The Latest: Hundreds of flights canceled nationwide due to government shutdown

The Federal Aviation Administration ’s unprecedented order to scale back flights nationwide because of the record-long government shutdown took effect Friday morning, with some passengers trying to figure out backup travel plans.

Airlines scrambled to adjust their schedules and began canceling flights Thursday in anticipation of the FAA’s official order, while travelers with plans for the weekend and beyond waited nervously to learn if their flights would take off as scheduled. Airlines also planned cancellations into the weekend, directing passengers to check apps to learn their flight status.

The 40 airports selected by the FAA span more than two dozen states.

The FAA said the reductions would start at 4% and ramp up to 10% by Nov. 14. They are to be in effect between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and impact all commercial airlines.

The agency said the cutbacks are necessary to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who’ve been working without pay for more than a month. Many are pulling six-day work weeks with mandatory overtime, and increasing numbers of them have begun calling out as the financial strain and exhaustion mount.

Here’s the latest:

Sean Duffy said that every day the shutdown continues the situation with more controllers calling out of work may get worse.

So additional flight cuts might be needed — particularly after controllers receive nothing on payday next Tuesday for the second time.

“If this shutdown doesn’t end relatively soon, the consequence of that is going to be more controllers don’t come to work,” Duffy said. “And then we’re going to have to continue to assess the pressure in the air space and make decisions that may again move us from 10% to 15%, maybe to 20. I don’t want to see that.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has rejected Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s offer to reopen the government as part of a bill that also includes a one-year extension of health care subsides for coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

“I think everybody who follows this knows that’s a nonstarter,” Thune said.

Thune made the comments as he prepared to meet with Senate Republicans on the way forward for ending the government shutdown. He has insisted that health care talks occur after Congress has funded the government.

“There is no way the Obamacare extension is the negotiation,” Thune said. “That’s what we’re going to negotiate once the government opens up.”

Jonathan Welle, 39, traveled 11 hours on the train to avoid flying to Washington D.C. from Cleveland, Ohio, for a work trip earlier this week.

Welle, who helps develop cooperative small businesses, opted to fly back to save time, only to have two flights canceled: the first on Thursday night and then the second on the rebooked flight Friday morning.

“I realized that if I had just taken the train at the original time I would have been home sooner, more reliably,” Welle said.

Luckily, American Airlines notified him of the changes before he left for the airport.

But he said the experience is making him reconsider his honeymoon in Vietnam later this month — a trip that he and his partner have waited a year for. The pair rarely travels and afforded the trip through generous gifts from wedding guests.

“I’m concerned about what this new normal could mean,” Welle said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán says his country has received an exemption from U.S. sanctions on Russian energy after a meeting in the White House with President Donald Trump.

The allowance will keep Russian oil and gas flowing to Hungary in a sign of the close affinity between the two leaders.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he wants to increase the sale of American arms to equip U.S. allies while also boosting the military industrial base.

In a more than hourlong speech to military leaders and top defense contractors Friday, Hegseth touted Trump’s efforts to encourage U.S. allies to buy American defense technology. Hegseth said he wants to streamline regulations to encourage more sales, as a way to boost U.S. arms manufacturing while also equipping allies with the latest in military hardware and munitions.

“President Trump in securing deal after deal to bring cold, hard cash to American manufacturers,” Hegseth said. “But our processes are too slow.”

The president is headed to watch the Washington Commanders play the Detroit Lions this Sunday.

Trump will be there to honor U.S. veterans, who are scheduled to be honored at halftime. Veterans Day is Tuesday.

Kickoff is just before 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. The Commanders play in Landover, Maryland, just outside Washington.

The Justice Department is scrutinizing a lobbyist tied to Mayor Muriel Bowser over a trip to Qatar, and not the mayor herself, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

The probe is looking into a trip she took to Qatar in 2023, according to the person, but the mayor has never been a target of that probe. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

Discussion about the investigation was prompted by a report in The New York Times that said Bowser was the target of the probe for payments made by Qatar to help cover the cost of the trip that she made there with four executive staff members.

Asked about the report at a press conference Friday, Bowser denied that she was under investigation. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro in a statement Friday said the same.

“Mayor Bowser is not under investigation, nor is she the target of any investigation,” Pirro said.

The Democratic leader proposed a new approach bill that would fund the government at current levels and extend the health care subsidies for a year, all while negotiations get underway for a more substantial fix for skyrocketing insurance premiums and the Affordable Care Act.

“Let’s find a path,” Schumer said, as the shutdown crisis deepens.

He proposed the senators could also establish a bipartisan commission to work more long-term on ways to make health care more affordable.

Schumer said it’s clear after so many failed votes, it’s time to try something different.

The ball is in the Republicans’ court, he said. “We need Republicans to just say yes.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon will overhaul its process for buying weapons to slash bureaucracy and ensure weapons and technology are delivered more quickly and efficiently.

Speaking to military leaders and top defense contractors Friday in Washington, Hegseth said he wants to streamline defense procurement rules to prioritize speed.

Hegseth began his remarks by quoting from a speech that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave on the same topic many years ago. Hegseth said that shows that the changes he envisions are long overdue.

“For too long, our department has been hampered by a bureaucracy bogged down by burdensome and inefficient processes, paralyzed by impossible risk thresholds, and distracted by agendas that have nothing to do with warfighting,” Hegseth said.

Mexican authorities with assistance from the United States and Israeli intelligence agencies thwarted an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to Mexico, Israeli and U.S. officials said Friday.

The plot to kill Ambassador Einat Kranz Neiger is alleged to have been hatched at the end of last year and remained active through the middle of this year, when it was disrupted, the U.S. officials said.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence, said the plot was “contained” and does not pose a current threat.

Iran’s mission to the U.N. said it had no comment.

Israeli Foreign Ministry on Friday thanked Mexican security services for “thwarting a terrorist network directed by Iran that sought to attack Israel’s ambassador in Mexico.”

Mexico’s Foreign Affairs and Security ministries didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The president and Orban spent about 40 minutes making statements and answering questions from U.S. and Hungarian reporters.

Trump spoke a few times about the continuing government shutdown but didn’t mention the airline snarls or what the administration is doing to deliver food aid for the needy.

He instead spoke a lot about why he’s been pressuring Republican senators to change legislative rules so that most bills can pass with a minimum of 51 votes, instead of the 60 votes currently needed.

Trump and Orban are now meeting in private.

When pressed about rising prices, the president has pointed to the cost of Walmart’s all-inclusive Thanksgiving dinner, which costs less than last year.

There’s one problem with his example — the package includes less than before.

“You’re fake news,” Trump said when a reporter pointed that out. He blamed inflation on former President Joe Biden and said Democrats’ talk about affordability was “a con job.”

“When did I not want to talk about it? I talk about it all the time,” he said.

Trump complained that a reporter had asked about prices in a “fake, disgusting manner,” and he summoned his press secretary to criticize the press more. “You guys refuse to cover it,” Karoline Leavitt said.

The Senate majority leaders says he’s taking the step as lawmakers struggle to end the country’s longest government shutdown ever.

He voiced frustration that negotiation appeared to have stumbled Thursday.

“They were trending in that direction. And then, yesterday, everything kind of, the wheels came off,” he said.

The Senate has been scheduled to be out next week. He was asked about the optics of that as Americans deal with flight cancellations and other ramifications of the shutdown.

“We’ll see what happens over the course of the next couple of days, but I would expect that we’re going to be here for the weekend,” Thune said.

The Senate majority leader pleaded with his colleagues to “end these weeks of misery” as many Democrats have said they will continue to vote against reopening the government until Trump and Republican leaders negotiate with them on an extension of health care benefits.

A small group of Democrats has been negotiating with Republicans on a deal that would end the shutdown with only an agreement for a future health care vote, instead of a guarantee that expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies would be expended.

While most Senate Democrats wouldn’t support that, Republicans only need five additional votes to fund the government.

“The time to act is now,” Thune said in his opening remarks on the Senate floor Friday.

Major airports across the country braced for cancellations on Friday as the result of the air traffic controller shortage created by the federal shutdown.

All 10 airports with the most cancellations had pulled approximately 3% to 4% of all departing flights.Here are the airports with the most cancellations as of noon ET on Friday:

— Chicago O’Hare International Airport: 40 cancelled flights

— Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport: 39 cancelled flights

— Denver International Airport: 32 cancelled flights

— Los Angeles International Airport: 28 cancelled flights

— Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport: 27 cancelled flights

— San Francisco International Airport, 24 cancelled flights

— Newark Liberty International Airport: 23 cancelled flights

“We’re looking at it,” he said during a meeting with Orbán.

Hungary wants to avoid U.S. sanctions for purchasing Russian oil, saying it would be too hard to import energy from other sources because his country is landlocked.Orbán said it’s a “vital” issue.

The president pardoned the former eight-time All-Star outfielder, whom the White House said “served time and paid back taxes” after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

A White House official speaking on background to detail a pardon that hasn’t yet been disclosed publicly, described the slugger as using his post-career time to find “faith in Christianity” and remain sober for a decade. The official said Strawberry also became active in ministry and started a recovery center that remains operational today.

Strawberry won the World Series with the New York Mets in 1986 and with the New York Yankees in 1996, 1998 and 1999.

Delta Air Lines says it has completed all the cuts it plans to make for Friday, Saturday and Sunday to comply with the FAA order.

Customers have been notified if their flight is canceled and they have been automatically rebooked on the next best option. Refunds are available for anyone who does not want to travel.

Delta directed questions about how many flights have been canceled to the FlightAware numbers since these cuts are affecting the entire industry. FlightAware shows 851 cancellations Friday and 670 on Saturday and 274 on Sunday so far. By comparison, 202 flights were canceled Thursday.

Consumer sentiment dropped to a three-year low and close to the lowest point ever recorded by the University of Michigan one month into the government shutdown, with pessimism over personal finances and anticipated business conditions weighing on Americans.

The November survey showed the index of consumer sentiment at 50.4, down a startling 6.2% from last month and it plunged nearly 30% from a year ago.

Economists were caught off guard. Those polled had expected a slight month-to-month increase for a reading of 54.2.

The president’s original plan to sit down with the Russian leader has been put off indefinitely.

But when Orbán arrived at the White House, Trump briefly answered a reporter’s question about revisiting the idea.“There’s always a chance,” Trump said. “Very good chance.”

New Jersey Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill said her state contributes billions of more dollars to the federal government than it gets back every year and called on the Trump administration to use funds it has available to run the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“I’m starting with demanding that the federal government A, either run the program it should be running or B return that money,” Sherrill said.

She attended a pop up food pantry Friday in Newark. It was her first visit since the election to the state’s largest city, which contributed significantly to her overwhelming victory in Tuesday’s election.

People in line for the items, which included rolls, cheese and boxes of cereal among other things, said they’re struggling to make ends meet without SNAP help.

Cornell University has agreed to pay $60 million and accept the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws in order to restore federal funding and end investigations into the Ivy League school.

Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff announced the agreement on Friday, saying it upholds the university’s academic freedom while restoring more than $250 million in research funding that the government withheld amid investigations into alleged civil rights violations.

The university agreed to pay $30 million directly to the U.S. government along with another $30 million toward research that will support U.S. farmers.

And it anticipates cutting fewer than 100 on Saturday to comply with the order to cut 4% of its flights at 34 of the 117 airports it serves.

Southwest said the “vast majority of our customers’ flights will not be disrupted,” and the airline will notify travelers who are affected as soon as possible.

“Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees. We continue to urge Congress to immediately resolve its impasse and restore the National Airspace System to its full capacity,” Southwest said in a statement.

Airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, who’s president of Atmosphere Research Group, said Friday that even though the total number of flights canceled nationwide is large, the impact at each airport is generally pretty small and spread out throughout the day.

“The airlines are doing their level best to minimize inconvenience and to avoid canceling too many flights at any one time in order to obviously get people where they want to go,” Harteveldt said. “They want to make sure that they have some flexibility.”

“So I’m not hearing of chaos,” he said. “There’s certainly anxiety. There’s uncertainty. There’s stress. And look, if your flight has been canceled, it’s very disruptive for you. I don’t want to minimize the impact.”

But even if the airlines have been able to manage these initial cuts without significant impact, Harteveldt said the impact will grow next week as the airlines work their way up to cutting 10% of their flights by next Friday.

United spokesperson Josh Freed said more than 80% of the people affected by the cuts have been rebooked with the vast majority of those scheduled to reach their destinations within four hours of their original plan.

“We’ve had a lot of success rebooking people is the bottom line,” Freed said.

The airlines focused the cuts on smaller regional flights to airports where they have multiple flights a day. That helped minimize the number of passengers affected and limited the disruptions to the airlines’ plan to position planes and crews in their hubs for the next flight.

American offered examples of some of the cuts it made. Flights from Dallas to San Antonio were cut from 11 a day to 10. Flights from Dallas to northwest Arkansas went from 10 to 8 a day. Boston to Reagan National went from 10 flights to 9.

The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans, mostly with lower incomes.

Thursday’s federal court order came in a lawsuit from cities and nonprofits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to cover only 65% of the maximum monthly benefit, a decision that could have left some recipients getting nothing for this month.

In its court filing Friday, Trump’s administration contended that Thursday’s directive to fund full SNAP benefits runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

“This unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers. Courts hold neither the power to appropriate nor the power to spend,” the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in its request to the court.

President Trump’s administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly SNAP benefits amid a U.S. government shutdown, even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people.

U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. had given Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But Trump’s administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund.

The court filing came even as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said on Friday that some SNAP recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.

▶ Read more about the government shutdown and food aid

Republican senators are trying to end the government shutdown by preparing a bipartisan package of spending bills they hope will win new Democratic votes. It’s unclear whether their plan will work.

Democrats have voted 14 times not to reopen the government as they demand an extension of expiring health care subsidies, which aren’t expected to be part of the legislation. Many said Thursday they would continue to hold out until President Trump and Republican leaders negotiate with them on an extension.

“That’s what leaders do,” said Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. “You have the gavel, you have the majority, you have to bring people together.”

A test vote on the new package, which hasn’t been made public, could come as soon as Friday.

▶ Read more about the government shutdown

President Donald Trump is adjusting his messaging strategy to win over voters who are worried about the cost of living with plans to emphasize new tax breaks and show progress on fighting inflation.

The messaging is centered around affordability, and the push comes after inflation emerged as a major vulnerability for Trump and Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, in which voters overwhelmingly said the economy was their biggest concern.

Democrats took advantage of concerns about affordability to run up huge margins in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races, flipping what had been a strength for Trump in the 2024 presidential election into a vulnerability going into next year’s midterm elections.

▶ Read more about Trump’s efforts on affordability

Hundreds of flights are being canceled because of the government shutdown, but the president isn’t grounded. He’s expected to jet down to Florida’s Palm Beach today to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his private resort.

In the scramble to find alternatives to flying, Hertz is reporting a sharp increase in one-way car rentals. One-way reservations have spiked more that 20% through this weekend compared with the same period last year.

Hertz CEO Gil West urged Congress to restore certainty for travelers, saying “Every day of delay creates unnecessary disruption.”

There was no jobs report Friday morning for the second month in a row because of the government shutdown, denying Wall Street analysts, economists and everyday Americans closely-watched figures such as the unemployment rate and the number of jobs gained or lost in October.

Still, a raft of alternative data from mostly private-sector companies suggest job gains remained weak last month. Payroll processor ADP said earlier this week that just 42,000 jobs were added in October, a small gain after two months of declines. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates the unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.4% from 4.3% when it was last reported in August.

For those out of work, sluggish hiring has resulted in longer spells of unemployment, an unusual trend outside recessions.

▶ Read more about the “no hire” job market

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said this week that he’s never seen these kinds of measures taken before in his nearly four-decade experience in the aviation field.

“We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns,” he said.

Staffing problems led to delays throughout October, but they were mostly isolated and temporary. Last weekend, though, saw a change.

From Friday to Sunday evening, at least 39 air traffic control facilities reported potential staffing limits, according to an Associated Press analysis of operations plans shared through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center system. The figure, which is likely an undercount, is well above the average for weekends before the shutdown.

The 40 airports selected by the FAA for reductions span more than two dozen states and include hubs such as Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami and Newark, according to an order published by the agency Thursday evening. A full list of affected airports can be found here.

Tips for passengers whose flights are delayed or canceled during the shutdown can be found here.

Some planned to focus on slashing routes to and from small and medium-size cities.

Carriers are required to refund customers whose flights are canceled but not to cover secondary costs such as food and hotel accommodations unless a delay or cancellation results from a contributing factor that is within the control of the airlines, according to the Department of Transportation.

Industry analyst Henry Harteveldt warned that the reductions will “have a noticeable impact across the U.S. air transportation system.”

Delta Air Lines said it would scratch roughly 170 flights Friday, and American Airlines planned to cut 220 a day through Monday.

The FAA said the reductions would start at 4% and ramp up to 10% by Nov. 14.