You picked a bad weekend to fly. Over 1,500 flights in the US were cancelled yesterday, and over 1,200 over them have already been cancelled this morning. One of those may have been yours. You’re stuck at airport right now, staring up at the Departures board and seeing nothing but red letters. You’d ask the gate agent for help, but that line stretches out the door and all the way to the rental car counter, which itself is now paralyzed by mass crowding. You’d call customer service for answers but … [automated voice] due to unusually high call volume … the next available agent will be with you in … eight … hours. There’s a very good chance that your only way home will be in the back of a container truck, sitting alongside Gus Polinski and the Kenosha Kickers for 17 hours as you ride out this unending nightmare. What the fuck is going on? Why isn’t our air travel system working at all?
Glad you asked. The answer is Trump. If you’re reading this on your phone while deserted in Terminal D at Hartsfield, and you only have two percent of your battery juice left, it’s because of Trump. He fucked you.
The background: the US is currently in the midst of its longest-ever federal government shutdown. Trump and the Republican Party will only agree to a deal to reopen the place if Democrats agree to drastic, inhumane budget cuts to Obamacare. Democrats said no, and so Trump said, OK, well we’ll just fuck everyone until you say yes. Hence, Republicans are still fighting the courts to let SNAP payments lapse, forcing millions of Americans to go hungry. More pertinent here, they’re forcing air traffic controllers—the public servants who, you know, keep airplanes from flying into one another—to work without pay. Now Trump’s FAA has ordered a 10 percent reduction in all flights across 40 major American airports, which means that the cancellations and delays will only get worse as the shutdown drags on.
This is how Trump 2.0 does its business: at knifepoint.
There’s precedence here. A decade ago, before he volunteered to act as Trump’s personal footstool, then-New Jersey governor Chris Christie ordered closures across multiple lanes on the George Washington Bridge, which connects Fort Lee, N.J., to New York City. There was nothing wrong with these lanes. But Christie was angry at Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich for declining to endorse him for an upcoming election, so he conjured a traffic jam out of fat air to exact revenge. The smoking gun in that scandal was a Christie lackey, Bridget Anne Kelly, sending an email that said outright, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Traffic problems in Fort Lee ensued.
You, the beleaguered air traveler, are now the victim of a similarly breathtaking offense. Only this time, it’s not just tri-state commuters getting fucked. It’s everyone. And with Thanksgiving mere weeks away, it will likely be more of everyone. Fort Lee will look like a goddamn picnic compared to the clusterfuck presently in the offing.
And screwing with Americans’ commutes is the ultimate sin. That’s why the Fort Lee scandal helped precipitate the end of Christie’s political career. Because commuter stress is one of the worst stresses in modern life. You get stuck in extensive traffic and it doubles your blood pressure. You miss a connecting flight and you feel as if you’re stuck in literal hell until you finally get home. All Americans travel, and all Americans resent being inconvenienced. So when someone fucks with their travel plans, they’re fucking with Americans on a primal level, one usually reserved for murdering those Americans’ next of kin.
Normally, the “someone” behind your travel nightmare is an unseen force beyond your control: bad weather, construction work, an accident, ambiguous corporate fuckery, whatever. But that’s no succor when you’re in the moment. When you’re stranded at an airport or on the road, you’d kill for an obvious culprit. That’s why you lose your shit on other cars, or on ticketing agent, or on some other poor cog in the machinery. It’s the best scapegoat you can find when you’re miserable, and it’s not a very cathartic one. Such is life in the first world.
But when you KNOW that one guy did it? And you know WHO that guy is, and that he himself never has to step foot inside a public airport to get places? Well, that’s not only a rare moment, but an oddly gratifying one as well. So if you read no other article on the 2025 Airport Crisis, take it from this one: Trump is the man responsible for it. He’s fucking with your airplanes, he’s fucking with your time, and he’s fucking with your money. He’s the reason you’re a caged animal right now. I wouldn’t want to be him if you ever get loose.
