Many of the same Democrats slamming the Trump administration for several ongoing transportation issues were silent as the Biden administration oversaw an understaffed, outdated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that resulted in dangerous travel conditions across the country.
Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have accused the Trump administration of “breaking the federal government” and having “decimated the FAA.” Jeffries blamed the Trump administration for a spate of cancellations at Newark Airport this week.
However, a month-over-month comparison of air accidents under the Biden administration and the first few months of the Trump administration shows a significantly lower number of accidents in March and April. Throughout former President Joe Biden’s four years in office, there were an average of 115 air accidents in April. Under Trump, there were just 67 air accidents in the month of April.
A report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in March shows that the Trump administration inherited an outdated system from Biden with “severe shortcomings.”
After Trump’s return to the White House, GAO advised the administration that it had made nine recommendations to the FAA under the Biden administration that remain open, and that “urgent attention” is needed to remedy the safety issues left by Biden.
GAO said that under the Biden administration the FAA “did not prioritize or establish near-term plans to modernize unsustainable and critical systems.”
Other government reports revealed that the Biden FAA was further hindered by severe staffing issues.
A June 2023 report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Transportation Department revealed that the FAA “made limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities.”
AMERICANS DESERVE TO HAVE A ‘STATE-OF-THE-ART’ AIR TRAVEL SYSTEM: SEAN DUFFY
The report said that “as a result, FAA continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them, which in turn poses a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations.”
The office said it had determined that 20 of 26 (77%) critical facilities were staffed below the FAA’s 85% threshold. Even major facilities like the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control and the Miami Tower were staffed well below the threshold at just 54% and 66%, respectively.
Another report by the office released later that year said the FAA’s “lengthy hiring process and COVID-19 restrictions” slowed the agency’s onboarding and training activities, resulting in few new hires having completed their training and obtained certification.
The issues had real-world consequences. Politico reported that during January and February 2023, “commercial jets experienced close calls with other aircraft at a faster pace than they had during all of the previous five years combined.”
On Jan. 11, 2023, the FAA had to issue a nationwide ground stop due to a system outage of the aging air traffic control system. The pause was described as the first of its kind since 9/11.
The GAO’s 2025 report said the 2023 national airspace prompted an operational risk assessment, which found that of the 138 air traffic control systems, “51 (37%) were deemed unsustainable by FAA and 54 (39%) were potentially unsustainable.”
In 2024, the GAO found that nearly 40% of FAA control systems were still severely antiquated, requiring “urgent updates.”
“This is not a new problem,” Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News Digital in a statement. “We’ve known this problem has existed. There have been multiple GAO reports over the last four years saying you have real problems with Air Traffic Control and you should do something with it before it actually fails. The last Administration spent $1.2 trillion. The largest infrastructure package known to man. Joe Biden signed this at this White House, and how much was spent to rebuild Air Traffic Control? $5 billion. And of the $5 billion that was given, only $1 billion was actually spent.”
“The Biden Administration had made no investments in the system that we now see having issues in Newark. On top of that, they were focused on things like renaming racists roads and changing cockpit to flight deck. This Administration has come in and started looking at the Air Traffic Control system after the DCA crash. Very quickly I saw one piece of the pie where there were issues and then scratched further and there is another piece of the pie. As we looked at it, we see that the whole system needs to be redone and we need to build a brand-new air traffic control system.”
In a Tuesday thread on X, GOP Sen. Mike Lee called out the FAA’s past practices and called out the agency’s “woke” approach.
“I started calling out the FAA’s hiring practices at Air Traffic Control an entire decade ago, pointing out that they were drifting from their longstanding pattern of hiring people with a solid math and science background and / or experience in aviation — recognizing that such people perform better in these important positions,” Lee said.
“But the ATC’s hiring decisions under Obama and later Biden prioritized basically everything else in favor of woke hiring practices,” he continued.
Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Biden and Jeffries for comment.
