"Leadership by Chaos Grounds the Nation"

Trump’s reckless cuts to transportation have grounded more than planes; they’ve grounded a nation, exposing what happens when ego replaces policy and chaos rules the skies.

Let’s talk about airports. Not because I want to remind you of your last soul-crushing TSA line or that lovely moment when your flight got cancelled after five hours of sitting on a tarmac breathing recycled air and rage; but because under President Donald J. Trump, our nation’s transportation infrastructure is spiraling into full-on chaos. And I mean that literally.

It’s been 107 days since Trump took office for his second term, and in that time, we’ve seen more transportation-related failures than you’d expect in a bad season of The Apprentice. Just yesterday, Newark International Airport; one of the busiest hubs in the country, was brought to its knees. Dozens of flights delayed or outright cancelled. Why? No air traffic controllers showed up for work. That’s right. One of the most critical positions in aviation was understaffed because of Trump's directive to slash Department of Transportation (DOT) and FAA budgets by executive order, all under the faux-populist DOGE guise of "draining the swamp" and "eliminating bureaucratic bloat." What he really eliminated? Safety. Sanity. Competence.

Now let’s be clear. This isn’t just a Newark problem. No. Since Trump’s inauguration 107 days ago, we’ve logged 56 verified transportation-related incidents involving either flight incidents, cancellations, control tower understaffing, mass delays due to outdated radar systems, or airline security breakdowns. That’s over one incident every other day. This isn’t random turbulence; it’s deliberate sabotage under the guise of reform.

Compare that with the record under the Biden administration, when Pete Buttigieg; yes, Mayor Pete, was Secretary of Transportation. Say what you want about him, but under his watch, there were far fewer such incidents. Over a similar 107-day stretch, Buttigieg’s DOT recorded just 14 verifiable national aviation-related disruptions. And most of those were due to weather, not because the Secretary of Transportation decided it was a great idea to gut essential services with the stroke of a Sharpie.

This is what happens when you replace policy with performance art.

Trump’s entire approach to governing is a bad improv set: loud, reckless, and allergic to preparation. There’s no analysis, no data, no consideration of downstream consequences; just vibes and vendettas. And now that approach has taken flight, literally. When you treat executive orders like they’re tweets, you get the kind of real-world fallout that no spin room or Truth Social post can clean up. Planes don’t fly on bravado. They require coordination, investment, infrastructure. You can't bully gravity.

Think about what we’re watching in real time: a president obsessed with cutting costs for optics while ignoring the cost of human life and national efficiency. Trump’s Department of Transportation doesn’t function as a regulatory agency anymore; it’s a staging ground for ideological warfare. And the casualties are the millions of Americans who depend on safe, timely, and reliable travel.

When Trump defunded critical FAA modernization programs in February; another executive action made without consulting industry experts or the DOT itself, he claimed it would "unleash innovation." What it actually unleashed was a spate of dangerous near-misses at major airports and an uptick in system-wide outages. You can’t modernize a system by defunding it any more than you can fix a car by taking out the engine and yelling at it to go faster.

But that’s the Trump doctrine, isn’t it? Confuse disruption with innovation. Pretend chaos is leadership. Sign an executive order, hold a press conference, blame someone else when it all goes wrong. Rinse and repeat.

And here’s the kicker: this isn’t just a transportation story. It’s a democracy story. It’s about what happens when you strip away institutional norms, replace experts with loyalists, and bypass deliberative processes in favor of instant gratification. The American people didn’t elect an emperor; they elected a president. But Trump governs like he’s above checks and balances, as though policy is a nuisance rather than a necessity.

We’re watching, in real time, what happens when the machinery of government is reduced to a one-man show. And spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well. Not for you, not for me, not for the people whose livelihoods depend on a functioning Department of Transportation. Certainly not for the passengers stranded at airports across the country wondering why the skies are suddenly so unfriendly.

America doesn’t run on executive orders. It runs on thoughtful, considered governance. On people who know that “cutting red tape” doesn’t mean amputating the entire regulatory limb. Trump’s war on “the deep state” has now become a war on basic functionality; and it's the average citizen who pays the price, not his billionaire brethren with multiple aircrafts who fly private.

So the next time you’re waiting at Gate 14, flight cancelled, kids screaming, no pilot in sight, and no explanation except a vague apology over the intercom, remember: this didn’t just happen. It was engineered. This is what governing by tantrum looks like.

And if we’re not careful, we’ll all be passengers on a nation going nowhere fast.

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