a new system that is going to destroy capitalism. 

Will he be able to accomplish that? There are some checks on him. 

Many of the promises he has made are like a third-grader running for school president who promises: “Free ice cream for everybody and no homework” was basically his campaign. If he said “affordability” over and over and over and then threw out a bunch of random things that he would never be able to do, he would be elected mayor.

It worked.

We now live in a political era characterized — on both sides — by people accurately diagnosing problems and then not proposing any real solutions while saying, “If you give me ultimate power, I will solve it for you.”

It never works.

Democrats are resistant to the idea that Mamdani is the future of the party. Hakeem Jeffries suggested that he was not the face of the party. But I’m old enough to remember when Democrats said AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib were not the face of the party.

And now they are.

It will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party treats him. Do they treat him as an outsider? Do they say that he’s “sort of quirky,” the way they treated Bill de Blasio, or do they embrace him and try to draft off of the energy that he obviously captured in the middle of this campaign?

One of the lies that is constantly told about socialist candidates like Mamdani is that they are the people who get blue-collar voters, that they excite blue-collar voters. But America and Europe are different; historically speaking, European blue-collar workers tend toward socialism, but that does not happen in America. In America, blue-collar workers have always been fond of capitalism because it is what provides their jobs. Even in the early union days of the United States, the unions were quite actively anti-communist in the United States in a way that they simply were not in Europe. That remains true today.

What drove Mamdani to victory were immigrants, extreme leftists, and college-educated young women. Some of the latter is because Mamdani, with the smarmy grin and the inability to bench-press 135 pounds, seems particularly non-threatening, as opposed to Andrew Cuomo, who was ousted from office over his inability to keep his hands off the asses of women.

If this is the future of the Democratic Party, go for it, guys. It’s playing with fire. New York City is playing with fire. Mamdani’s policy proposals are trash. If he implements any of them, the city is in serious trouble.

There are systemic checks and balances that prevent Mamdani from single-handedly destroying the city. If he wants to raise taxes, he has to go to the state level. And the state legislature is very unlikely to want to increase taxes again. He says that he wants to make all the buses free, and he’s going to pay for it. How’s he going to do any of this stuff?

He won’t be able to get any of that stuff done, and then he will rail against the system.

Mamdani will make the business climate disastrous. Crime will go up. His proposals are foolish in the extreme.

Typically when you win, you tend to quote the founding ideals of the country. Mamdani did not. His entire victory speech was about how America historically is trash and how all of the fundamental principles of America are trash, and how he’s here to change things on a radical, fundamental level.

He quoted Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate from the 1910s and Nehru, the socialist leader of the non-aligned India in the post-partition era. There was no Washington; there was no Jefferson; there was no Lincoln. He said there’s a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can “afford.”

All of these plans are trash.

He says that there’s a “mandate for change.” There’s always a mandate for change. That’s what elections are.

I’m very much looking forward to never having to pay for a hotel again in New York. I’m just gonna ride the buses around. I’ll just get on and ride them for free. Why the hell not? As long as I don’t get stabbed in the face, which may very well happen in a city of New York governed by Zohran Mamdani, who thinks that the police are inhibitors of human freedom.

H.L. Mencken, the famous columnist from the early 20th century, once said that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

I hope you enjoy what you wrought, New Yorkers.

And I’m glad that I have some Florida real estate that is available at a fetching price.