Air traffic across the United States came to a halt on Friday afternoon during an FAA ground stop, prompting WME executive chairman Ari Emanuel to publicly criticise former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. In a post on X, Emanuel wrote that "no one's hands are clean here," but argued that Buttigieg had "four years in the job and infrastructure money, yet made zero progress modernizing the FAA," adding, "You left a failing system in place. THANKS!"

Buttigieg left his post at the end of the Biden administration. The current transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, whom Donald Trump nominated to the role in 2024, addressed the public just after the ground stop was lifted on Friday evening. Duffy pointed to his demands to Congress for modernization funds, saying, "I can't build things if I don't have money," and urging the public to tell their senators and members of Congress, "We don't deserve this."S1S2

Duffy acknowledged that upgrades were necessary but admitted they may have introduced instability into the air control system. "By doing nothing, you inject way more risk into the system," he said, adding, "I didn't anticipate that we would have an outage like this." Emanuel's post drew more than 3,000 replies, many questioning why he was blaming a previous administration, with one commenter pointing to the FAA's troubles since Duffy took office.S2

Buttigieg was himself stranded at Denver airport during the disruption. After watching the press conference given by Duffy and Markwayne Mullin, he told the New York Times, "I have questions."S2