Trump Launches Mass Purge of Air Traffic Control Staff

Donald Trump’s administration has begun indiscriminately culling scores of people who keep air travel safe, despite four deadly plane crashes during his first two months as president.

In a statement published Saturday, David Spero, the president of the AFL-CIO’s Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS), said that several hundred employees represented by the organization had been fired “without cause nor based on performance or conduct.”

The notices, sent from an “exec order” Microsoft email address, began arriving Friday evening, according to the statement. “It is possible that others will be notified over the weekend or literally barred from entering FAA buildings on Tuesday, February 18,” Spero said in the statement

“These are not nameless, faceless bureaucrats. They are our family, friends and neighbors. They contribute to our communities. Many military veterans are among them. It is shameful to toss aside dedicated public servants who have chosen to work on behalf of their fellow Americans,” Spero said.

Last month, Trump baselessly blamed the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for the deadly incident that killed 67 people aboard two aircrafts at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The FAA shortly after released a statement indicating that the air traffic control tower might have been understaffed at the time of the collision. Still, the Trump administration seems intent to assert that excess is the issue.

So far in 2025, there have been four deadly plane crashes in the United States. Before then, the most recent deadly commercial aircraft accident was in 2009.

“Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs,” said Spero, according to CNN. “To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”

The move is part of a wider push from the Trump administration targeting probationary workers in the federal government, who have been employed for less than a year, and therefore lack the job protections of their colleagues. While they are the easiest to get rid of, they will undoubtedly prove difficult to live without.

Elon Musk’s overhaul of the federal government seems to have hit a snag: His Department of Government Efficiency posted classified information on its website. 

Musk’s team posted information about the staff and size of a U.S. intelligence agency on their new website, HuffPost reports. DOGE has been criticized for the level of access into sensitive government departments, including the Treasury Department, but how they got the classified information isn’t clear. 

DOGE.gov was launched Wednesday claiming to give Americans the ability to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” The feature allows users the ability to see data from all federal offices and agencies including head counts, budgets, and the average age of staff. But, the website was supposed to exclude data from U.S. intelligence agencies, according to the fine print at the bottom of its main page.  

The young whiz kids at DOGE appear to have forgotten that part and included information about the National Reconnaissance Office, which is tasked with creating and maintaining satellites for U.S. intelligence. Much of the agency’s activities, including its budget and head count, are classified and aren’t supposed to be available to the public. Plus, how did Musk’s team get access to that information, anyway? Does it have something to do with Musk’s company SpaceX having a $1.8 billion contract to build satellites for the NRO?

Members of the intelligence community would like to know the answer to these questions. One Defense Intelligence Agency employee told HuffPost anonymously that “DOGE just posted secret [Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals] info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed.”

While the NRO is the only intelligence agency that DOGE appears to have exposed, this incident doesn’t speak well of the pseudo-agency’s security procedures. The website has already been hacked by Thursday evening thanks to coding vulnerabilities. And since DOGE has gotten into all kinds of sensitive data, every American could be at risk.

Hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that the Department of Health and Human Services would not undergo a staff purge, it did.

The Trump administration laid off half of its Epidemic Intelligence Service, otherwise known as the “Disease Detectives.” The lay off affected 1,260 staff, reported NBC News’s Lewis Kamb.

Top-ranking officials with the CDC, the HHS subagency that oversees the program, told CBS News that the cuts would have a devastating effect on the country’s ability to assess blooming diseases. They are just some of the thousands of probationary workers taking a hit as Elon Musk’s DOGE combs the federal government for possible programs to slash.

“The country is less safe,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, an alumna of the disease research program, told CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”

Many staffers that go through the program serve on the frontlines of public health responses before later rising through the ranks of the CDC. Another health official observed to the news outlet that many of the fired staffers were early career professionals who had been trained by the agency.

“Now their dream is canceled,” the unidentified official said.

Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday. In an interview with Fox News after he was sworn in, Kennedy pledged that employees who work in service of public health had “nothing to worry about” under his tenure fronting America’s health policy.

“If you’ve been involved in good science, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said. “If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Kennedy’s role as secretary of HHS will have him oversee a budget of nearly $2 trillion and a staff of 90,000 federal employees, as well as hand him the reins of other critical health programs under the fold of HHS, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The 71-year-old’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has not been laid out in specifics, but Kennedy has vaguely promised to tackle the nation’s rising obesity rates and SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps), and has claimed he will work the Department of Agriculture to eradicate ultra-processed foods from the American market.

Donald Trump’s attempt to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams keeps escalating, with seven federal prosecutors resigning rather than carry out the order. 

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove gathered the entire Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, which handles all federal public corruption cases, in one room on Friday and threatened to fire those unwilling to dismiss the case against Adams, according to Reuters. He gave them one hour to come up with a name to file the motion, after which one prosecutor did under duress. 

“This is not a capitulation-this is a coercion,” a source familiar with the meeting told Reuters. “That person, in my mind, is a hero.”

Bove had moved the case to the Public Integrity Section from the Southern District of New York after its acting U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, resigned Thursday rather than drop the charges. After her, the acting head of the section, John Keller, also resigned. Then, the case was sent to the  DOJ’s criminal division, which handles all federal criminal cases. Its acting head, Kevin Driscoll, refused to drop the case, and handed in his walking papers. 

That wasn’t the end, though. Three other deputies in the Public Integrity Section—Rob Heberle, Jenn Clarke, and Marco Palmieri—also quit their jobs Thursday. Then, the lead prosecutor on Adams’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, also resigned and ripped the order in his resignation letter to Bove, who seems to have been tasked with carrying out Trump’s instructions. 

On Thursday, it seemed as though Trump’s DOJ was repeating the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” of the Nixon administration, when the top two leaders of the DOJ resigned rather than file special counsel Archibald Cox on President Nixon’s orders. But the case of Trump wanting to drop charges against Adams in exchange for cooperation on his cruel immigration policy has far surpassed the 1973 incident, with more than triple the number of DOJ resignations taking place. 

These resignations show a commitment by these prosecutors to resist appearing corrupt, and to stand by their strong case against Adams, who has cozied up to the president in the last few months to save his own skin. Will other government officials also fight against Trump’s shameful actions?

The Trump administration on Friday booted the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, citing the newswire’s choice to continue referring to the recently renamed “Gulf of America” as the “Gulf of Mexico.”

“The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America,” wrote White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich on X. “This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”

Moments after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the newly minted president signed an executive order officially renaming the ocean basin to linguistically claim it as America’s.

“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” Budowich said. “Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration. Associate[d] Press journalists and photographers will retain their credentials to the White House complex.”

The Associated Press—an international publication—has defended its decision to defy the Trump administration’s guidance on renaming the body of water by citing its global audience. The wire pointed to its style change for Mount Denali to Mount McKinley under the rationale that Trump has singular authority as the head of the federal government to rename national landmarks.

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen,” the outlet said in a statement. “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

“The Associated Press will use the official name change to Mount McKinley. The area lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.”

The lead prosecutor assigned to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s public corruption case resigned Friday, in a mic-drop statement slamming the Department of Justice official who thought he’d be stupid enough to drop the charges at Donald Trump’s behest.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten wrote a scathing letter to acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who earlier this week had ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams alleging he had sought out and taken bribes from the Turkish government.

Bove argued that the prosecution would interfere with Adams’s ability to execute Trump’s crackdown on immigration. It seems the DOJ sought to remove the charges to ensure Adams’s compliance with enacting Trump’s mass deportations in his sanctuary city.

Scotten, a graduate of Harvard Law School who was awarded two bronze stars for his service as a troop commander in Iraq, made sure to set the record straight, telling Bove that he was nobody’s fool.

“I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct,” Scotten wrote.

“The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so,” he wrote.

Sassoon, a Trump appointee with a solid conservative record, joined a cascade of resignations Thursday over the order to drop the charges. She revealed that Adams’s lawyers had requested a quid pro quo agreement and that her office had been planning to bring forward a superseding indictment against Adams.

“There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views,” Scotten continued.

“I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me,” Scotten concluded.

Read his full letter here.

A major lawsuit to end Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government has landed before one of Donald Trump’s least favorite judges.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s federal election interference case, was assigned the federal lawsuit filed by 14 states against the president and Musk, attacking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s authority.

Chutkan gained the national spotlight as she refused to accept arguments from Trump’s legal team at nearly every step in the January 6 case. She infuriated Trump when she placed a gag order on him in October 2023 and said that his presidential candidacy did not give him “carte blanche” to vilify public servants “who are simply doing their job.” Trump lashed out at the judge, calling her “the most evil person” as she seemed unwilling to bend to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Now Chutkan will preside over a pivotal lawsuit that will determine the future of the U.S. government and the second Trump administration. The suit directly attacks Musk as a “21st century tech baron,” claiming that “the scope and reach of his executive authority appear unprecedented in U.S. history.”

“His power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies,” the lawsuit states.

Trump is not likely to be happy with Chutkan being assigned the case but so far has not mentioned her on his Truth Social account, as of this writing. Likewise, Elon Musk hasn’t posted on X. But it’s only a matter of time, considering that several MAGA personalities, such as Laura Loomer, are already attacking her. The right will soon be on the attack, led by the president and Musk, escalating their attempts to undermine the federal judiciary and constitutional separation of powers.

There appears to be mass chaos at the agency responsible for keeping a “safe, secure, and reliable” watch over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

ABC News is reporting that hundreds of employees at the 1,800-person National Nuclear Security Administration were fired on Thursday. Many of them described the situation as a “national security crisis.”

The Department of Energy then suddenly paused the firings on Friday, frantically calling back employees to tell them they still have a job.

“This is creating unbelievable threats to our national security. Trump, Musk, and DOGE are wiping out the employees who manage our nuclear arsenal,” attorney and former Ukrainian Armed Forces member John Jackson wrote on X. “Every time someone retires, there will be no one to fill their slot.”

The confusion comes as the Trump administration on Thursday directed agencies to fire thousands of probationary employees in the federal workforce. While Trump is framing these mass firings as commonsense fat-trimming, this seems to be a pure ideological war—with brutal consequences.

Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday establishing the “Make America Healthy Again Commission,” which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will chair. One virologist was quick to lay out multiple rhetorical quirks in the order that suggested an anti-vaccine agenda.

“Fortunately, I speak fluent anti-vax grifterese & can translate,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen wrote in an illuminating thread on X.

The order reflected many of Kennedy’s concerns as a vocal anti-vaccine advocate who has repeatedly pushed the long-debunked claim that vaccines lead to autism. During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy claimed he did not oppose vaccines but stressed studying the origins of chronic illness over researching infectious disease.

The executive order said that all research by all federal health agencies “should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick.”

According to the “purpose” section of the order, this seemed to indicate research on “nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety” would be given priority. As Rasmussen put it, “vaccines, approved medications, processed food, lifestyle choices” were MAHA priorities.

The executive order established that within 100 days, the commission needed to submit a report assessing “the threat that potential over-utilization of medication,” among other things, poses to children.

The report would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Rasmussen wrote that the order’s references to the issue of “increased prescription of medication” translated to the claim that “evidence-based medicine is bad” and that a supposed “over-reliance on medication and treatments” in the U.S. suggested a shift toward “replacing vaccines and drugs with supplements.” Further, the order stated that agencies must “ensure the availability of expanded treatment options,” making it clear alternative medicine is on the menu.

The order also established a policy where agencies must “work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world.” During his Senate hearing, Kennedy had also pushed for stricter regulations on food additives. Rasmussen noted that this policy could create a context to “deregulate food standards.”

“We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data,” the order states. Rasmussen warned that this was creating a context to remove experts and replace them with pseudo-scientists.

The Trump administration has cut news access to some American foreign service employees, even as they clamor that the up-to-date information is essential for their work.

“It is critical to our jobs,” one employee anonymously told HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery on Friday.

The employee said they could not access Politico, The New York Times, or Bloomberg, despite having paid subscriptions to all of them, and added that the content is crucial as the news industry covers policy developments, information on meetings, and more. They added that the loss of Politico Pro was particularly damaging, as the digital publication serves as a popular channel to publish leaked documents.

DOGE severed the government’s subscriptions after a MAGA conspiracy emerged that revenue for Politico—which had a lapse in payroll on Tuesday—was dependent on subscriptions paid for through USAID, which was under a budget freeze at the time. In truth, USAID paid roughly $24,000 for its subscriptions to Politico Pro, while the rest of the government spent $8.4 million on the premium news subscription in 2024. But federal subscriptions to Politico Pro began under Trump’s first administration, according to public data from USASpending.

“I was made aware of the funding of USAID to media outlets, including Politico.… And I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

Politico bosses sent a memo to staff saying they “welcome” the conversation around the value of their products, which provide in-depth policy analysis and hard-hitting government scoops.

The company had “never been the beneficiary of government programs or subsidies,” Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and global editor in chief John Harris wrote in the memo, and the “overwhelming majority” of subscriptions stemmed from the private sector. “Please know that our business is strong and enduring,” they wrote.

But that doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t still benefiting from the news wires.

“My guess,” the anonymous foreign service person told HuffPost, “is the White House kept their access.”

Musk and his team similarly attacked Reuters, misleadingly claiming that DOGE had “uncovered” details that the news organization had been “paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception.’” In actuality, the public contract to Reuters’s data division was authorized by Trump during his first administration and had tasked Reuters to research potential defenses against deception.