Ground Stop at Jfk Due to Staffing
Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago
fly.faa.govOtherstoryHigh profile
heatednegative
Debate
85/100
Government ShutdownAir Traffic ControlFederal Funding
Key topics
Government Shutdown
Air Traffic Control
Federal Funding
A ground stop was issued at JFK airport due to staffing issues related to the government shutdown, sparking debate about the impact of shutdowns on essential services and the politicization of funding.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
13m
Peak period
112
0-6h
Avg / period
20
Comment distribution160 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Oct 30, 2025 at 9:48 PM EDT
2 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Oct 30, 2025 at 10:02 PM EDT
13m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
112 comments in 0-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Nov 2, 2025 at 5:01 AM EST
2 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45767505Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 8:28:07 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Time to put the finishing touches on the costumes and carve the last pumpkins.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1cKfZatlQ4
i.e. a plane for one route might go between various different cities in 24 hours, with different crew each time of course before it gets back to the first route.
They are considered essential. That means they have to work, but not be paid.
https://time.com/7329683/government-shutdown-flight-delays-c...
I think thats due to the 27th Amendment [1]
> No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
can't change (or stop) congressional pay until an election. guess it's a double-edged sword they can't give themselves in immediate pay raise, which I think was the point of ratification in 1992, but also can't cut their pay for failing to pass a budget.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-27/
... But they're hurting for recruits in a big way so even at their size their negotiating position isn't as strong as they might want.
What's more, even if you could, who is going to take a job for which they will not be paid as long as the shutdown continues?
(Current Airline Pilot here, definitely NOT in favor of privatizing ATC, but historically breaking things on purpose is the usual path politicians take to privatize)
>Before 1917, the U.S. had no debt ceiling. Congress either authorized specific loans or allowed the Treasury to issue certain debt instruments and individual debt issues for specific purposes. Sometimes Congress gave the Treasury discretion over what type of debt instrument would be issued.[25] The United States first instituted a statutory debt limit with the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. This legislation set limits on the aggregate amount of debt that could be accumulated through individual categories of debt (such as bonds and bills). In 1939, Congress instituted the first limit on total accumulated debt over all kinds of instruments.[26][27]
>In 1953, the U.S. Treasury risked reaching the debt ceiling of $275 billion. Though President Eisenhower requested that Congress increase it on July 30, 1953, the Senate refused to act on it. As a result, the president asked federal agencies to reduce how much they spent, plus the Treasury Department used its cash balances with banks to stay under the debt ceiling. And, starting in November 1953, Treasury monetized close to $1 billion of gold left over in its vaults, which helped keep it from exceeding the $275 billion limit. During spring and summer 1954, the Senate and the executive branch negotiated on a debt ceiling increase, and a $6 billion one was passed on August 28, 1954.[28]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt_ceiling#Leg...
"Funding gaps have led to shutdowns since 1980, when Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued a legal opinion requiring it. This opinion was not consistently adhered to through the 1980s, but since 1990 all funding gaps lasting longer than a few hours have led to a shutdown. As of October 2025, 11 funding gaps have led to federal employees being furloughed."
Shutdowns happen when Congress hasn't appropriated new money by passing a budget. The shutdown failure mode is "there isn't enough money to pay for existing programs."
Therefore, it will never happen.
So yes: I'd like to suggest that organ transplants may be in fact be luxuries.
(If the question were instead worded as "Should organ transplants be considered luxuries?" then my answer would be written very differently.)
For now, it remains a luxurious and unattainable concept to me.
There's enough republicans in the House of Representatives for a vote amongst party lines to pass a budget there. That's not a problem for them
There's also enough republicans in the Senate to make it happen with a simple majority, which they posess. They surely know this.
Republicans can end the debate and vote on a bill -- including one that can temporarily get things moving -- any time they want to. They've got the numbers to do that.
It's not a theory. There's precedent. They've made that shift previously[1] in the not-so-distant past.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option
I happen to agree on the object level issue of maintaining the Medicaid funding. Thanks for talking down to me, though.
https://youtu.be/YeABJbvcJ_k
Forcing people to work and not pay them is slavery!
But I don't think I was wrong. Work is fundamentally a business transaction; I sell my time and expertise and they give me money and benefits. Ultimately for any job I've had, even jobs that I really loved, if they stopped paying me I'd stop showing up [1]. It's nothing personal, that's just the transaction that I agreed to.
If I had some bloviating wannabe-demagogue telling me that I should keep working and to not expect backpay, I am quite confident that I would quit, or at least keep calling in sick. I am not going to blame anyone who would do the same. I have no fucking idea why half the country voted for this.
[1] This has actually been tested for one job.
If you don't like it, working at a BigCo could be quite soul-draining.
I have worked and done well at BigCos where they were a little less intellectually dishonest, so I don't actually think it's intrinsic to big companies.
It's like telling your girlfriend you're dating her because she's really hot. I'm sure that factored in, but she might get annoyed if that's the only reason you can come up with.
Try talking to a kid who used to be beat by their parents, at least the company is up front (usually).
He thought I was being extremely cynical (and I suppose I kind of was) and he disagreed with me.
About a year later, he felt screwed over by the company, and admitted that maybe I was right. I mentioned it is just a conclusion that nearly anyone comes to when working for the corporate world long enough.
Again, to be clear, I said all this at the time.
I don't think the hot girlfriend analogy applies in this case; if I had a hot girlfriend and she stops being hot, if I liked her I probably wouldn't up and leave her. If a company stops paying, I will absolutely leave.
My point is that if you go around and tell everyone at work that you're doing it because of the money, you're... not coming off particularly well? A statement like that comes off a bit odd and socially tone-deaf? And yes, I understand that it's true that you would quit your job if they stopped paying you, but things can be true and still not a great idea to say out loud. It can be an objective fact that my manager is ugly; it's not a good idea to say this during a meeting.
It wasn’t like I just blurted it out when people were deciding which database to use, it was relevant to the discussion. I can’t remember the exact conversation but IIRC we were having trouble hiring someone for a role and the topic of compensation came up. I felt my comment was relevant, and I genuinely didn’t even consider that people would have issue with it because I thought it was borderline tautological.
Shareholders can literally sue the management if they don't pursue the obligation.
We've had rivers catch fire because poisoning the water is profitable.
We all exist in a society. However, the people most likely to own businesses and be successful at it seem to have no moral qualms about harming society so long as it personally enriches themselves.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234358133/exxon-climate-chan...
Anyone can sue anyone for anything. It’s not remarkable.
Now cite even a single case where shareholders sued and won. In reality, the “obligation” you are referencing has basically only ever been relevant in situations where the board or management is taking bribes. I’m not aware of any cases where shareholders won because the company was too nice to customers, the environment, or whatever.
For whatever reason, “shareholders” live rent free in the heads of Internet commentators, but it’s hard to understate their actual influence.
That’s a mistake that business leaders have long since learned from. Wanna drop a billion dollars to add legs to your metaverse characters? Do whatever you want and just present a plausible argument that it serves shareholders. You don’t need evidence, any rationale is fine as long as you don’t explicitly state that you don’t care about shareholder value.
Another similar case might by something like eBay v Newmark, in that to the extent shareholders got relief it was because of things the business leaders said about shareholder primacy, rather than any actual actions taken by the company.
I guess that’s the real influence of shareholders: boards and executives can do whatever they want as long as when they talk, they don’t speak ill of shareholder primacy.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-354
> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits.
> Among non-experts, conventional wisdom holds that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. This common but mistaken belief is almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court's 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.
Or
> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate.
For latest example of a stupid lawsuit where this has happened, see Justin Baldoni v. Blake Lively. Baldoni sued Lively and others. After a lot of legal maneuvering, a judge dismissed the case.
But even if it was dismissed, it’s still a fact that Baldoni did sue Lively. You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn’t mean you will get any relief, but you can do it anyway, and in our age of dumb performative lawsuits, many do.
Actually good attitude often == not honest.
It didn't occur to me that people would say I had a bad attitude because I did think that literally everyone I was talking to would agree and I didn't see why they'd be bothered.
On the one hand, I've been saying this for two decades, in small and large cos. I've never been promoted in title, but I've also never been fired and generally been given more and more people to manage. I'm too direct and honest, but as I got older I learned to own it and do it smoothly without disrupting too much.
But the 'consultant mentality' helps me maintain my sanity, sleep a little better at night and never get married to a company. I wish I put my money where my mouth is, though, because peers who move every 2-3 years make significantly more than me despite being more junior.
On the one hand, the FounderSpeak about internalizing the job, loving what you do, and work life balance being bad business nauseates me... On the other hand, some of my high performing workaholic friends are not only richer than me, they seem like they're more purpose driven in their lives as their corporate jobs give meaning it doesn't give me.
It seems then that, for me, self-honesty and work life separation achieve less satisfaction and a lot less pay (and perhaps delayed early retirement).
BigCo
To Investors : We are in it for money. We will earn you money. It is money we dream, covet and will go to any lengths for. Ethics, Integrity, Truth, all those don't matter in the long term.
To Society : We do CSR, we are a good for society, we are ethical, we have integrity, we value society, we care much more than just money.
To Employees : We are family, if one of us is hurt everyone is hurt, we believe in work-life balance, we believe in fairness, equality, openness, transparency.
BigCo is a liar and a hypocrite.
Our military is over extended, science has been flipped over and defunded, and that alone will settle it.
Now add unreasonable volatility from tariffs, and wait, give it time, wait some more until it’s impossible to unwind, then if we’re not in a major war, economy crashes, chaos ensues.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We never really fully recovered from that. We took away the power of employees in a high stress job to voice their concerns and needs which, as a result, made the job extra hard to hire for.
Once that happens, Congress has basically iced itself out. Oversight from unfriendly government agencies? No worries, they're shut down because they're unpaid. And clearly this demonstrates the executive needs more power, since Congress is completely frozen. Finally, the Supreme Court is no longer an issue either, since that's not funded either.
Someone tell me why this couldn't happen.
That's what it looks like from the outside, but I can't understand what the gain is. Who benefits? The result of the middle class was massive advancement and an equally massive increase in standard of living for the wealthy who captured most of the gains.
What do they gain from stagnating innovation and a lack of education, services, etc.?
It makes me think of the old Olympic and sports videos. The participants basically suck because they're coming from a small pool of people wealthy enough to not need a job. Do they really want the pool of candidates competing to become doctors, etc. to be smaller which will end up lowering the overall quality for them?
Or do they think they'll simply hire the best and brightest from other countries that are investing in their citizens?
The days of Henry Ford capitalists who think their workers should be paid enough to buy their products seems to be unfashionable (even though he was a Nazi supporting racist, he had his head screwed on better than they do).
The end game of full on narcissistic capitalism is coming. Hopefully the Henry Ford types wake the fuck up and do something about their peers losing the fucking plot entirely.
Alternatively "better to rule among the miserable than to serve among the great."
It's a consistent theme with most autocracies.
In addition to what the other replies are saying (I think they're all at least partly right), Trump benefits. Right now.
He's getting to be the King he always believed was his right and due.
People who would rather be kings of shit mountain, than rich and powerful but bound by law in a functional society.
That's it, that's the only goal.
So dastardly that no one seems to be able to explain how dastardly it is.
Republicans have proven they won't follow the same rules and aren't negotiating in good faith.
They'll do whatever they can get away with, and if bad things happen (whether they are opposed or not) then it's anyone else's fault.
When Democrats had the Admin, Senate, and House, they put the ACA provisions on sunsetting subsidies in. How dastardly are the Republicans that they forced Democrats to do that when it was done with almost zero Republican votes?
Your post is just game. “My side is good and their side is evil”… don’t you get tired of that?
You are falling for semantics games.
Stop. You aren’t even falling for it. They’re using shutdown as leverage to try and get something they couldn’t get when they had all three houses. You can agree or disagree that is a good idea or that it will work, but can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.
If the Dems don’t like the political outcome of losing so many elections, they should propose popular policies ideas and candidates to win elections.
If you point your analysis at yourself you can see how you pivot perspectives in synchrony with the abusive behaviors as it supports your political alignment.
The Democrats won't agree to making the awful omnibus bill cuts permanent and essentially defunding the ACA, because they want to govern and actually help all our people.
The Republicans won't agree to providing and caring for Americans through programs that are already fully approved, because they want to destroy those programs without actually having the votes to repeal them, because they want to destroy the government and harm anyone who doesn't fit their particular view of what a "real American" is.
So while your words are technically true, they serve to obscure a very real difference in why each side is refusing to end the shutdown.
I don't know about you, but I think the side that actually wants to govern the country, uphold the rule of law, and help people in need, is really not the one that we should be blaming for refusing to compromise on their principles (however late they may have come to them).
The Democratic Party is not seeking to rule. They are seeking to have the government do its damn job.
The Republican Party is seeking to rule, but not govern: that is, they get to be in charge, but they take no responsibility for anything that happens under their rule. (Most especially Trump and his administration; Congressional Republicans are a bit less of the former and a lot more of the latter.)
Just keeping the lights on shouldn’t require a 60% consensus (it should be the default). This is represented by the reconciliation process, which is some budget related voting process that only requires a majority in the senate. But the reconciliation process was used up to pass the “one big beautiful bill.”
I am curious why Republicans have not changed the parliamentary rules for cloture. The party seems to be pushing states to gerrymander to benefit their Congressional power as early as the next Congressional election. My best guess at the moment is there are a few Republican members who fear what the party leadership does with no opposition party constraints.
Fundamentally, Republicans just want tax breaks and judicial appointments, and the filibuster already doesn't block those. So it hasn't really been a problem for them. Since Dems in theory want the government to work, they can keep things working well enough to let the Dems deal with their time bombs like expiring ACA subsidies and middle class tax breaks.
Start with DOGE and Russel Vought’s actions. Then look at Congressional Republican’s recision bill, their lack of Article 1 oversight of what Trump’s Executive is doing, their consistent support of the Executive against any attempt by the Judicial to enforce the law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Big_Beautiful_Bill_Act
BTW the not passed continuing resolution only goes through November 21st.
Look at the actions of Russell Vought, not the words of Ted Cruz.
This means that there is no longer the ability to negotiate a budget in good faith. The Dems can fight for more health care funding (or whatever) and the compromise can happen, and then the president can just say "sike!" And not do it.
And, political leanings aside, this president has shown that he will indeed break any agreement he decides to, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to negotiate. So I'm thinking this shutdown lasts a Long time.
Then the president is on his way out, and Republicans start looking for and building favor with the next person.
(Which is really what all the "third term" BS is about. Trump has no intention, age-wise, of running for a third term, but talking about it keeps the lame duck calculus on ice. Hence why there aren't any details about "how", just a vague "we have a plan")
Congress has had problems for decades (thanks to Newt and the childish boomers), which is what has been accreting so much power in the Presidency to begin with. But there is still time to pull up by Congress reasserting its authority as an institution, and that time is now.
So yes, this is not going to be resolved in a matter of weeks. But something has to happen in order for it to resolve one way or another, and one of those possibilities (that you should be championing if you appreciate our Constitutionally-limited government!) is for Congress to start exerting their authority independent of Dear Leader's grip on the Party.
"Our legally elected representative directly refuses to represent us" should be plenty of grounds.
The closest I could find was Burton v. U.S., where the court declined to rule, since the law in question didn't apply to senators at the time.
Caveat: on a preliminary basis in most of the decisions
Important to differentiate SCOTUS saying "there isn't a compelling reason to block this power before we decide" and "here's our decision about the legality of this power"
Rough summary of current state: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-courts-hampered-...
I'm half-curious if Roberts is playing for time to avoid a constitutional crisis, figuring it's better to cede a temporary power (and avoid the executive stuffing the bench or whatever insane shit they'd try) than to cast it in case law. Not great for the rule of law, but I can see the realpolitik (which Marbury v. Madison shows has always been a consideration for inter-branch squabbles)
There's a kind of mental trap (Frances Fukuyama and the end of history) where you consider the modern liberal capitalist democracy an attractor state of such strength that anything like the current admin is a temporary aberration,that we can wait it out.
And just like the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, I think the populist demagogue class can retain power longer than the liberal institutions can endure. I certainly hope I'm incorrect about this.
So this means the Supreme Court has unilaterally implemented the line item veto ? So much for "balls and strikes" eh.
Beware the ides of march.
During a constitutional crisis that doesn't seem to have an immediate resolution political violence should be expected from the inside as an attempt to reach a resolution. The last line of defense is that military leadership actually do have a pretty solid loyalty to the constitution and soldiers are pretty well trained to follow the chain of command.
nobody can gain loyalty anywhere near trump nor does anyone have close to the unhinged charisma
but the government is shut down there should be no expectation that there will be any agreement to half fund it and absent that there's not really any foreseeable mechanism for the treasury to start operating on a large scale entirely outside of the law
so i guess the other last line of defense is the bond market and foreign exchange markets which wouldn't respond well to dictatorial control of the treasury and the fed
Until UBI is a thing, they (necessarily) need to be very cognizant of where they spend their time in relation to where they make their money.
Republicans should propose a reasonable solution that will get the votes to pass, otherwise, this will continue.
121 more comments available on Hacker News