Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sought on Monday to assuage concerns about air traffic safety after a number of high-profile plane incidents took place during the first month of the Trump administration as efforts to trim the “fat” are underway.
During an interview with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, Duffy acknowledged that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has fired hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but he emphasized they were people who were recently hired.
“There’s fat everywhere in government, and in DOT as well. But let’s be clear. At FAA, we cut 352 people out of 46,000 people. That is 0.8% of the workforce. These were probationary workers. They were employed for less than a year at DOT,” Duffy said.
.@SecDuffy: "We kept all of the critical safety positions. We actually hired more positions in critical safety, like air traffic controllers… for people to say that because we cut 352 people out of 46,000 — that that's a risk to safety — give me a break." pic.twitter.com/4QEeWgAj4G
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 24, 2025
Duffy stressed that these employees who were let go were not veterans of the department needed to help keep transportation systems running smoothly, an assurance that followed recent air travel disasters such as the deadly collision between a military helicopter and passenger jet in the Washington, D.C., area and mid-air plane crash in Arizona.
“These weren’t the old school, really ingrained employees of the DOT. And not only that, we kept all of the critical safety positions. And we actually hired more positions in critical safety, like air traffic controllers. We hired more inspectors for things like pipelines and for aircraft,” Duffy said.
“So, again, we have a safety mission, but for people to say that because we cut 352 people out of 46,000 — that that’s a risk to safety — give me a break. I mean that’s just plain politics as opposed to saying let’s cut the fat,” Duffy added.
Duffy also talked about the email first announced over the weekend by Elon Musk, who is overseeing President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort, requesting that federal employees provide five things they accomplished in the past week. While other agency leaders have instructed their workers not to respond, the Transportation Secretary said he did not object.
“At DOT, I have no problem with employees here saying, ‘What did you do last week?’ and if you can’t come up with five things that you did, maybe you shouldn’t be employed here,” Duffy said. “Again, this is an easy task. It happens in the private sector all the time. And so I wanted all our employees to actually engage and talk about what they did.”
He added: “I think this whole movement, Bill, is potentially going to make people go, ‘I’m going to come to work earlier.’ ‘I’m going to stay later.’ ‘I’m going to look at what Donald Trump wants me to accomplish because he won the election, and I’m going to fight and work to make sure I help him accomplish that because I’m a public servant.'”
Duffy even posted his own list of five things he accomplished last week in a post to X:
Mr. President, 5 things I did last week:
1. Terminated NYC elitist, anti-worker congestion pricing.
2. Launched an investigation into the $16 billion in taxpayer dollars wasted on a high-speed rail project that, after 17 years, has yet to lay a single mile of track.
3. Saved $10…— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 24, 2025