Pete Buttigieg Stands Up For Safety As Trump Fires Air Traffic Control Staff

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is demanding answers as Trump begins firing FAA air traffic control staff.

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Trump Is Firing People Who Keep The Skies Safe

After the mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport that killed everyone on board a jet and a military helicopter, the Trump administration loudly protested that they were not firing air traffic employees and that their cuts in government employees had nothing to do with the crash.

The administration failed to disclose that they were not firing any air traffic control employees yet.

The AP reported:

Probationary workers were targeted in late night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told the Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Probationary employees, under the federal government’s definition, are not employees who did anything wrong. They are employees who have only been at their agency one or two years after being hired. Probationary employees may be federal workers who changed agencies. They are not bad employees, but employees who are easier to fire because they lack the same protections as other federal workers.

Pete Buttigieg Speaks Out

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is an expert on air safety and transportation, and he posted on X, “The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?”

Buttigieg also posted and gutted the Trump/Musk false claim of targeting waste, fraud, and abuse:

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general. If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.

The American people don’t know who was fired or why, but more importantly, these firings will negatively affect the government’s ability to function.