ICYMI: Secretary Duffy’s Full Sunday Circuit Outlines Ground Stop Response and the Path Forward

This morning, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy appeared on all five Sunday shows to level with the American people about Friday’s nationwide ground stop. Secretary Duffy laid out the Trump Administration’s decisive actions to isolate the problem and restore the airspace and shared preliminary findings from the investigation.

While Democrats shamefully lie and resist finishing the job, Secretary Duffy also reiterated that the $12.5 billion provided in the Working Families Tax Cuts (which not a single Democrat voted for) was written specifically for radar, radios, and related upgrades — not a new telecom network or software. As President Donald J. Trump made clear, Congress must approve the rest of the funding so the modernization can be finished.

Key exchanges:

• On the Trump Administration’s immediate response: “We were talking to the President… He said, ‘Whatever resource in any other Department that you need, let me know. You can pull them. I want everybody to work on this’ — because the safety of the traveling public is number one for him, like it is for me.” (State of the Union)
• On what caused the ground stop: “The telecom in El Dorado, it was an old copper wire that basically was going to be decommissioned. They said it can’t be used anymore, so we were forced by the telecom provider to actually update that copper to fiber and we brought in our routers and did the work, and that’s when we saw the flooding of the network.” (Face the Nation)
• On the need for Congress to fully fund a modernized air traffic control network: “I have systems that are from the ‘90s. I have radar that are from the ‘60s and ‘70s… [We’re] replacing radar and radios, we’re putting in voice switches, we’re doing all of this work with the $12.5 billion, but one of the biggest problems we continue to see is our network — and the architecture of our network is from 1980. We need a modern technology and architecture. I have AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen all ready to go. We have the architecture ready to build a state-of-the-art telecom system that will give us resiliency. All I need is the money to finish it.” (State of the Union)
• On what the $12.5 billion downpayment can — and can’t — do: “When I asked for a massive amount of money to fix the system, what the Congress did is they said, ‘Okay, we’ll give you a partial funding, $12.5 billion,’ in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and they were very specific in how we spend it… But what I don’t have money for is a new telecom system. I don’t have money for new software… Let’s finish the job. Let’s not see what happened on Friday. Let’s not let it happen again.” (Face the Nation)
• On Democrats’ “unspent money” talking point: “Whoever’s saying that, they have to actually read the bill that gave me the money. It was very specific… There’s no money for towers. Our towers are old. Our air traffic controllers oftentimes don’t have elevators or HVAC… Their roofs leak. Let’s build a new system that is worthy to be called American.” (State of the Union)
• On the broad consensus for fully modernizing the system: “If you don’t give us the resources, we can’t complete the job… This is the most bipartisan thing in all of Washington — Democrats, Republicans, the President, everyone agrees on this. Let’s just do it. Do it for the American people.” (Meet the Press)
• On Democrats’ push to pull money from border security: “We should be able to keep our borders safe, we should be able to deport illegals, and we should be able to invest in safe air travel in America. We should be able to invest in new networks, invest in software. We can do all things; we don’t have to pick one versus the other.” (Fox News Sunday)
• On the safety of American air travel: “It is the safest air system in the world, bar none… It’s going to remain safe. But let’s not lie to each other — we have to make investments into a network that has been neglected for decades.” (Meet the Press)
• On delivering results: “President Trump and I are going to fix it.” (Meet the Press)