Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Why is Trump going after America's air traffic controllers, today of all days?
It's one more way to distract from his decision to increase your health insurance premiums."

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— Pete Buttigieg (@petebuttigieg.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM

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Trump take air travel

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— Laura Bassett (@lebassett.bsky.social) November 9, 2025 at 1:38 PM

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The federal government shutdown is ending, but the chaos for air travel isn’t. The aftereffects of it could linger into the Thanksgiving travel period, according to aviation experts.

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— New York Magazine (@nymag.com) November 10, 2025 at 7:01 PM

From Jeff Wise, science journalist and private pilot — Air Travel Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better:

… The air-travel industry had experienced steadily worsening delays and cancellations in the week after controllers missed their first full paycheck last Tuesday. On Wednesday, the FAA ordered airlines to begin reducing their number of flights at 40 major airports starting that Friday. With their plans scrambled, airlines struggled to accommodate stranded travelers, as every canceled flight meant that aircraft and flight crews weren’t where they were supposed to be.

By Sunday, the system had become badly snarled, with around 10 percent of all flights canceled and 30 percent delayed by more than 30 minutes, according to Cirium, a company that collects air-travel data. Some airlines and airports suffered more than others: At both Newark and La Guardia airports, a third of all flights were canceled and nearly half were delayed.

As of Monday morning, Cirium’s data indicated that travel would continue to be disrupted during the day ahead, with cancellations standing at 5.5 percent and growing. By midday Newark, La Guardia, Teterboro, Miami, and Las Vegas were all experiencing significant slowdowns and FlightAware was reporting that more than 4,000 U.S. flights had been delayed.

Expect more of the same in days to come. Even if the shutdown wraps up by the end of the workweek, it will take at least a few days for the system to get back on its feet. “Based on past events, I would anticipate a return to normal operations within two or three days,” says Mike Arnot, an airline-industry commentator.

But even when airlines return to their previous flight schedules, the aftereffects of the shutdown will linger. For one thing, the failure to pay controllers for more than a month has put added strain on a profession already suffering from chronic understaffing. At the start of the shutdown, the FAA employed about 11,000 certified professional controllers, some 3,000 less than required for full staffing. As a result, most controllers had to work mandatory overtime shifts to make up for the shortfall…

There’s also another factor that could cause problems going forward. Airlines are limited in the number of hours that pilots and cabin crews can work per month. The large scale of unexpected flight cancellations has forced the airlines to use their personnel inefficiently.

“If an airplane isn’t in the right place at the right time, an airline has two choices. Either it cancels a bunch of flights until that airplane is actually needed, or it ferries it to another place,” says Illson. “If you ferry it to another place, that means you’re using flight crews to fly at an empty airplane, which is obviously inefficient.”

Thanksgiving is the year’s busiest travel period, a time when airlines and air-traffic control are pushed to the limit. This year, the airlines will be going into it having already used up a lot of their crews’ legal flight time.

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Wednesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (300)

He is posting this while he is on his way to Palm Beach for an extended golf weekend.

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— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) October 31, 2025 at 1:11 PM

In the ‘Lincoln Era’, as many people have pointed out, what’s now the Lincoln Bedroom was President Lincoln’s office. And his ‘sanitary facility’ was a chamber pot behind a screen in the corner.

(Also, unless the contractors paid more attention than the ‘architect’, a glassy marble bathroom floor is a slip-and-fall accident waiting to happen.)

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posting with obvious pride about remodeling the lincoln bathroom in (very ugly) marble the day before SNAP dries up is a level of out-of-touch that i don't think any president has ever matched, even if it doesn't break through the news.

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— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 31, 2025 at 1:28 PM

i can't imagine any other president even bothering to mention having done this, even if they'd done it

— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 31, 2025 at 1:29 PM

if we're going to have to suffer such a useless, quisling press corpse made up of the worst reporters in america, the very least one of them could do would be to bait trump into disclosing how much they've spent on remodeling since january

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— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 31, 2025 at 2:04 PM

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“'Highly polished, Statuary marble!' Mr. Trump declared on social media as he posted images of his new Lincoln bathroom, even as some households planned on handing out canned soup in lieu of candy." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/u…

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— John Schwartz (@jswatz.bsky.social) October 31, 2025 at 11:47 PM

It broke through, even to our Very Serious Media:

American families are worried about losing food stamp benefits. Hundreds of thousands of federal government workers have no idea when they will next be paid. Several airports have been experiencing delays because of staffing shortages.

The pain of the government shutdown is growing more acute as it grinds toward the five-week mark, with Congress showing little movement toward a resolution. But President Trump has been attending to other matters.

Just hours after returning from a trip across Asia, Mr. Trump left Washington on Friday for a Halloween party and a fund-raiser at his Florida residence. When he weighed in briefly on the shutdown, it was to cast the potential loss of benefits that millions of Americans rely on for groceries as mostly a problem for Democratic voters. Rather than offer steps he might take to bring the crisis to a close, Mr. Trump called attention to the new details of his renovation of a White House bathroom…

The stark contrast crystallized how the president has appeared largely disconnected from the fiscal impasse that has gripped Washington and paralyzed much of the federal government.

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Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Fine Corinthian Marble Sh*tterPost + Comments (99)