Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tried to shift the blame for a string of recent air disasters onto his Democratic predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, in the wake of cutting hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration personnel.
Duffy, confirmed to lead the department in the Senate late last month, revealed on Monday that the Trump administration fired “less than 400” of the FAA’s 45,000 employees. He also claimed all of them were serving probationary periods.
The layoffs took place against a backdrop of three fatal U.S. air disasters since Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Alaska – with another commercial plane carrying 80 people flipping over upon a crash landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday.
His response came after Buttigieg, who served as transportation secretary in the Biden administration, took issue with the dismissals and publicly called out Duffy on X on Monday.
“How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?,” he wrote.
Rather than directly address the question, Duffy, a former reality star and Fox News host, took a swipe at Buttigieg and suggested his implementation of outdated equipment, laissez-faire leadership style and so-called “mismanagement” were to blame for recent incidents.
“Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system,” he began his social media rant on Monday evening.
He later wrote: “Mayor Pete chose to use this amazing department—that is so critical to America’s success—as a slush fund for the green new scam and environmental justice nonsense. Not to mention that over 90% of the workforce under his leadership were working from home – including him. The building was empty!
“When we finally get a full accounting of his mismanagement, I look forward to hearing from him.”
Duffy said that none of the FAA staff fired were air traffic controllers or any “critical staff.”
However, one air traffic controller told the Associated Press that fired workers included those hired for FAA radar, landing, and navigational aid maintenance.
In the case of the D.C. crash, which saw none of the 67 people aboard an American Airlines jet and Black Hawk military helicopter survive after they collided above the Potomac River last month, a seemingly overworked air traffic controller was given the job of two people, a source told The New York Times.
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union that represents FAA employees, said that “several hundred” workers started getting firing notices on Friday.
David Spero, the union’s leader, said the action was “unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
The Trump administration has pushed to make large-scale reductions in the federal workforce in a cost-cutting drive led by Elon Musk’s non-official advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency.
The lay-offs came as DOGE visited the FAA’s Air Traffic Control command center in Warrenton, Virginia, on Monday, as the Trump administration says it hopes to reform the system.
Duffy tweeted on Monday that a team from Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX would also visit the command center to “envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.”
After being probed by journalist and podcast host Jon Favreau about “firing working responsible for air safety,” Musk tweeted: “Please identify which safety personnel were fired and we will bring them back immediately.
“To the best of our knowledge, no one affecting safety has been fired.”
