By JOSH FUNK

Even though the U.S. has a stark shortage of air traffic controllers, ones who call in sick instead of working without a paycheck during the federal government shutdown risk being fired, the U.S. transportation secretary warned.

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said this week that he understands the controllers’ frustrations and worries. But during an appearance Thursday on Fox Business, he said that by calling in sick they are causing major disruptions to air traffic, and it won’t be tolerated.

“If we have some of our staff that aren’t dedicated like we need, we’ll let them go,” Duffy said, noting that more than 90% of controllers have been showing up to work during the shutdown. “… It’s a small fraction of people who don’t come to work. They can create this massive disruption. And that’s what you’re seeing rippling through our skies today.”

Airports across the country have experienced delays this week because of a shortage of controllers, more than half of which Duffy attributed to work no-shows. The worst problems have come at smaller airports in Burbank, California, and Nashville, Tennessee, but there have also been delays at major hubs in Newark, New Jersey, Chicago, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Even a small number of controllers not showing up for work is causing problems because the Federal Aviation Administration has a critical shortage of them. Duffy has made it a priority to increase hiring to try to eliminate the shortage in the next few years, but he said controllers who are “problem children” could still be fired.

A Transportation Department spokesperson reinforced that message in a statement Friday, saying, “if there are rare bad actors that don’t show up purposefully and cause disruptions to our operations, consequences are inevitable.”

The controllers’ union, the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, has also stressed that members need to keep working during the shutdown.

“We must be clear. NATCA does not condone a coordinated activity that disrupts the national airspace system or damages our reputation. Such actions are illegal. Risk your careers and destroy our ability to effectively advocate for you and your families,” Mick Devine, the union’s executive vice president, said in a video to members.

Like other affected federal workers, controllers are worried about how they will pay their bills during the shutdown when they won’t get paychecks. Duffy and the union’s president have acknowledged the unfairness of their situation, which only adds more stress to their already stressful jobs.

NATCA President Nick Daniels said controllers might have to take time off to work a second job just to make ends meet during the shutdown. But Duffy said that right now, he thinks the controllers who are missing work are “lashing out” in frustration.

“It’s going to eventually be that when people don’t have money, they have time to start making life choices and life decisions. And it shouldn’t be waiting for air traffic controllers to break because of having to take out loans, credit card debt, paying bills, gas, groceries, mortgages. Those things aren’t going to stop,” Daniels said.

Flight disruptions caused by controllers missing work might add to the pressure on Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown. That’s what happened in 2019, but so far Democrats and Republicans have shown little sign of getting close to ending their standoff.

A Grant teen who was last seen around 7 p.m. Thursday after leaving sailing practice at the White Bear Lake Yacht Club in Dellwood was found safe on Friday afternoon near the intersection of Echo Street and Dellwood Avenue, authorities said.

The 15-year-old was found after a resident saw him walking out of some woods in the area, said Cmdr. Tim Harris of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

He was dropped at the White Bear Lake Yacht Club at 56 Dellwood Ave. for sailing practice at 3:30 p.m. Thursday. He participated with his sailing class and completed practice, but did not return home, the report states. He was supposed to be done by 6:30 p.m.

Sheriff’s deputies were called to the White Bear Yacht Club at 6:50 p.m. The teen was seen on video surveillance and by staff leaving east across the golf course in the direction of his home on foot wearing a blue shirt, grey shorts and black Crocs around 7 p.m.

“The initial report came in as a missing-person’s report, and then the investigation turned into a search for a juvenile runaway,” Harris said.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office used drones and a canine unit to assist in the search; the Minnesota State Patrol also sent their helicopter to aid in the search, Harris said.

Residents in the area were asked to check outbuildings and video surveillance during the search.

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By Alex Brizee, The Idaho Statesman

BOISE, Idaho — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that a facility for a branch of Qatar’s armed forces will be built at the Mountain Home Air Force Base south of Boise.

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“Today, we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. “The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability.”

Hegseth added that it’s “just another example of our partnership,” while seated next to the Qatari Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. The announcement came during a news conference addressing the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, where he thanked Qatar for the “substantial role” they played.

“I want to thank you for that historic peace,” Hegseth told Al Thani.

Pilots from the Qatar Emiri Air Force, and their F-15s, will join a base that already houses members of the Republic of Singapore Air Force, who have trained and lived in the quiet town outside of Boise since 2009.

The possibility of Friday’s move was announced years ago, and in 2022 the Air Force honed in on Mountain Home as the location to house 300 personnel, including a 170 Qatari trainees and 130 U.S. Air Force active duty personnel and contractors, the Idaho Statesman reported.

It’s unclear whether the specifics from that contract remain the same. The Statesman reached out to the Mountain Home Air Force Base, the Governor’s Office and the White House for more information.

U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, praised the news on social media.

“This development is beneficial for training, enhances our partnership with America’s allies, and strengthens national security,” Simpson wrote on X.

©2025 The Idaho Statesman. Visit idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Two young Republican groups have challenged statistical methods used to produce the results of the 2020 census, four years after the numbers were released, as the GOP continues its growing attack on the numbers from the last U.S. head count.

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The legal challenge, filed in a Florida federal court, targets the U.S. population figures that determine how many congressional seats each state gets. It comes as President Donald Trump has been pressuring Republican-led state legislatures to redraw their congressional districts to benefit the GOP ahead of next year’s elections.

Census and redistricting expert Jeffrey Wice said Friday that the Florida lawsuit was part of that strategy to keep the House of Representatives under Republican control.

“Clearly, this is part of that agenda to use the courts and state legislatures in any way they can to retain congressional power,” said Wice, a New York Law School professor. “It’s not a very great step forward.”

The University of South Florida College Republicans, the Pinellas County Young Republicans and two individuals on Tuesday filed a request for a three-judge panel to hear their lawsuit, as is required for cases involving the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states, known as apportionment. The request on Thursday was referred to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs didn’t respond to an emailed question about the lawsuit, and neither did the Census Bureau or the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau.

Some GOP elected officials in recent months have been calling for a mid-decade redo of the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. In August, Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently blamed the Census Bureau for “shortchanging” Florida, saying the nation’s third most populous state deserved an extra seat in the House. Florida gained one additional House seat after the 2020 census, raising its total to 28. Unlike other states, Florida barely provided any resources for mobilizing residents to fill out census forms, and DeSantis brushed off early calls to form a state committee aimed at mobilizing participation.

In a letter to the Commerce Department this week, Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, blamed one of the statistical methods for producing inaccurate totals and demanded the release of a file containing original, unaltered census data.

“The Biden (administration) used a shady ‘privacy’ formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states,” Banks wrote in a social media post. “It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it.”

Although the 2020 census numbers were released during the first months of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, the execution and final planning for the head count, including the decision to use the statistical methods, took place during Trump’s first term. The 14th Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” are to be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, and the Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody residing in the U.S., regardless of legal status. Federal courts have repeatedly supported that interpretation.

The methods that the lawsuit challenged were “differential privacy” and “imputation” for group quarters, which include college dorms, nursing homes and other places where people live together under one roof. Differential privacy adds intentional errors to the data to obscure the identity of any given participant in the 2020 census while still providing statistically valid information. Imputation is a process of using other information to fill in data about people when census-takers can’t reach anyone at a particular address.

The 2020 census faced unprecedented obstacles from the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes and wildfires, social unrest and efforts by the Trump administration to end the count early. Group quarters such as college dorms and nursing homes were especially challenging since campuses closed and care facilities restricted access in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19.

The lawsuit describes imputation as a form of statistical sampling, which is prohibited for apportionment. But Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues, said Friday that “imputation is not sampling” and that differential privacy didn’t affect state population counts used to apportion congressional seats.

“Accuracy is the overarching goal,” Lowenthal said. “I’m not sure why there is a concerted effort among Republicans to diminish the accuracy of the census.”

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social