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Flight delays continued at U.S. airports Sunday amid air traffic controller shortages as the government shutdown entered its second month, with Newark airport in New Jersey experiencing delays of two to three hours.New York City’s Emergency Management office said on X that Newark delays often ripple out to the region’s other airports.Travelers flying to, from or through New York “should expect schedule changes, gate holds, and missed connections. Anyone flying today should check flight status before heading to the airport and expect longer waits,” the social media post added.George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago O’Hare were also seeing dozens of delays and one or two cancellations, along with major airports in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Miami, according to FlightAware.As of Sunday evening, FlightAware said there were 4,295 delays and 557 cancelations of flights within, into or out of the U.S., not all related to controller shortages. In July, before the shutdown, about 69% of flights were on time and 2.5% were canceled.U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been warning that travelers will start to see more flight disruptions the longer controllers go without a paycheck.“We work overtime to make sure the system is safe. And we will slow traffic down, you’ll see delays, we’ll have flights canceled to make sure the system is safe,” Duffy said Sunday on CBS’S “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”He also said he does not plan to fire air traffic controllers who don’t show up for work.“Again when they’re making decisions to feed their families, I’m not going to fire air traffic controllers,” Duffy said. “They need support, they need money, they need a paycheck. They don’t need to be fired.”Earlier in October, Duffy had warned air traffic controllers who had called in sick instead of working without a paycheck during the shutdown risked being fired. Even a small number of controllers not showing up for work is causing problems because the FAA has a critical shortage of them.The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday on X that nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks.Staffing shortages can occur both in regional control centers that manage multiple airports and in individual airport towers, but they don’t always lead to flight disruptions. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, flight data showed strong on-time performance at most major U.S. airports for the month of October despite isolated staffing problems throughout the month.Before the shutdown, the FAA was already dealing with a long-standing shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers. Barbara Ortutay, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s administration faces deadlines on Monday to tell two federal judges whether it will comply with court orders that it continue to fund SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown.The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally.The situation leaves millions with uncertainty about how they will feed themselves. Benefits will be delayed in November regardless of the outcome of the court cases because many beneficiaries have their cards recharged early in the month and the process of loading cards can take a week or more in many states.Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions. Cities and nonprofits also filed a lawsuit.On Friday, judges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts ruled separately that the administration must continue to pay for SNAP. They both gave the administration leeway on whether to fund the program partially or in full for November.The USDA has a $5 billion contingency fund for the program, but the Trump administration reversed an earlier agency plan to use that money to keep SNAP running. Democratic officials argue that the administration could also use a separate fund of about $23 billion.U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, said SNAP must be funded using at least contingency funds, and he asked for an update on progress by Monday.He said all previous work requirement waivers must continue to be honored. During the shutdown, the USDA has terminated existing waivers that exempted work requirements for older adults, veterans and others.In Boston, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled the suspension was unlawful and said USDA has to pay for SNAP. Talwani ordered the federal government to advise by Monday whether they will use emergency reserve funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits for November or fully fund the program using both contingency funds and additional available funds.Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills. The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the SNAP debit cards.To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $32,000 per year. Last year, SNAP assisted nearly 42 million people, about two-thirds of whom were families with children. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The government shutdown is poised to become the longest ever this week as the impasse between Democrats and Republicans has dragged into a new month. Millions of people could lose food aid benefits, health care subsidies are set to expire and there are few real talks between the parties over how to end it.President Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by Democrats who are demanding negotiations to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year for millions of Americans. Echoing congressional Republicans, the president said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” he’ll negotiate only when the government is reopened.Trump’s comments signal the shutdown could drag on for some time as federal workers, including air traffic controllers, are set to miss additional paychecks and there’s uncertainty over whether 42 million Americans who receive federal food aid will be able to access the assistance. Senate Democrats have voted 13 times against reopening the government, insisting they need Trump and Republicans to negotiate with them first.The president said Democrats “have lost their way” and predicted they’ll capitulate to Republicans.“I think they have to,” Trump said. “And if they don’t vote, it’s their problem.”He also reiterated his pleas to Republican leaders to change Senate rules and scrap the filibuster. Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected that idea since Trump’s first term, arguing the rule requiring 60 votes to overcome any objections in the Senate is vital to the institution and has allowed them to stop Democratic policies when they’re in the minority.“Republicans have to get tougher,” Trump told CBS. “If we end the filibuster, we can do exactly what we want.”With the two parties at a standstill, the shutdown, now in its 33rd day and approaching its sixth week, appears likely to become the longest in history. The previous record was set in 2019, when Trump demanded Congress give him money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. A potentially decisive week Trump’s push on the filibuster could prove a distraction for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Republican senators who’ve opted instead to stay the course as the consequences of the shutdown become more acute.Republicans are hoping at least some Democrats will eventually give them the votes they need as moderates have been in weekslong talks with rank-and-file Republicans about potential compromises that could guarantee votes on health care in exchange for reopening the government. Republicans need five additional Democrats to pass their bill.“We need five with a backbone to say we care more about the lives of the American people than about gaining some political leverage,” Thune said on the Senate floor as the Senate left Washington for the weekend on Thursday.Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday there’s a group of people talking about “a path to fix the health care debacle” and a commitment from Republicans not to fire more federal workers. But it’s unclear if those talks could produce a meaningful compromise. Far apart on Obamacare subsidies Trump said in the “60 Minutes” interview the Affordable Care Act often known as Obamacare because it was signed and championed by then-President Barack Obama is “terrible” and if the Democrats vote to reopen the government, “we will work on fixing the bad health care that we have right now.”Democrats feel differently, arguing the marketplaces set up by the ACA are working as record numbers of Americans have signed up for the coverage. But they want to extend subsidies first enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic so premiums won’t go up for millions of people on Jan. 1.“We want to sit down with Thune, with (House Speaker Mike) Johnson, with Trump, and negotiate a way to address this horrible health care crisis,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said last week. No appetite for bipartisanship As Democrats have pushed Trump and Republicans to negotiate, Trump has showed little interest in doing so. He called for an end to the Senate filibuster after a trip to Asia while the government was shut down.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News Channel the president has spoken directly to Thune and Johnson about the filibuster. But a spokesman for Thune said Friday that his position hasn’t changed, and Johnson said on Sunday that Republicans traditionally have resisted calling for an end to the filibuster because it protects them from “the worst impulses of the far-left Democrat Party.”Trump said on “60 Minutes” he likes Thune but “I disagree with him on this point.”The president has spent much of the shutdown mocking Democrats, posting videos of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a Mexican sombrero. The White House website has a satirical “My Space” page for Democrats, a parody based on the social media site that was popular in the early 2000s. “We just love playing politics with people’s livelihoods,” the page reads.Democrats have repeatedly said that they need Trump to get serious and weigh in. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said that he hopes the shutdown could end “this week” because Trump is back in Washington.Republicans “can’t move on anything without a Trump sign off,” Warner said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. Record-breaking shutdown The 35-day shutdown that lasted from December 2018 to January 2019 ended when Trump retreated from his demands over a border wall. That came amid intensifying delays at the nation’s airports and multiple missed paydays for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on ABC’s “This Week” that there have already been delays at several airports “and it’s only going to get worse.”Many of the workers are “confronted with a decision,” he said. “Do I put food on my kids’ table, do I put gas in the car, do I pay my rent or do I go to work and not get paid?”As flight delays around the country increased, New York City’s emergency management department posted on Sunday that Newark Airport was under a ground delay because of “staffing shortages in the control tower” and that they were limiting arrivals to the airport.“The average delay is about 2 hours, and some flights are more than 3 hours late,” the account posted. “FAA planning notes show a possibility of a full ground stop later if staffing shortages or demand increases.” SNAP crisis Also in the crossfire are the 42 million Americans who receive SNAP benefits. The Department of Agriculture planned to withhold $8 bllion needed for payments to the food program starting on Saturday until two federal judges ordered the administration to fund it.House Democratic leader Jeffries, D-N.Y., accused Trump and Republicans of attempting to “weaponize hunger.” He said that the administration has managed to find ways for funding other priorities during the shutdown, but is slow-walking pushing out SNAP benefits despite the court orders.“But somehow they can’t find money to make sure that Americans don’t go hungry,” Jeffries said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in his own CNN appearance Sunday, said the administration continues to await direction from the courts.“The best way for SNAP benefits to get paid is for Democrats for five Democrats to cross the aisle and reopen the government,” Bessent said. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report. Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
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