Trump Administration Live Updates: Officials Demand States ‘Undo’ Work to Send Full Food Stamp Benefits
Author
Staff Writer
Posted on
Posted on
0
Where Things Stand
- Food stamps: The Trump administration told states to “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, threatening financial penalties if they do not comply. The guidance issued late Saturday by the Agriculture Department adds to the uncertainty surrounding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown. SNAP helps roughly one in eight Americans buy groceries. Read more ›
- Shutdown talks: Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, suggested that a deal to reopen the government was “coming together” and could potentially face test vote as early as Sunday evening. A bipartisan group of senators has been huddling in discussions that seek a path out of the standoff, but it is not clear whether Democrats are ready to sign on. Read more ›
- Airport disruptions: More than 1,600 flights were canceled and delays were rising on Sunday, the third day of government-mandated traffic cuts affecting 40 of the country’s busiest airports. The cuts, intended to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who have worked without pay since the federal government shutdown began last month, were expected to grow in the coming days if the standoff continues. Read more ›
Nov. 9, 2025, 4:51 p.m. ET13 minutes ago
Reporting from the Capitol
Thune says a deal to reopen the government is ‘coming together.’
The Senate appeared to be creeping toward a breakthrough that could end the government shutdown after Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, told reporters at the Capitol that a spending deal was “coming together” and could receive a test vote as early as Sunday evening.
Mr. Thune had been expressing hope for days that an agreement could be reached, and it was not clear whether Democrats, who have been divided on how to proceed, would be ready to join Republicans in moving ahead. They were set to huddle later Sunday afternoon to discuss next steps.
But Mr. Thune’s comments, during a rare Sunday session and as the shutdown stretched into its 40th day, followed intense discussions among a bipartisan group of moderate senators who have been seeking a path to reopening the government.
Republicans who control 53 votes in the Senate have tried and failed repeatedly over the past several weeks to win over enough Democrats to bring up a temporary spending bill. But so far they have drawn the backing of just three members of the Democratic caucus — too few to scale the 60-vote threshold to proceed.
Mr. Thune’s remarks suggested that he believed his party was on the brink of bringing enough Democrats on board to move forward. That would be a remarkable development, especially given that the G.O.P. has refused to grant Democrats’ main demand in the shutdown fight: the extension of Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies slated to expire at the end of the year.
Senators in both parties have been quietly negotiating a spending package that includes a new stopgap measure that would fund the government through January, plus three separate spending measures to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies for most of 2026.
In a sign of progress, leaders on the Senate Appropriations Committee on Sunday released the three spending bills, which reject most of the deep spending cuts that President Trump proposed in his budget earlier this year.
Mr. Trump’s proposal, for example, would have eliminated the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus American crops to communities around the world that are experiencing famine and starvation. The Senate legislation would provide $1.2 billion for the program, which many Republicans hailing from farm states have championed.
Negotiators in the Senate also rejected a push from House Republicans to halve funding for the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The G.A.O. has twice determined this year that Mr. Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, and the agency is allowed under existing law to sue to force a president to release illegally withheld funds.
Instead, Senate appropriators proposed keeping the G.A.O.’s funding flat, and jettisoned a provision that their House counterparts had advanced that sought to bar the agency from suing the White House in the future.
Democrats spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend the health insurance subsidies in exchange for their votes to fund the government, a condition that the G.O.P. refused to meet.
On Friday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, scaled back that demand, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the legislation included an extension of the health tax credits for just one year.
Republicans immediately rejected that proposal, calling it a non-starter.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 9, 2025, 4:10 p.m. ET55 minutes ago
Mattathias Schwartz reports on the federal judiciary.
A federal judge steps down, warning Trump poses an ‘existential threat’ to democracy.
A federal judge warned of an “existential threat to democracy” in a searing first-person essay published on Sunday, saying he had stepped down from the bench to speak out against President Trump. He accused Mr. Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”
The judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote in The Atlantic magazine that Mr. Trump’s actions are “contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.”
The publication of the essay by Judge Wolf, 78, came two days after an announcement by the Federal District Court for Massachusetts that he was leaving his post as a senior-status judge.
An appointee of President Ronald Reagan who also served in the Justice Department during the Ford administration, Judge Wolf offered one of the most explicit expressions of concern for the rule of law to come from a member of the federal judiciary amid Mr. Trump’s efforts to vastly expand the scope of presidential power.
His seat on the court was filled by Judge Indira Talwani, a nominee of President Barack Obama, in 2014, after he stepped down from active service to senior status, a form of semi-retirement.
In a phone interview, Judge Wolf said he had resigned not only to speak more freely about his own views, but for colleagues who are still on the bench. “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people,” he said.
Lower court judges have repeatedly issued rulings blocking Mr. Trump’s initiatives, provoking an aggressive response from administration officials who have accused them of engaging in partisan politics, going as far to call for some of them to be impeached.
In many cases, those judges have seen their decisions effectively reversed on a preliminary basis by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Responding to a New York Times questionnaire, dozens of lower-court federal judges criticized the role that those emergency rulings by the Supreme Court, on the so-called shadow docket, have played in the ongoing conflict between the judiciary and the executive branch.
“There are judges who anonymously expressed concerns about the unreasoned decisions on the shadow docket, which I also expressed in this article,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump-aligned legal figures were quick to criticize Judge Wolf. Robert Luther III, a professor at Antonin Scalia Law School who helped choose judicial nominees as a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office during Mr. Trump’s first administration, said he hoped other judges engaged in what he called “anti-Trump activism” would follow Judge Wolf’s lead and leave the bench. “Step right up, please!” he wrote on social media.
Judge Wolf had a long and storied career on the federal bench. As the Massachusetts district’s chief judge, he presided over the trial of the Boston mobster James (Whitey) Bulger and wrote a 661-page opinion detailing misconduct by the F.B.I. related to Mr. Bulger, who had been a confidential informant.
In 2023, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he raised questions about the judiciary’s handling of Justice Clarence Thomas’ decision not to disclose lavish gifts on his annual financial disclosure forms.
The code of conduct for federal judges requires that they “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” a rule that has been interpreted to limit their public statements. In a letter last week to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio asked that the judges who responded to the Times questionnaire be investigated for potentially violating that rule.
But in the eyes of Judge Wolf and other judges who have put warnings in their opinions, the actions of the administration deserve urgent scrutiny. In addition to claiming unilateral powers to spend, deport, and kill, Mr. Trump’s administration has also undertaken a far-reaching campaign to investigate and prosecute the president’s adversaries.
Judge Wolf, who served in the Justice Department in the years after the Watergate scandal, wrote that Mr. Trump was “routinely and overtly” doing what President Nixon had done “episodically and covertly.”
He cited a social media post by Mr. Trump which called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute James Comey, the former F.B.I. director; Senator Adam Schiff of California, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Mr. Comey and Ms. James were subsequently indicted, and investigations of senior intelligence officials from the Obama administrations were also said to be underway.
“Americans proudly say that we live in the longest-lived democracy in the world,” Judge Wolf said in the interview. “But that should teach us that all the others failed.”
Nov. 9, 2025, 4:05 p.m. ET59 minutes ago
Reporting from Washington
Michelle Obama says Trump’s East Wing demolition ‘denigrates’ the work of the first lady.
Michelle Obama criticized President Trump for destroying the East Wing of the White House to make room for a $300 million ballroom, calling the project a denigration of a space that traditionally has been the first lady’s domain.
“When we talk about the East Wing, it is the heart of the work” of a first lady, Mrs. Obama said during a live taping of her podcast in Brooklyn last week, according to Vanity Fair. “And to denigrate it, to tear it down, to pretend like it doesn’t matter — it’s a reflection of how you think of that role.”
The East Wing of the White House came crumbling down last month for Mr. Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a project that will transform one of the most recognizable buildings in the world and could nearly double its size.
Mrs. Obama said that she had told President Barack Obama’s staff at the West Wing that she and members of her staff brought him “five extra approval points” for his job approval rating by presenting a balanced image of the first family, according to Vanity Fair.
She also expressed her disapproval and frustration with men who did not vote for Kamala Harris, the former vice president, in 2024, interpreting their refusal to vote for Ms. Harris as unwillingness to “vote for a woman.”
“Don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying. You’re not ready,” she said, according to Vanity Fair’s reporting. Mrs. Obama was in Brooklyn promoting her new book, “The Look.”
In 2024, white men favored Mr. Trump by 20 percentage points, an increase of three points compared to 2020, while white women favored Mr. Trump by four percentage points, according to Pew Research Center. Mr. Trump also improved his margins with Hispanic voters and other groups, including Black men, though an overwhelming majority of Black voters supported Ms. Harris.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 9, 2025, 4:00 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Tony RommEconomic policy reporter
State officials are considering additional legal action against the Trump administration after it ordered them to “undo” any full benefit payments this month, according to two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe the deliberations. About two dozen states have already sued the government in a bid to force the release of full funding for the program, known as SNAP, which is being heard by a federal court in Massachusetts.
Nov. 9, 2025, 2:48 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Washington
The White House has discussed naming the new Washington Commanders stadium after Trump.
Officials in the Trump administration have discussed the president’s wish to have the new stadium of the Washington Commanders football team named after him, according to a senior White House official.
The new site will allow the Commanders to return to the District of Columbia by 2030 after having spent about three decades in suburban Maryland.
“That would surely be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in an emailed statement.
ESPN reported earlier that Mr. Trump wanted the stadium to be named for him, and that his associates were said to have conveyed the idea to Josh Harris, the football team’s owner.
It is unclear how Mr. Trump has contributed to the construction of the new stadium. The team played at that site, about two miles east of the Capitol, before moving to Maryland.
In December 2024, Congress passed a bipartisan bill to transfer the land around Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to the D.C. government from National Park Service, which kicked off the redevelopment process of the stadium that would house the team.
The bill gives Washington administrative jurisdiction over 174 acres of the land under a renewable 99-year lease that also allows for the construction of residential and commercial buildings.
In January, before Mr. Trump assumed office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed the bill into law.
The land’s previous jurisdiction under the park agency had been a major roadblock to the redevelopment of the stadium campus, as the land use was strictly limited, barring commercial or housing development, according to legislation passed by the District of Columbia Council in September that approved the $3.7 billion deal for the new stadium.
The naming rights for the new stadium belongs exclusively to the developers of the new stadium compound, according to the term sheet signed by Washington’s mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, and Mr. Harris.
Naming rights deals for N.F.L. stadiums often hold millions of dollars in market value. Bank of America, for example, spent around $140 million to have the Carolina Panthers’ stadium in Charlotte, N.C., named after the company for about two decades.
Ms. Bowser’s office and the Commanders declined to comment.
The White House did not respond to a question about how the name change would be possible. The president was expected to attend the Commanders’ home game against the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
Nov. 9, 2025, 2:35 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, told reporters at the Capitol that a spending deal to reopen the government was “coming together” and that he hoped to hold a test vote to gauge support for such a legislative vehicle as early as this evening.
His comments came as a bipartisan group of moderate senators have been huddling to find a path out of the shutdown. Bipartisan discussions around a spending deal have centered on a new stopgap funding measure, plus three separate spending bills for programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies for most of 2026.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 9, 2025, 1:14 p.m. ET4 hours ago
More than 1,600 flights were canceled on Sunday and delays were rising, according to the tracking service FlightAware, as airlines struggled to manage the fallout of a federal reduction in flying at 40 busy airports amid limited air traffic controller staffing. “It’s only going to get worse,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I’d look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”
Nov. 9, 2025, 1:12 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Trump offers a new angle on the shutdown: Attack Obamacare again.
President Trump took a new line toward ending the government shutdown this weekend, attacking the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Democrats are demanding be extended and calling instead for the subsidies to go directly to consumers.
Through social media posts, the president renewed his attacks on the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, which he has spent years assailing and promising to replace, but to no avail. Mr. Trump suggested that premiums for consumers and share prices for insurers had risen too much in the 15 years since the law passed, and he was ready to work on a solution — if Democrats reopened the government first.
“I stand ready to work with both Parties to solve this problem once the Government is open,” he wrote on Sunday.
Mr. Trump has insisted for more than a month that Democrats sign on to a Republican measure to reopen the government, without the concessions they have sought on health programs, including the subsidies. On Friday, Democrats substantially scaled back their demands, saying they would be willing to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension, but Republicans quickly rejected the offer.
Mr. Trump has pitched various ideas for ending the standoff, including pushing Senate Republicans to end the filibuster, which would allow them to pass their funding measure with a simple majority. But Republicans fear such a move would come back to haunt them if Democrats were to regain the majority.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said that he would recommend to Senate Republicans that funds being sent to “money sucking Insurance Companies” instead go to the people, so they can “PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE.”
On Sunday, he attacked Obamacare and Democrats, who he said were looking to enrich “their best friends” in insurance companies. The country, he wrote, was “being terrorized by Democrats who have decided to shut the Government down to make me and other Republicans continue ObamaCare subsidies, which have been a windfall for Health Insurance Companies, and a DISASTER for the American People.”
But Mr. Trump offered no details about what such a plan could look like, how it could save money for consumers, or how funds sent to Americans for health care costs would not end up going to insurance companies, anyway. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview on Sunday with ABC’s “This Week” that there had been no formal proposal to the Senate.
Even so, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, quickly endorsed the notion, calling it “simply brilliant.”
“I am completely onboard with your recommendation,” he wrote on social media.
Mr. Trump repeatedly called for the Affordable Care Act to be replaced during his first term, but no viable approach ever materialized. During his lone debate last year against Vice President Kamala Harris, he acknowledged he had only “concepts of a plan” but went on to promise a new one “in the not-too-distant future.”
Nov. 9, 2025, 12:58 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, told Fox News and CNN in interviews on Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had texted him to offer the services of military reservists trained as air traffic controllers to alleviate staff shortages that are worsening during the shutdown and have prompted the government to impose limits on air traffic.
President Ronald Reagan brought in military controllers to fill air traffic positions in 1981, when he responded to a strike by firing the entire workforce of unionized controllers. Duffy said in the interviews that he was not sure if he would be able to use military controllers now, since they had not been trained to manage the airspace they would be working in.
But, he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “if I can, I’m going to use them.”
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 9, 2025, 12:44 p.m. ET4 hours ago
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said on Sunday that he intends to subpoena Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the retired government infectious disease specialist, to testify before his committee if Fauci does not agree to do so voluntarily. Paul made his comments in a virtual address to a conference hosted by Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. founded and led until he ran for president.
The senator has been a relentless critic of Fauci, who helped steer the nation through the coronavirus pandemic, repeatedly accusing him of covering up evidence that Covid-19 was the result of a laboratory leak, and of lying to Congress.
Fauci, who has vehemently denied those accusations, had no comment on the senator’s remarks.
Nov. 9, 2025, 10:14 a.m. ETNov. 9, 2025
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a promise from Republicans to vote on extending expiring health care subsidies would be insufficient for House Democrats to end the stalemate that has shuttered the government. Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to commit to holding such a vote, but Democrats have long maintained that they want a guarantee that the tax credits will be extended.
“I don’t think that the House Democratic Caucus is prepared to support a promise, a wink and a prayer, from folks who have been devastating the health care of the American people for years,” Jeffries said.
Nov. 9, 2025, 9:27 a.m. ETNov. 9, 2025
Tony RommEconomic policy reporter
The Trump administration demands that states ‘undo’ work to send full food stamps to low-income families.
The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown.
The Agriculture Department issued the command late Saturday in a memo, which The New York Times later viewed. That guidance threatened to impose harsh financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the new federal orders.
The memo surprised, vexed and frustrated many state leaders, and by Sunday, some had begun to explore their legal options to prevent any further disruptions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But the Trump administration held firm in its refusal to fund food stamps in full, telling a court in a strongly worded filing on Sunday that states would be “responsible for the consequences” of their actions.
Caught in the middle were the roughly one in eight Americans who depend on monthly federal assistance to purchase groceries — aid that has been imperiled for days as the shutdown approaches its sixth week. Multiple lawsuits to loosen that money remain unresolved, leaving many families at growing risk of hunger and financial hardship.
Some of the 42 million people enrolled in SNAP began to receive their full benefits on Friday, after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the program this month amid the shutdown. States like New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin raced to release the aid to residents, some of whom had been without nutrition assistance for days.
Soon after, though, the Supreme Court temporarily paused the judge’s order so that an appeals court could further review it, leaving the entire program in legal limbo. That review remains underway, and the outcome could determine whether the government must tap its ample reserves — totaling into the tens of billions of dollars — to preserve full SNAP benefits this month.
The Agriculture Department did not respond to a request for comment. The White House budget office also did not respond.
Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that she believed that the Trump administration was “demanding that food assistance be taken away from the households that have already received it.”
“They would rather go door to door, taking away people’s food, than do the right thing and fully fund SNAP for November so that struggling veterans, seniors, and children can keep food on the table,” she said.
The food stamp program is federally funded but largely managed by states. To provide benefits, states send files to processors, which administer the electronic benefit transfer system, known as E.B.T. These vendors then make the funds available on E.B.T. cards, which are the primary way that SNAP recipients purchase groceries.
In its guidance, the Agriculture Department late Saturday said states may not send E.B.T. processors the files that would be required to provide full benefits. Rather, the agency said states must only send files for “partial” benefits, meaning that food stamp recipients would see their payments substantially cut.
“To the extent states sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” wrote Patrick A. Penn, a top official at the Agriculture Department. “Accordingly, states must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
David A. Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said it would not be “legal” for the government to claw back benefits that it had already provisioned without affording people due process.
But, Mr. Super added, the federal government sought to thwart the states that hadn’t completed their work to release full SNAP allotments to low-income families. He said the memo could serve to “scare states partway along the process, and it’s telling the states to turn back.”
Officials in at least one state, Wisconsin, publicly refused to comply with the Trump administration’s new directive, citing the financial harm that it might inflict on residents.
“No,” Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said in a statement. He said his state would continue to fight “against the Trump administration’s efforts to yank food assistance away from Wisconsin’s kids, families, and seniors.”
Wisconsin officials also criticized the federal government on Sunday for trying to obstruct some of the complicated, behind-the-scenes transactions that help to reimburse grocers that accept SNAP. They brought it to the attention of a federal judge in Massachusetts who is considering a request by roughly two dozen states, including Wisconsin, to force the Trump administration to restore all SNAP funds.
As part of that lawsuit, state leaders also asked the judge on Saturday to shield them from any federal punishment over their handling of food stamps during the current period of legal uncertainty. In a filing, they pointed to a series of conflicting instructions from the Agriculture Department, which at one point had signaled that it was preparing to release the funds for full food stamp payments after all.
Lawyers for the Justice Department strongly opposed the states’ request in a formal reply to the court on Saturday. Their filing came as the Trump administration also ratcheted up its threats to punish local officials for allocating full food stamp payments.
In its memo, the Agriculture Department said that states could lose access to some federal money to manage the SNAP program if they failed to comply, and may be “liable” for funding full benefits that the federal government did not authorize.
“The cruelty is the point,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who leads her party on the chamber’s top agriculture committee. In a post on Sunday on social media, she added: “It is their choice to do this.”
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 9, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ETNov. 9, 2025
Airport disruptions may get worse this week.
Thousands of flights were canceled this weekend after federal restrictions on flying were put in place at the nation’s busiest airports. And the cuts are expected to grow in the coming days, threatening to wreak further havoc for airlines and travelers as Thanksgiving approaches.
The Federal Aviation Administration required airlines to cut flights by 4 percent at 40 busy airports starting on Friday, citing the need to improve safety and relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who have worked without pay since the federal government shutdown began last month.
At one point on Saturday, 18 out of 22 controllers in Atlanta did not show up to work, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“It’s only going to get worse,” Mr. Duffy said. “I’d look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”
Airlines tried to weather the restrictions throughout the weekend by making surgical cuts, but managing the disruption was difficult and will become harder as the restrictions rise throughout the coming week to 10 percent by this Friday and possibly even higher.
“The degree of complexity increases for every flight that we are not going to operate,” said Steve Olson, the head of system operations and airports at JetBlue Airways. “That means that we have a crew that may not be in the right position to be able to operate their next flight or an aircraft that may not be in the right place.”
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights each day from Friday through Sunday at airports serving major cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. The cuts were concentrated among flights offered by three of the largest carriers, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, which dominate many of those busy airports.
American canceled about 740 flights on Friday and Saturday, or more than 6.5 percent of its schedule for those days, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm. Delta canceled about 640 flights across both days, or over 7.3 percent of its schedule, while United cut over 450 flights or more than 5.2 percent of its schedule.
While the disruption on Friday was less severe, there were more than 1,400 flights canceled on Saturday, making it the 10th worst day of the year for cancellations, according to Cirium data. American, Delta and United had canceled more than 1,000 flights by midday Sunday.
See Where Flights Have Been Canceled Across the U.S.
Throughout the first few weeks of the shutdown, controller staffing had a limited effect on cancellations, according to the trade group Airlines for America, which represents the largest passenger and cargo airlines. Through Oct. 29, the nation’s six largest passenger airlines canceled fewer than a dozen flights because of controller staffing problems, it said, citing an analysis of F.A.A. data.
Since then, though, those airlines have canceled more than 1,200 flights because of controller staffing problems. On Friday alone, 865 flights were canceled for reasons related to controller staffing, about 87 percent of which were because of the F.A.A. directive to reduce flying at the 40 busy airports. And while many flights still operated, the staffing problems have contributed to widespread delays over the weekend.
In a social media post, Mr. Duffy said that private jets were also being diverted from busy airports to smaller ones to better accommodate commercial flights.
On CNN, Mr. Duffy said that an average of four controllers retired daily before the shutdown, but that number is now up to 15 to 20. He also said that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, had offered the help of military reservists trained as air traffic controllers, but that he wasn’t sure if he would be able to use them.
Thousands of travelers were affected the weekend disruptions, but airlines were able to ease the impact thanks in part to timing.
Planes are generally less full in early November because many people reserve travel for later in the month, around Thanksgiving. That gave the airlines the flexibility to trim on busy routes, moving passengers from canceled flights to others still operating between the same destinations. United said that about half of its customers affected by the cuts over the weekend were rebooked to flights that took off within four hours of their original departure time.
Airlines also focused cuts on less popular regional routes, dropping flights linking tiny airports with larger cities. Flights to small, regional airports can typically accommodate about 50 to 75 passengers, while flights between big cities can often carry twice as many people, if not more. While American cut more than 5 percent of its schedule on Friday, for example, only about 2 percent of its passengers that day were on affected flights.
Most of the weekend disruption was caused by staffing shortages and the reduction in flying, but airlines were also dealing with more routine problems. At Chicago O’Hare International Airport, for instance, flights were delayed more than half an hour, on average, on Sunday afternoon because of runway construction. A snowstorm was forecast for the evening, which could bring further disruption.
American, Delta and United outsource many regional flights to subsidiaries or other carriers like SkyWest Airlines and Republic Airways, the two operators most affected by the cuts.
By midday Sunday, about 230 SkyWest flights had been canceled, amounting to about 8 percent of its schedule for the day, according to FlightAware, an aviation data firm. Republic canceled more than 160 flights, or about 14 percent of its schedule.
Those two airlines mostly operate flights for American, Delta and United and are typically still paid for canceled flights, though they may face added costs to move planes and crews into place for other flights. In a statement on Saturday, SkyWest said that cancellations were “being managed days in advance” and that the company continues to operate “the vast majority” of its flights.
Still, most routes, even regional ones, retained at least some service through the weekend, though there were a few examples of carriers dropping routes with one or two flights. (On Sunday, for instance, United cut its only round-trip flight from its hub in Newark to Myrtle Beach, S.C.)
But airlines generally avoided cutting more congested flights between hub airports or to destinations abroad. Most cuts were carried out by U.S. airlines, though a handful of flights were canceled by international carriers. Many airlines allowed customers to change flights or request refunds, even if they had restrictive, nonrefundable tickets.
Because of the disruptions, some travelers were reconsidering flying, exploring other options, including renting cars, taking buses or trains or just staying home.
Airlines are well practiced at managing flight cancellations caused by myriad factors, like bad weather, staffing shortages and technological outages. In deciding which flights to cancel, crisis teams use software to help identify candidates to cut and consider a range of factors, including how cancellations will affect the placement of customers, pilots and planes. But there are limits to how much disruption the industry can handle.
“The airlines’ challenges will worsen as the Thanksgiving holiday period approaches,” the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings said in a research note on Friday. Thanksgiving is among the busiest travel periods of the year and will “leave little room for airlines to reaccommodate displaced passengers, amplifying revenue loss and customer service costs,” the note said.
The industry escalated calls for an end to the government shutdown, the longest in history, as the flight limits took effect at the end of the week. Airlines for America said that more than 4 million passengers had already experienced delays or cancellations caused by air traffic controller staffing problems since the shutdown began in early October.
“We implore Congress to act with extreme urgency to get the federal government reopened, get federal workers paid and get our airspace back to normal operations,” the group said on Friday. A record 31 million people are expected to travel over about a dozen days around Thanksgiving, it added.
The F.A.A. said it was reducing flights to improve safety and relieve air traffic controllers who had been overworked for years, but were under particular stress after working for more than a month without pay.
Some lawmakers and experts questioned the measure, asking the agency to share the data justifying its decision. But others welcomed the proactive approach.
“Pressures are building in the system,” Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a social media post last week. “This is safety management, the very foundation of our aviation system, and it’s the right thing to do.”
Nov. 8, 2025, 7:19 p.m. ETNov. 8, 2025
Isabela Espadas Barros Leal and Tony Romm
A timeline of the legal battle over food-stamps benefits.
The Supreme Court late Friday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to continue to withhold some funding for food stamps, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, the latest twist in a dizzying legal battle with great stakes for millions of low-income Americans.
The order from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson paused, at least for now, the directive of a lower court judge, who had ordered the Trump administration to fully fund benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The matter now rests in the hands of a federal appeals court, which is considering whether to maintain that pause, known as a stay, or allow the lower court judge’s order to take effect. The appeals court is expected to rule quickly.
In the meantime, states have struggled to interpret a series of conflicting rulings and changing developments, which by Saturday appeared to further disrupt food stamp benefits for some of the roughly one in eight Americans who receive them.
Here’s a timeline of the SNAP developments:
Oct. 1: The government shutdown begins after lawmakers in Congress failed to strike a deal to fund federal agencies and programs. The closure did not immediately affect SNAP, however, which was able to pay benefits for the month.
Oct. 24: The Trump administration informed states that it would not tap a reserve of about $5 billion to provide even partial benefits under SNAP, which normally costs about $8 billion a month. The decision by the Agriculture Department marked a reversal from the agency’s own public guidance, issued earlier in the fiscal standoff in Washington, which said it would use its contingency funds to sustain the food stamp program.
Oct. 28: Roughly two dozen states sued the Trump administration over its refusal to continue to fund SNAP. The states, including Arizona, California and Massachusetts, described the cuts as unnecessary and illegal, and they asked a federal judge in Boston to order the Agriculture Department to restart funding to avoid benefit cuts in November.
Oct. 30: A second coalition of cities, religious groups and other nonprofits sued the Trump administration in federal court in Rhode Island. They raised some of the same issues as the states as they looked to force the release of SNAP funds.
The Trump administration staunchly defended its decision to halt SNAP funds at a hearing before a federal judge in Massachusetts, who expressed deep skepticism with the arguments raised by the Justice Department. The government had even acknowledged ahead of that hearing that it had plenty of funds available in two accounts: an emergency fund for SNAP and a second reserve filled primarily with tariff revenue. But the Trump administration said it faced legal, technical and budgetary constraints that prevented it from transferring the money.
Oct. 31: Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, ruled against the Trump administration. Siding with cities and nonprofits, he said the government had to tap emergency money for SNAP — and consider using a second tranche of funds, largely comprising tariff revenue — to pay benefits quickly.
Nov. 1: In a written version of his earlier ruling, Judge McConnell gave the administration a choice: It could make full or partial SNAP payments that week to alleviate “irreparable harm” facing food stamp recipients. No matter which option it chose — and which funding source it used — the judge ordered the government to act with haste and during that week.
Nov. 3: The administration revealed in a set of court filings that it would send partial payments to SNAP recipients. Initially, the government said that eligible households could receive about half as much in benefits, and it warned that those benefits could be severely delayed. But guidance issued days later by the Agriculture Department revealed the cuts and delays would be much more extensive — leaving some families to receive no aid at all in November.
Nov. 4: President Trump threatened on social media to defy the federal court order, saying that SNAP payments “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, later said the administration would be “fully complying” with the court order.
Nov. 6: The same federal judge in Rhode Island ordered that food stamps must be paid in full by Nov. 7. He sharply criticized the administration for holding up SNAP for “political reasons,” and required the government to use both emergency funds and its additional account to provide full benefits in November.
Vice President JD Vance criticized the judge’s “absurd ruling,” and the Justice Department quickly said it would appeal.
Nov. 7: In its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the Justice Department argued that there was no “lawful basis” to force the president to fund SNAP payments in full. The court declined to impose an immediate halt to the order, prompting an emergency appeal from the administration to the Supreme Court.
Later that night, Justice Jackson temporarily halted the Rhode Island court’s order to give the appeals court additional time to weigh elements of the case. But states including New York, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Oregon had already started to release full benefits to their residents, adding uncertainty to how the Supreme Court’s administrative stay would affect the payments.
Nov. 8: One day after the ruling, many states struggled to sort through the confusion. Some states had to delay their plans to provide full SNAP benefits, while some food stamp recipients experienced trouble using their benefits to buy groceries.
In late-night guidance, the Trump administration then told states it must “undo” the work to provide full food stamp payments to low-income families — and it threatened financial penalties on states that did not comply.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Nov. 8, 2025, 4:36 p.m. ETNov. 8, 2025
As beef prices remain high, Trump calls for an inquiry into big meatpacking companies.
A Justice Department investigation into the country’s largest meatpacking companies for collusion and price fixing has the potential to reshape the cattle and beef industries. But past efforts to break the companies’ hold have gone nowhere.
The White House called for an examination into the meatpacking companies’ practices after President Trump, in a post on social media on Friday, accused them of artificially inflating prices and jeopardizing the country’s food supply. A White House news release specifically named JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef as targets of the investigation. The companies collectively slaughter 85 percent of the country’s cattle and a majority of its hogs.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said an investigation, headed by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, was already underway.
Ranchers have long complained that the big four meatpackers hold undue power. They have pointed to data that shows that retail beef prices rose over much of the last decade even as the price they received for their cattle fell, with middlemen like slaughterhouses taking in more of the profits.
“We welcome this investigation to ensure that cattle producers receive competitive prices for their cattle, and that consumers pay prices set by a competitive market rather than a monopolistic one,” Bill Bullard, the chief executive of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fund, said in a statement on Friday.
JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef did not respond to requests for comment. The Meat Institute, an industry lobbying group, said that beef packers were losing money and that “market transactions are transparent.”
Shares in JBS and Tyson Foods, the two publicly traded meatpackers, initially dropped on Friday after President Trump’s announcement, though Tyson’s stock recovered and ended up for the day.
A pound of ground beef cost $6.32 in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an increase of more than 11 percent from the year before. Most economists have pointed to the United States cattle herd, which is smaller than it has been since the 1950s, as the main cause of high beef prices. President Trump has often talked about food prices and the Consumer Price Index, sometimes falsely saying the costs for some foods have fallen when they have not.
The opening of an investigation could mollify President Trump’s critics in ranching and farm country. While rural America largely voted for him in the last presidential election, many have grown more critical as his trade war drove down crop prices, and his administration spent $40 billion bailing out Argentina, an agricultural competitor of the United States. Mr. Trump has also blamed ranchers for high beef prices, leading to a drop in prices for cattle at auctions. But the retail price of beef has continued to rise.
The government, in President Trump’s first term, also examined the meatpacking industry. The Department of Justice subpoenaed information from the big meatpackers. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also criticized meatpackers in one of his State of the Union addresses.
The companies have paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to settle an array of private lawsuits accusing them of fixing prices. But the government has rarely advanced beyond investigations to formally accuse the companies or their executives of wrongdoing.
Ranchers have not been alone in their criticism of the control held by a handful of large companies. Farmers have long complained that just a few companies control the seed, fertilizer and equipment industries, and they have no choice but to pay inflated prices for those products.
Gail Slater, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said at her confirmation hearing in the spring that agriculture was one of the industries she wanted to focus on.
Ms. Slater, a Republican who has embraced what she calls “America First Antitrust,” said she believed that antitrust enforcers should give priority to core industries that affect the pocketbooks of Americans, like food, housing and health care. She has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Agriculture Department to protect competition in the agricultural industry.
When the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on concentration in the seed and fertilizer industries last month, she attended and later met with people running independent seed businesses who were among the witnesses. On Friday, she said she had met with a number of ranchers.
But even if Ms. Slater and the antitrust division want to take action against potential collusion, it is unclear whether they will have the ability to do so.
Over the summer, Ms. Slater was forced to fire two of her top deputies, Roger Alford and William Rinner.
Mr. Alford later said at a conference that they were fired because lobbyists for companies involved in a potential acquisition objected to the antitrust division’s review, and persuaded Justice Department officials under Ms. Bondi to demand their ouster.
Nov. 8, 2025, 4:24 p.m. ETNov. 8, 2025
Trump gave Hungary’s Viktor Orban a one-year reprieve on sanctions after their White House meeting.
President Trump has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from sanctions the United States has imposed on countries buying Russian oil after meeting with the Hungarian prime minister at the White House on Friday.
The extension was part of a series of agreements that had come out of the meeting between Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orban, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the agreement. The sanctions are aimed at pressuring Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
