Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is warning that the Trump administration may be forced to close airspace in certain parts of the country if the government shutdown drags on into next week.

The 35-day funding lapse has snarled air travel across the country with at least 2,900 flight delays on Monday due to a spike in absences from air traffic controllers, who are reporting to work without pay during the shutdown. Duffy predicted “mass chaos” for U.S. airspace if Democrats do not relent their hardball tactics and fund the government. (RELATED: Hakeem Jeffries Digs In His Heels Further As Major Airlines, Unions Call For End To Schumer-Caused Shutdown)

“So if, if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy said. “You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

Duffy qualified his remarks by adding that the nation’s air travel system is still safe and that his agency would “shut it down” in the event of a mass air traffic controller shortage.

Despite mounting impacts from the month-long shutdown, the vast majority of Senate Democrats voted Tuesday against a clean continuing resolution (CR) to open the government for a 14th time.

The nation’s four largest airlines called on Congress to end the shutdown using Republicans’ preferred approach of a clean CR on Thursday.

“Delta Air Lines implores Congress to immediately pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government so that our air traffic controllers, TSA and CBP officers charged with the safety and efficiency of our national airspace can collect the paychecks they deserve,” the Atlanta, Ga.-based airline said. “A system under stress must be slowed down, reducing efficiency and causing delays for the millions of people who take to the skies every day.”

Roughly 500 major travel industry-groups urged lawmakers to immediately pass a clean continuing resolution on Monday, warning of “devastating” consequences for the upcoming holiday travel season.

Democrats have blamed their Republican counterparts for the shutdown’s disruptions to air travel despite plunging the country into an indefinite shutdown with no clear exit strategy.

“Listen, Donald Trump needs to stop rage Truth Social posting and show some actual leadership,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Tuesday when pressed about a reported ground stop at Ronald Reagan National Airport. “He’s been missing in action, in fact, throughout the entirety of his presidency, but it’s grown worse. The guy is having a complete and total meltdown right now. You know why? Because he knows that Republicans who we endorse are going down in flames all across America because they’ve been a complete and total disaster and a failure throughout this year.”

Andi Shae Napier contributed to this report.

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James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has argued that the charges he is facing should be thrown out as an act of vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration.

The federal prosecutors pursuing a criminal case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, disclosed evidence on Monday, including private emails, showing that he used a confidant to provide information to reporters — even though it was difficult to tell how some of the evidence was relevant to the specific charges detailed in the case.

The evidence was included in a 48-page filing that appeared to be an effort to construct a narrative that Mr. Comey had leaked information to the news media without actually tying such assertions to the allegations made in the indictment brought against him.

The filing, in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., was styled as a rebuttal of Mr. Comey’s claims that the charges he is facing should be thrown out as an act of vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration. He is accused of lying to and obstructing Congress in testimony on the investigation into Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, during which he was asked whether he had authorized anyone at the F.B.I. “to be an anonymous source in news reports.”

Yet the prosecutors who wrote the filing spent as much time suggesting that Mr. Comey had used the confidant, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, as a conduit to the news media as they did seeking to reject allegations that the indictment was vindictive. Mr. Richman had worked at the F.B.I. as a “special government employee,” leaving in early 2017.

Last month, lawyers for Mr. Comey accused President Trump of improperly ordering the Justice Department to prosecute him out of a deep personal animus reaching back to May 2017, when he was fired as F.B.I. director while overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation.

The lawyers pointed to the extraordinary origins of the case: a public message on social media in which Mr. Trump ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to go after Mr. Comey, one of his most reviled adversaries. The demands came shortly after the president had ousted the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who had refused to indict Mr. Comey and replaced him with a neophyte prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, who quickly filed charges in the first criminal case she had ever handled.

(Mr. Comey’s lawyers have also argued that the case Ms. Halligan filed should be dismissed because Mr. Trump improperly appointed her to her post as U.S. attorney. But in a separate motion on Monday, prosecutors rejected that claim.)

While Mr. Comey’s lawyers described Mr. Trump’s social media message as “smoking-gun evidence” of vindictiveness, the prosecutors argued it was “hardly evidence at all” and merely part of “a mix of news reports, social-media posts and speculation” used to accuse the president of bias.

The prosecutors also claimed that the indictment of Mr. Comey was not born out of animus but rather addressed “the societal interests” of bringing charges against “a former F.B.I. director who lied to Congress about his conduct while at the helm of the nation’s primary federal law-enforcement agency.”

The indictment accuses Mr. Comey of lying to and obstructing Congress during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.

At that hearing, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, asked Mr. Comey whether he had authorized someone at the F.B.I. “to be an anonymous source in news reports.” The indictment says Mr. Comey misled the committee by saying that he had not done so.

Mr. Comey’s lawyers have attacked the indictment — as well as Mr. Cruz’s question — as imprecise and confusing. Moreover, they have said that Mr. Comey’s answer was not a detailed, direct response to Mr. Cruz, but was instead a “literally true statement” in which he said he stood by previous testimony he had given three years earlier when he was asked similar questions in a different congressional hearing.

Even though they were supposed to be addressing the question of vindictiveness, the prosecutors filled the opening pages of their filing with quotations from personal emails and texts messages between Mr. Comey and Mr. Richman, as well those between Mr. Richman and reporters.

While those communications could ultimately help prosecutors prove that Mr. Comey used Mr. Richman to communicate to the news media, it remained unclear what bearing they had on the specific charges in the case: namely, whether Mr. Comey was lying when he denied authorizing an F.B.I. employee to anonymously share information for news reports.

Prosecutors have not made clear what new reports they were referring to or which reporters may have worked on them.

Indeed, the new court filing quoted communications between Mr. Comey and Mr. Richman concerning several articles in The New York Times. Two cited in the filing touched on Mr. Comey’s controversial handling of the conclusion — and brief reopening — of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server close to the 2016 election in which she was the Democratic candidate.

The first article was a graphic The Times published on Nov. 2, 2016, outlining the pros and cons of the choices available to Mr. Comey in his handling of reopening the Clinton investigation. It did not contain any new information about the inquiry or cite Mr. Richman — or anyone else — as a source.

Still, the emails quoted in the filing suggest that Mr. Richman helped influence the abstract analysis presented in the article.

Before the graphic was published, Mr. Comey had complained about The Times’s coverage and said to Mr. Richman, “Perhaps you can make him smarter.” It is not clear whether that was a reference to the same reporter who was working on the graphic, but after it appeared, Mr. Comey wrote to Mr. Richman, “Well done my friend.”

The other article appeared to be an investigation published in April 2017 that scrutinized Mr. Comey’s handling of communications about the Clinton investigation. It featured on-the-record quotations from Mr. Richman. The indictment accused Mr. Comey of lying about authorizing an anonymous source to leak information to the news media.

The filing also discussed The Times’s publication, days after Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey in May 2017, of information about Mr. Comey’s earlier conversations with the president. Mr. Comey later testified to Congress that he had directed Mr. Richman to share information about them, based on contemporaneous memos he had written.

The filing quoted a text Mr. Richman sent the author of those articles, Michael S. Schmidt, saying that he “just got go ahead” — a possible reference to Mr. Comey agreeing to let him serve as a source. Even if that were true, it could not be a basis for the criminal charge because the indictment accuses Mr. Comey of lying about using an F.B.I. employee to leak information and Mr. Richman was no longer working at the F.B.I. by then.

The new filing also disclosed an insinuating piece of evidence that did not appear to be related to either of the two charges detailed in the indictment. It instead appears related to a third charge that Ms. Halligan tried to bring against Mr. Comey, but that a grand jury rejected.

That involved a memo the C.I.A. sent to the F.B.I. on Sept. 7, 2016, containing intelligence about Russia’s interference in that year’s campaign. The F.B.I. had recently opened an investigation into Russian interference and the nature of the Kremlin’s ties to associates of the Trump campaign.

The memo itself broaches how Russian intelligence analysts had discussed purported emails saying that in late July 2016, Mrs. Clinton had supposedly approved a campaign plan centered on Mr. Trump and Russian hackers to distract from her own email scandal. Evidence gathered by a special counsel later showed that the purported emails were likely fabricated.

At the September 2020 hearing, a senator had asked Mr. Comey about the memo, but Mr. Comey said he had no memory of seeing it. The third charge Ms. Halligan tried to bring was over whether Mr. Comey lied in saying that.

The new filing said the F.B.I. had recently found handwritten notes from Mr. Comey, dated Sept. 26, 2016, that read: “HRC plan to tie Trump.”

Even though that appeared to refer to Mrs. Clinton, it is not clear why those notes would support the failed charge, since they do no mention the Sept. 7 memo at issue. It has long been public that Mr. Comey knew about the allegation itself because he was present for a briefing in August at which it was mentioned.

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People wait in a security checkpoint line at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on Nov 4.

WASHINGTON – US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Nov 4 that if the federal government shutdown continues another week it could lead to “mass chaos” and could force him to close some of the national airspace to air traffic, a drastic move that could upend American aviation.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos, you will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Mr Duffy said at a press conference on Nov 4.

US aviation has already faced tens of thousands of flight delays over the last month. The comments represented the Trump administration’s most dire warnings of impending impacts from rising air traffic controller absences.

As the shutdown entered its 35th day, the Federal Aviation Administration delayed a new round of flights on Nov 4. Airlines said this week 3.2 million passengers have been hit by delays or cancelled flights due to a spike in air traffic controller absences.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told Fox Business’ Varney & Co on Nov 4 that at the agency’s largest 30 airports “anywhere from 20 to 40 per cent of our controllers aren’t coming to work.”

Democrats blame Republicans for not negotiating with them to reopen the government. The shutdown has exacerbated staffing shortages, forcing 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers to work without pay.

In 2019, widespread disruptions in air travel pressured lawmakers into ending a 35-day government shutdown during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Mr Duffy reiterated he would shutter the US aviation system if he thought the shutdown was making it too risky to travel.

On Oct 31, the FAA said nearly half of the 30 busiest US airports faced shortages of air traffic controllers in the single worst day since the shutdown began.

In New York on Oct 31 80 per cent of air traffic controllers were absent, the agency said. REUTERS

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Tuesday that disruptions at U.S. airports will get worse as the government shutdown continues, using some of the most alarming language yet about the state of air travel. Air traffic controllers and TSA agents are currently working without pay, which has caused an uptick in workers calling out sick as they scramble to find side jobs to pay their bills.

Duffy noted that air traffic controllers will receive an email pay stub on Thursday indicating that their paycheck next week will be a “big fat zero.”

“Many of the controllers said a lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks,” Duffy said during a press conference in Pennsylvania that was supposed to be about that state’s train system.

Duffy pinned the blame on elected Democrats, who have said they won’t provide the votes necessary to reopen the government until congressional Republicans are willing to make concessions about health care funding. Americans are set to see their health insurance premiums soar in 2026 after the Republicans failed to extend covid-era tax credits for Obamacare in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that was passed in July.

“So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” said Duffy. “You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations. And you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

All eyes are currently on air traffic controllers, since the one-month mark seemed to be a real breaking point for the government shutdown of 2019, which lasted 35 days. The current shutdown started on Oct. 1 and is currently in its 35th day, which means it will officially be the longest shutdown in U.S. history on Wednesday. Duffy suggested that fewer air traffic controllers were calling out sick during this shutdown compared to 2019 but warned it’s going to get worse.

“These hardworking Americans have bills they have to pay, and they’re being forced to make decisions and choices,” said Duffy. “Do they go to work as an air traffic controller or do they have to find a different job to get resources, money to put food on their table to put gas in their car? And as every day goes by, I think the problem is going to only get worse, not better.”

Duffy’s warnings have become increasingly more dramatic each day the shutdown drags on. And travelers are seeing it with their own eyes at the airport. More than 5,000 flights traveling to and from U.S. airports were delayed on Sunday alone, according to NBC News, and travelers at two major airports in Texas—Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport—saw major delays on Monday.

Duffy also talked about the lasting damage that a prolonged shutdown will have on the willingness of people to consider air traffic control as a profession. There was already a shortage of between 2,000-3,000 air traffic controllers before the shutdown, according to Duffy.

“Do they want to go into a profession where they can have a shutdown and they cannot be paid? That has affected our pipeline,” said Duffy.

It’s unclear who might blink first to end the shutdown. Republicans have refused to come to the table and Democrats haven’t publicly signaled a desire to fold without real concessions on health care. But reporting from politics-focused news outlets like Axios has been giving hints from behind the scenes in recent days that things could soon change.

Centrist Democrats and Republicans in the House are reportedly proposing a plan that would extend the health care tax credits for two years while tightening rules for cracking down on supposed fraud, according to Axios. And Senate majority leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, told Axios, “We’re getting close to an off ramp.”

But all of the negotiations can be heavily dependent on whatever President Donald Trump decides to do on a given day. The Trump administration said in a court filing Monday that it would pay out roughly half of the USDA contingency funds that are set aside for SNAP benefits in an emergency like this. But Trump wrote a new Truth Social post on Tuesday contradicting government lawyers, stating that he wouldn’t actually pay out the benefits to the states.

“SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote.

Local communities across the country are holding food drives for government workers who have been working without pay or furloughed. And while a 2019 law requires furloughed employees to be paid after a shutdown ends, the Washington Post reports Tuesday that Trump’s government has hinted furloughed workers won’t get paid after all.

Officials at the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memo in October that those workers shouldn’t be paid and the Post notes that furlough notices no longer include reassurances that backpay will ever come. Such a move would obviously attract legal challenges, but those can take considerable time and would depend on courts upholding the law.

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According to the FAA, nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks.

WASHINGTON — Airspaces in some parts of the country may be forced to close if the ongoing government shutdown continues into next week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Tuesday.

“So, if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy said. “You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

His comments came during an unrelated press conference to address a funding shortage for Philadelphia’s SEPTA transportation system.

The government shutdown has now dragged on for over a month, with Tuesday officially tying the record for the longest shutdown in U.S. history. The previous record was set during Trump’s first presidency.

“Every day, these hard-working Americans have bills they have to pay, and they’re being forced to make decisions and choices. Do they go to work as an air traffic controller? Or do they have to find a different job to get resources, money, to put food on the table, to put gas in their car?” Duffy said. “As every day goes by, the problem is only going to get worse, not better.”

Staffing shortages have already caused flight delays at a growing number of airports in recent weeks, including Newark Airport in New Jersey, which saw delays of two to three hours on Sunday.

According to the FAA, nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks. The agency said on Friday that a surge in callouts has worsened the situation, with almost 80% of controllers in New York-area facilities being absent.

“The shutdown must end so that these controllers receive the pay they’ve earned and travelers can avoid further disruptions and delays,” the FAA said in a statement on Friday. “As we continue to reiterate, we will never compromise on safety. When staffing shortages occur, the FAA will reduce the flow of air traffic to maintain safety. This may result in delays or cancellations.”

Senate Democrats have repeatedly voted against a House-passed bill that would reopen the government, until Republicans, including Trump, engage them on extending health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year.