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Nov. 1 (UPI) — Federal Aviation Administration officials on Friday night urged Congress to approve government funding as more air traffic controllers call in sick amid the shutdown.

The nation’s nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers and additional Transportation Security Administration agents are deemed essential, but they are not being paid during the government shutdown that started on Oct.1.

Now in its 32nd day on Saturday, the FAA said the strain on unpaid employees is causing many to call in sick due to other obligations, such as supervising children, and out of frustration, The Hill reported.

“A surge in callouts is straining staffing levels at multiple facilities, leading to widespread impacts across the [National Airspace System,” FAA personnel posted on X.

“Half of our Core 30 facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 80% of air traffic controllers are absent at New York-area facilities.”

The FAA post said the “shutdown must end” so that air traffic controllers can get paid and to ensure the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the country.

When experiencing staffing shortages, the FAA reduces the amount of air traffic to maintain safety, which could cause flight delays or cancellations, the post said.

Such staffing shortages caused delays at airports in Boston, Dallas, Nashville and Newark, N.J., among several others, according to ABC News.

The shutdown is the second-longest in U.S. history, but it is poised to exceed the current record-holder of 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019.

During that shutdown, air traffic controllers again worked without pay until the government reopened and they received back pay.

Air traffic controllers earn a median salary of $150,000 annually, but new hires are paid about $50,000, aviation industry labor expertJake Rosenfeld of Washington University in St. Louis told ABC News.

The Senate has failed 13 times to obtain the 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rule and fund the federal government while continuing to work on a 2026 fiscal year budget.

The Senate reconvenes on Monday, which is one day short of the record 35-day shutdown.

Oct. 8 (UPI) — Flight delays have been reported throughout the United States for a second day due to staffing issues at airports as the government shutdown continues.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association called on its 20,000 members on Tuesday to remain on the job.

“We’re asking America’s air traffic controllers, who get 45,000 U.S. flights safely to their destinations every day, to work without pay,” it said in a statement on X.

“Congress must #EndtheShutdown.”

On its website, it is urging its members that “it is more important than ever that we rise to the occasion and continue delivering the consistent, high-level of public service we provide ever day.”

“We urge you to stand in solidarity with your brothers and sisters by continuing to exhibit the same unwavering professionalism that the aviation community and the American people deserve.”

A ground stop was issued for flights late Tuesday at Nashville International Airport while delays were announced throughout Tuesday evening and day at international airports in Chicago, Boston, Newark, Orlando and Denver.

The staffing shortages come amid a government shutdown that has continued into its second week and on a day when President Donald Trump threatened that some furloughed federal workers would not recieve back pay after Congress agrees to a resolution to fill the federal coffers.

Republicans are blaming Democrats and Democrats are blaming Republicans.

“The Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and Jeopardy,” the American president said Tuesday. “For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people There are som people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

In turn, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said: “Thanks, @realDonaldTrump!”

“Burbank Airport has ZERO air traffic controllers from 4:15 p.m. to 10 p.m. today because of YOUR government shutdown.”

On Monday when delays were being announced amid a rising number of controllers calling out sick, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy acknowledged to reporters at Newark that they had seen “a slight tick-up” in sick calls.

“If we have additional sick calls, we will reduce the flow consistent with a rate that’s safe for the American people,” he said.

The government shutdown began Sept. 30 and will continue until Congress passes a stopgap bill.

Air traffic control tower at Newark Liberty International Airport, one of three airports experiencing air traffic controller staffing issues during the U.S. government shutdown, which forced the Federal Aviation Administration to delay flights Monday. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 7 (UPI) — As the U.S. government shutdown drags into its second week, the Federal Aviation Administration was forced to delay flights into and out of three U.S. airports Monday due to air traffic controller staffing issues, including one airport with no controllers.

Newark Liberty International Airport, Denver International Airport and Hollywood Burbank Airport all experienced delays after a rising number of controllers called out sick.

Air traffic controllers are not being paid during the government shutdown, but are considered essential and are required to work.

“So, we’re tracking sick calls, sick leave and have we had a slight tick up in sick calls? Yes, and then you’ll see delays that come from that,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters Monday at Newark.

“If we have additional sick calls, we will reduce the flow consistent with a rate that’s safe for the American people,” Duffy said, adding that he did not want to see flights canceled.

Hollywood Burbank Airport in the Los Angeles area remained open Monday despite having no controllers show up for work during a six-hour stretch.

“Operations are continuing at Hollywood Burbank Airport,” the airport wrote in a post Monday. “Please check with your airline — before arriving at the airport — for updates on possible delays or cancellations.”

Air traffic into and out of Burbank was handled by San Diego TRACON on a delayed schedule, a source told NBC News.

Flights into Newark, near New York City, experienced delays of up to an hour Monday due to low air traffic controller staffing, while flights into Denver were delayed by an average of 39 minutes.

The U.S. government has been shut-down since Sept. 30, and will remain closed for a seventh day. On Monday, the U.S. Senate failed to pass a stopgap bill that would have funded federal agencies for the next six weeks.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the Trump administration to lay off tens of thousands of federal employees and downsize their agencies without seeking the approval of Congress.

In an 8-1 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked mass layoffs at more than 20 departments and agencies.

The court has sided regularly with President Trump and his broad view of executive power on matters involving federal agencies.

In a brief order, the court said “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful,” referring to the plans to reduce staffing. But it said it was not ruling on specific layoffs.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the decision on the grounds that it was narrow and temporary.

Dissenting alone, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should not have intervened.

“Under our Constitution, Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and detail their functions,” she wrote.

Since mid-April, the court has handed down a series of temporary orders that cleared the way for Trump’s planned cutbacks in funding and staffing at federal agencies.

Litigation will continue in the lower courts, but the justices are not likely to reverse course and rule next year that they made a mistake in allowing the staffing cutbacks to proceed.

The layoff case posed the question of whether Congress or the president had the authority to downsize agencies.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said Congress, not the president, creates federal agencies and decides on their size and their duties.

“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress,” she said on May 22.

Her order barred more than 20 departments and agencies from carrying out mass layoffs in response to an executive order from Trump.

They included the departments of Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Services Administration and the National Science Foundation.

She said the planned layoffs are large. The Health and Human Services department plans to cut 8,000 to 10,000 employees and the Energy Department 8,500. The Veterans Administration had planned to lay off 83,000 employees but said recently it will reduce that number to about 30,000.

Labor unions had sued to stop the layoffs as illegal.

Illson agreed that the agencies were not acting on their own to trim their staffs. Rather, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought was leading the reorganization and restructuring of dozen of agencies. She said only Congress can reorganize agencies.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, turned down the administration’s appeal of the judge’s order.

Appealing to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers insisted the president had the full authority to fire tens of thousands of employees.

“The Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal, “and the President does not need special permission from Congress.”

He said federal law allows agencies to reduce their staffs.

“Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,” Sauer wrote.

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans alike raised concerns on Wednesday about deep staffing cuts, funding freezes and far-reaching policy changes overseen by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned Kennedy’s approach to the job, some saying that he has jeopardized vaccine uptake, cancer research and dental health in just a few short months.

In combative and at times highly personal rejoinders, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s dramatic effort to reshape the sprawling, $1.7-trillion-a-year agency, saying it would deliver a more efficient department focused on promoting healthier lifestyles among Americans.

“There’s so much chaos and disorganization in this department,” Kennedy said on Wednesday during the Senate hearing. “What we’re saying is let’s organize in a way that we can quickly adopt and deploy all these opportunities we have to really deliver high-quality healthcare to the American people.”

During tense exchanges, lawmakers — in back-to-back House and Senate hearings — sometimes questioned whether Kennedy was aware of his actions and the structure of his own department after he struggled to provide more details about staffing cuts.

“I have noted you’ve been unable, in most instances, to answer any specific questions related to your agency,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat.

The secretary, in turn, pushed back — saying he had not had time to answer specific questions — and at points questioning lawmakers’ own grasp of health policy.

Kennedy testified to explain his downsizing of the department — from 82,000 to 62,000 staffers — and argue on behalf of the White House’s requested budget, which includes a $500-million boost for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to promote nutrition and healthier lifestyles while making deep cuts to infectious disease prevention, medical research and maternal health programs.

He revealed that he persuaded the White House to back down from one major cut: Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for low-income families across the country.

But lawmakers described how thousands of job losses at the health department and funding freezes have impacted their districts.

One Washington state mother, Natalie, has faced delays in treatment for Stage 4 cancer at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. The clinical center is the research-only hospital commonly known as the “House of Hope,” but when Murray asked Kennedy to explain how many jobs have been lost there, he could not answer. The president’s budget proposes a nearly $20-billion slash from the NIH.

“You are here to defend cutting the NIH by half,” Murray said. “Do you genuinely believe that won’t result in more stories like Natalie’s?” Kennedy disputed Murray’s account.

Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman of New Jersey asked “why, why, why?” Kennedy would lay off nearly all the staff who oversee the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4.1 billion in heating assistance to needy families. The program is slated to be eliminated from the agency’s budget.

Kennedy said that advocates warned him those cuts “will end up killing people,” but that President Trump believes his energy policy will lower costs. If that doesn’t work, Kennedy said, he would restore funding for the program.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, said those savings would be realized too late for people in her state.

“Right now, folks in Alaska still need those ugly generators to keep warm,” she said.

Murkowski was one of several Republicans who expressed concerns about Kennedy’s approach to the job throughout the hearings.

Like several Republicans, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee praised Kennedy for his work promoting healthy foods. But he raised concerns about whether the secretary has provided adequate evidence that artificial food dyes are bad for diets. Removing those food dyes would hurt the “many snack manufacturers” in his district, including the makers of M&M’s candy, he said.

Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist from Idaho, said Kennedy’s plan to remove fluoride recommendations for drinking water alarms him. The department’s news release on Tuesday, which announced the Food and Drug Administration plans to remove fluoride supplements for children from the market, wrongly claimed that fluoride “kills bacteria from the teeth,” Simpson noted. He explained to Kennedy that fluoride doesn’t kill bacteria in the mouth but instead makes tooth enamel more resistant to decay.

“I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride … we better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a lot more dentists,” Simpson added.

Kennedy was pressed repeatedly on the mixed message he’s delivered on vaccines, which public health experts have said are hampering efforts to contain a growing measles outbreak now in at least 11 states.

Responding to Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, Kennedy refused to recommend that parents follow the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio and whooping cough. He, instead, wrongly claimed that the vaccines have not been safety tested against a placebo.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the health committee, had extracted a number of guarantees from Kennedy that he would not alter existing vaccine guidance and work at the nation’s health department. Cassidy, correcting Kennedy, pointed out that rotavirus, measles and HPV vaccines recommended for children have all been tested in a placebo study.

As health secretary, Kennedy has called the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — a shot given to children to provide immunity from all three diseases — “leaky,” although it offers lifetime protection from the measles for most people. He’s also said they cause deaths, although none has been documented among healthy people.

“You have undermined the vital role vaccines play in preventing disease during the single, largest measles outbreak in 25 years,” independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said.

Seitz writes for the Associated Press.