It’s Saturday, November 14. I hope you’re home safe and not stuck at a gate somewhere, because a lot of people still are. It has been a wild 24 hours, and I want to thank everybody who tuned into my live coverage last night.
Here are the latest updates we are tracking
The nationwide FAA ground stop and the regime’s shifting explanations
Trump’s total silence on it, while he posts about Newsom and Hollywood
The White House continuing to pick a fight with the incoming Democratic oversight before it even starts
Mike Johnson’s midterm spin and a projected Peltola win in Alaska
A WSJ exclusive on Trump allies and illegal Chinese vapes
Ecuadorian fishermen suing over a U.S. military boat strike
Trump, Xi, and Putin heading into talks while Russia makes demands on NATO
Iran, Cuba, the Nvidia fallout, the Microsoft outage, and more
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Let’s get into the news.
We’re Not Getting the Full Story…
More than 10,000 flights were disrupted during Friday’s nationwide ground stop, and CNBC reports the delays and cancellations will stretch into the weekend, maybe longer. Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare.
So what happened this time? That depends on which Trump official you ask and when.
On Friday night at the White House, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed air traffic control routers that got overloaded with data and started giving inconsistent readings. Then Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stepped up and said the new technology they were patching in was overwhelming the older system. In other words, they plugged new equipment into a system that was working and broke it.
You could see Duffy’s face while Mullin said it, and he did not look happy. Watch as he literally bumps Mullin right as Mullin let it slip.
Meanwhile, the company behind the FAA’s AI-powered traffic management system, Air Space Intelligence, has already said its technology wasn’t responsible.
I’m proud that our own White House Correspondent Luke Radel was in that room asking the questions everyone at home was asking. Luke asked Duffy whether Americans should feel safe flying and why a five-hour ground stop was necessary if nobody was in danger. Duffy admitted he still doesn’t know what caused the outage or whether the same thing could happen again. When Luke kept pressing, Mullin pivoted to calling Trump the “greatest president we’ve had.” Watch Luke’s questioning here. This is what your paid subscriptions have helped build, so thank you.
Then came this morning, when Duffy tried a second press conference, live on Fox. It got drowned out by microphone feedback.
A press conference about technical failures, derailed by technical failures. Fox eventually cut away. The incompetence of this regime is just staggering.
Once the mics worked, Duffy called what happened Friday “routine,” talked about college football games getting moved around, and promised a “great end of the year Christmas present” in the form of a big sum of money for the FAA.
Then the FAA’s acting CTO, Rebecca Guy, took the mic and described two sources pinging the network at roughly 1,000 connections every four to five seconds. Hmm… To be clear, nobody has confirmed a hack, and U.S. authorities still haven’t determined the cause. What we do know is that we now have three different stories (at least): old routers, new technology, and mystery pings.
The air traffic controllers aren’t buying it. Anna Giaritelli reports she spoke with 60 controllers Friday night, and none of them believe Duffy’s account. They told her these kinds of system switches happen midweek, in the middle of the night, when there’s no traffic. Nobody does this on a Friday afternoon.
And about that money…
Duffy and Mullin are out here asking Congress for billions more. Biden’s infrastructure law set aside roughly $25 billion for FAA and airport infrastructure, and Trump’s big budget bill put in more than $12 billion for air traffic control modernization.
Meanwhile, Giaritelli reports Congress approved and funded a 2.8% raise for controllers back in April, and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford put it on hold until controllers work five hours on position per shift instead of four. He justified it by saying controllers worked five hours 15 years ago, but an FAA chart she found shows they didn’t. Trump says he brought in $22 trillion and we’re so rich we don’t know what to do with it, so why doesn’t this Golden Age include a functioning FAA?
Speaking of Bedford, the FAA Administrator whose bio promises “transparency” hasn’t posted a word about the ground stop. His most recent post was a tribute to the late NBAA leader Ed Bolen. He wasn’t at the press conference either.
You know who did show up? Canada. Canadian cabinet minister Steven MacKinnon offered the FAA full assistance, including taking in U.S.-bound aircraft. Gavin Newsom thanked them publicly.
Where Is Trump?
Donald Trump hasn’t been seen in public since Wednesday and he hasn’t said one word about the ground stop, not even on Truth Social. Newsom’s press office pointed out that a man who goes on posting sprees at all hours couldn’t spare 30 seconds to reassure stranded Americans. When asked why we haven’t heard from Trump, Duffy said, “I don’t run the president’s comms.”
So what has Trump posted? An attack on “Newscum” over the death penalty. Newsom actually announced back on November 5 that he’s commuting the sentences of the state’s 548 death row inmates to life without parole. Old news, and Trump didn’t even have the facts straight in his post. Then a long post about bringing Hollywood back from countries like Canada. The closest he came to the FAA was reposting a Sen. John Kennedy quote that mentions “FAA Funding” in passing.
The White House vs. Oversight
The White House posted that it “will not be extorted, intimidated, or bullied by unlawful subpoenas,” attaching a November 9 letter from the White House Counsel to Rep. Robert Garcia. The letter goes after Garcia’s “LAWYER UP” campaign and incoming members including Representative-Elect Ojeda. The new Congress hasn’t even been sworn in and they’re already scared.
Midterm Aftermath
In his first interview since the midterms, on Fox with Kayleigh McEnany, MAGA Mike Johnson claimed they had “one of the most productive Congresses in the history of the institution” and complained that Democrats “weaponized the word ‘affordability.’” Mike, Trump promised to lower prices and made everything more expensive. Voters noticed.
In Alaska, VoteHub now projects Mary Peltola will win the Senate race. As of Friday night, AP hadn’t called it, with Peltola at 49.8% to Dan Sullivan’s 46.1% and about 96% of the vote counted. This makes 56 Democratic U.S. Senators in the new Congress.
Trump Allies and Illegal Chinese Vapes
A Wall Street Journal exclusive reports that the White House ordered federal officials late this summer to approve the release of tens of millions of dollars in detained illegal Chinese vapes into the U.S. market, after conversations with Trump political adviser Chris LaCivita and his son. Everybody’s kids are getting paid! Make America Healthy Again! America First! I can keep going…
Fishermen Sue Over U.S. Boat Strike
The Guardian reports 16 Ecuadorian fishermen plan to sue the Trump administration in federal court in western Pennsylvania on Monday. Their complaint says two armed drones destroyed their boat on March 17, burning two crew members, after Ecuadorian officials had searched it and found no drugs. They say U.S. personnel then bound and hooded them and jailed them for weeks in El Salvador. The suit targets Operation Southern Spear, which has killed at least 238 people. The Pentagon declined to comment.
Trump, Xi and Putin
AP reports Trump, Xi and Putin will hold unprecedented talks in China next week. Per the New York Times, Russia has revived demands that NATO pull back to 1997 positions, halt expansion, and end Western arms to Ukraine. Mark Carney fired back that Europe’s security will be decided by free Europe and NATO, not Russia. CNBC reports Trump doesn’t plan to raise the Nvidia scandal with Xi. And the Washington Post reports Rubio used a CIA report on Jensen Huang’s affair with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset to undercut him, helping trigger the scandal that led to Huang’s resignation.
Quick Hits
Iran: State media claims Iran shot down a U.S. MQ-1 drone over Qeshm Island and disabled two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. These claims are not independently verified.
Cuba: President Miguel Díaz-Canel says Havana is preparing to reject any foreign military aggression.
Microsoft: NEXTA reports the 35-hour Microsoft 365 outage hit hospitals, police, banks and airlines, with damage estimates over $7 billion. There’s no reporting linking it to the FAA outage.
That’s it for now. Thank you for being part of the Meidas Mighty!! If you haven’t picked up WTF America?! yet, it’s out now. Talk soon.
