Sean Duffy Wants You to Know That This Wasn’t Sean Duffy’s Fault

On Sunday, the head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation refused to apologize for the nationwide ground stop that stranded hundreds of thousands of airline travelers with delayed or canceled flights. Instead, Secretary Sean Duffy is blaming previous presidential administrations and Congress. 

“It happened on my watch, but we have to be clear: I am moving at an incredible speed that no one has done at the [Federal Aviation Administration] or DOT in decades. And I’m proud of the work we’re doing, the attention we’re bringing to this issue,” Duffy said during an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press. “But I can’t apologize for what was passed off to us, and I can’t blame Republicans or Democrats, because it’s all of them.”

The secretary said there has been “30 years of a lack of investment” from previous administrations. That’s certainly true: As The New York Times notes, “For decades, air traffic communications have relied on a system that runs on analog copper wire, floppy disks and alphabetical keyboards so old that the F.A.A. has difficulty sourcing spare parts.”

But Duffy and the Trump administration have been overseeing the FAA and the rest of country’s aging transportation system for nearly two years now. And in 2025, lawmakers appropriated $12.5 billion for FAA modernization.

In a Saturday press conference, Duffy said that FAA contractor L3Harris, an information tech services provider and defense contractor, was trying to replace a copper wire with a fiber-optic cable, leading to a data overload on the FAA network. He also said that these disruptions could happen again until all copper wires have been replaced, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2028. 

The transportation secretary repeated his call for more congressional funding to update the FAA’s system during the Sunday interview. 

On CNN, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) slammed Duffy for “point[ing] fingers” at Congress for the debacle. “Congress has met the Trump administration’s request, and it was Republicans who in their so-called Big Beautiful Bill that put in the $12.5 billion, of which they’ve only spent one-third,” he said. “So it’s really rich to hear the secretary pointing the fingers at Congress when Congress has given the administration what they asked for.”

Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator, said on Saturday that the agency had committed or spent around 38 percent of that $12.5 billion so far, adding that it needed “about $10.1 billion to finish modernization.”

Van Hollen, who plans to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer to be the next Senate majority leader, also said Sunday that he would back any additional funding if “necessary.” But, he said, the Trump administration would have to “justify” its requests.