Before You Praise the President, Explain the Failure

When a national system fails, why are Americans getting a tribute to the president before a clear account of what went wrong?

A family stranded at an airport needs useful information: whether its flight is operating, what arrangements are available, and when another update will come. The people waiting have responsibilities, limited money and somewhere they need to be. They also deserve to understand what is being done to protect them.

On November 13, communications problems affecting air traffic control prompted a nationwide ground stop. That evening, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin addressed the disruption together. Opening the briefing, Mullin declared: “This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like.” ¹²

What part of this is leadership? What, precisely, were Americans being asked to applaud while travelers were stranded and the cause was still being investigated? What had officials established that would help passengers understand what happened, why flights could resume, and what would protect them from another disruption?

Stopping departures when communications become unreliable can be necessary to protect lives. The public deserves to know how the system reached that point—and what justified the celebration before those questions had been answered. Political self-congratulation had arrived before a settled explanation. That was a failure of judgment.

Explain How the Systems Failed Together

The two officials’ explanations left a central question unresolved. Mullin said new equipment and technology appeared to have overwhelmed older systems. Duffy emphasized that the new equipment had remained operational while legacy equipment failed. How did those accounts fit together? If changes to the network overwhelmed existing equipment, what had been done to test that interaction before the changes were introduced? ¹²

A new component functioning properly does not, by itself, demonstrate that the combined system can handle the resulting demands. Travelers needed an explanation of how the network failed, how its operation was restored, and what evidence supported restarting flights.

The FAA later said it tested its systems for stability before allowing departures to resume. What did those tests establish? ⁹ What conditions were checked, what problem had been corrected or contained, and what protections would remain in place while investigators completed their work?

Telling passengers to check with their airlines addresses the status of a flight. It does not answer the national question of why the system supporting that flight can be relied upon. That explanation belongs to the officials responsible for it.

The Planning Warning Was Already Public

The FAA’s published voice-switch modernization program describes replacing approximately 450 aging analog switches in three deployment waves, moving from smaller towers toward the most complex facilities. This is a substantial transition requiring coordination. ³

In a report published September 14, 2026, the Government Accountability Office found that, as of May, the FAA had not integrated the schedules for 11,389 modernization projects. GAO warned that poorly coordinated installations could disrupt operations and that schedule pressure could compress testing. It recommended an integrated master schedule. ⁴

That report did not investigate the November outage. It documented risks officials were responsible for addressing before it. What was corrected after that warning—and what remained unresolved when the changes described at this briefing were introduced?

Calling equipment old does not answer that question. Neither does celebrating the speed of modernization. The measure of a successful transition includes testing, coordination and operational reliability. Political leaders claiming credit for the work owe the public an accounting of the decisions under their authority.

The Workforce Belongs in the Accounting

The personnel record deserves examination alongside the equipment. On January 29, 2025, Duffy’s department announced a directive to eliminate DEI and related policies. The following month, the FAA dismissed hundreds of probationary employees in the broader DOGE workforce cuts. Reuters later reported Duffy’s figure of 352 dismissals. ⁵⁶

Duffy maintained that safety-critical positions were protected. Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union representing FAA technical and other employees, disputed the suggestion that the affected workers were unimportant. Its March 2025 congressional testimony identified navigation-charting specialists, maintenance mechanics and operational support personnel among those dismissed. PASS also warned that fully training a systems specialist could take up to three years, and that experienced employees leaving without mentoring replacements created knowledge gaps. ⁶⁷

The reinstatements belong in the record, too. In March 2025, PASS announced that the 132 dismissed employees it represented were being reinstated, with a scheduled return to duty on March 20. We need to know who actually returned, who subsequently left, and what expertise was available to the teams responsible for this network. ⁸

The firings have not been established as a cause of the November 13 outage, but our question is: did those staffing decisions weaken the FAA’s expertise, planning, testing or oversight—and could retaining that knowledge and capacity have helped prevent this failure?

An administration promising competence should be able to document how it preserved the competence its systems required.

What Protects Travelers Now?

The public accounting should identify the work underway before the failure, the testing performed, who authorized the changes, and what risks were accepted. It should explain how backups and recovery procedures performed, which qualified teams reviewed the work, and whether staffing or training gaps had been identified. Those records would give Americans something they could assess beyond the assurances of a press conference.

Duffy pressed Congress for additional modernization funding and warned that further failures could occur. ¹⁰ But where does that leave the traveler preparing to fly this holiday season? What protection is in place between now and the completion of a replacement system? A request for long-term funding does not explain how the existing network will be protected tomorrow.

What Duffy and Mullin owe Americans most is a clear explanation of the steps taken to keep them safe—and the evidence supporting the decision to resume operations. People boarding a plane should have confidence that qualified professionals have checked the systems supporting their flight. That confidence must rest on demonstrated competence.

This is a central responsibility of leadership during a crisis. Come prepared. Answer questions directly. Explain what has been verified, what remains under investigation, what crews are doing and when the public will receive another update.

People who work for a living understand that difficult problems take effort and sometimes take time. They recognize the difference between someone taking responsibility and someone searching for another person to blame. Most can understand an official saying: We have more work to do. Here is what we know. Here is what we are checking. Here is how we are protecting you while that work continues.

The Americans waiting in those terminals deserve to be treated as people whose safety, time and concerns matter. They should leave a crisis briefing better informed about the situation and the response, with a clear understanding of how the remaining questions will be resolved.

Our criticism is that presidential praise took priority over earning that confidence. Americans needed leadership focused on their safety, their questions and the work ahead.

Before you ask Americans to applaud the leadership, show them the work.

The Sunday Dinner Question

What should officials have to disclose before asking the public to accept that this failure has been addressed?