Sen. Patty Murray made Sean Duffy squirm in his chair as she laid out all the issues under the Transportation Secretary’s purview that are failing, including sending not one, but two, “fork in the road” emails asking air traffic controllers to resign at a time of a critical shortage.
Murray made sure Duffy couldn’t blame the Biden administration for his failings.
A huge issue within the FAA is that the US doesn’t have enough controllers, and we’ve witnessed the results with collisions and near misses.
Duffy claimed that all those he fired were not needed, but the results say otherwise. Sen. Murray then asked Duffy who sent the emails to air traffic controllers, and he said he didn’t know.
MURRAY: Well, let me just say that since you became Secretary, air traffic controllers have twice received fork-in-the-road emails encouraging them to resign, which you have sent, I know, sent mistakenly. But it is…
DUFFY: But none of them have taken it. They can’t take it because they’re not included.
MURRAY: Well, they received the mail. You’re an employee. You got the same email. And I just think it’s really callous to suggest controllers, to do controllers, these emails saying your work’s not valued.
So do you know who sent those emails to our air traffic controllers?
You can talk about the system that we have to send emails out.
I think it’s antiquated, old, and…
MURRAY: I just asked who.DUFFY: I don’t know. I don’t know. No, I don’t know how they would have gotten those emails.MURRAY: You don’t know who sent them. Nobody’s been fired for sending those.
DUFFY: They would have had the wrong email for an air traffic controller versus someone else in the FAA. No, I’m not going to fire someone over that.
Secretary Duffy absolutely knows who sent those emails. It’s unconscionable that he wouldn’t.
Maybe Duffy sent those emails?
The Trump administration has fired anyone who disagrees with Trump’s ranting, but Duffy will not fire a person (maybe himself) who followed DOGE and put the fear of God in controllers that they were losing their jobs for no reason at all.
Suddenly, destroying air traffic controllers’ confidence and morale is A-ok.
