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TSA agents could call in sick during shutdown

admin - Latest News - October 2, 2025
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During the 2019 U.S. government shutdown, TSA officers unable to make it to work started to call in sick. Now, there are fears history might repeat itself during the current shutdown.



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Oct. 2, 2025, 10:41 AM EDTBy Raquel Coronell Uribe and Megan LebowitzThe federal government shut down Wednesday after lawmakers left the Capitol without passing a funding bill.Agencies and departments each have their own operational procedures during a shutdown, and they have issued guidance about what to expect as the money runs out.Here’s what’s happening as the shutdown continues.Will federal workers be paid during a shutdown? What about layoffs?No, federal workers will largely not be paid during a shutdown. Employees who are considered essential must still report to work, although they will not be paid until the government reopens.Furloughed and essential employees will receive back pay after a shutdown ends.President Donald Trump and members of Congress, however, are continuing to receive paychecks during a shutdown. Their pay is constitutionally protected.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that layoffs would be “imminent.” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought also told House Republicans during the day that federal employees would begin to be fired in “one to two” days, according to sources. On Thursday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that he would meet with Vought to decide which “Democrat Agencies” the OMB director “recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”Trump, like other Republican leaders, blamed Democratic leaders in Congress for the shutdown and warned them about the impact, writing, “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”How does a shutdown affect the military?The majority of veteran benefits and military operations will continue to be funded regardless of the shutdown. However, pay for military and civilian workers will be delayed until a funding deal is reached, forcing them to continue their duties without compensation.Military personnel on active duty, including active guard reserves, remain on duty, but no new orders may be issued except for extenuating circumstances — such as disaster response or national security. Some National Guard members serving through federal funding could have their orders terminated unless performing an essential duty.Ahead of the shutdown, the Department of Veterans Affairs said it expected 97% of its employees to work, though regional offices would be closed. Some death benefits, such as the placement of permanent headstones at VA cemeteries, and ground maintenance, are expected to cease. Communication lines, including hotlines, emails, social media and responses to press inquiries, are expected to be affected a well.The Army and Navy said in social media posts that they will provide “limited updates” on their websites during the shutdown. The Air Force and Space Force said their websites are “not being updated.” How is air travel affected?Air traffic control services will continue, allowing more than 13,000 air traffic controllers to work through a shutdown — but without pay until the government is funded again. Other essential services are also still occurring, such as the certification and oversight of commercial airplanes and engines, and limited air traffic safety oversight.Still, the Department of Transportation has stopped other activities, including the hiring and field training of air traffic controllers, facility security inspections, and support for law enforcement.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement Wednesday that shutdowns “reduce the safety and efficiency of the National Airspace System (NAS) and erode the layers of safety that allow the flying public to arrive safely and on-time to their destinations.””During a shutdown, critical safety support staff are furloughed, and support programs are suspended, making it difficult for air traffic controllers and other aviation safety professionals to perform at optimum levels,” the group said.Will Social Security checks still go out?Social Security benefits, considered mandatory under law, continue regardless of a shutdown, so recipients can expect to continue receiving their payments. However, the Social Security Administration could face a furloughed workforce. Fewer workers could mean that processing new Social Security applications could be delayed.How does the shutdown affect the Department of Health and Human Services?The Department of Health and Human Services — home to agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration — said in its contingency plan that it expects more than 32,000 of its nearly 80,000 workers to be furloughed during the shutdown.HHS said “excepted activities” will continue, offering as an example responses to pandemic, flu and hurricanes. Additionally, the National Institutes of Health is still conducting research and clinical services necessary to protect human life and government property.But research contracts and grants to external organizations, such as universities, are now frozen, and NIH will not admit new patients to its research hospital unless medically necessary. HHS also said it will not process Freedom of Information Act requests during a shutdown.How is the FDA affected?The FDA will continue certain exempt activities, including drug and medical device reviews and recalls, monitoring and response of foodborne illnesses and the flu, pursuing some investigations when the agency believes the public is at risk, and screening food and medical products imported to the U.S.The agency warned it will end its ability to monitor the use of new ingredients in animal food, and thus will not be able to ensure that meat, milk and eggs of livestock are safe for the public to eat. Long-term food safety initiatives are also expected to be stop during the shutdown.The FDA is not processing new drug applications and medical device submissions. The agency warned it will not support staff that oversee protection of unsafe or ineffective drugs unless it is an imminent threat.Are students able to get loans for school?The Department of Education continues to disburse student aid through Pell Grants and Federal Direct Student Loans — assistance that goes to nearly 10 million students at 5,400 schools, the department said.Borrowers still need to make their loan payments during a shutdown, the memo added.In the first week of a government shutdown, the department said it would furlough about 95% of staff who don’t work on federal student aid. The department is also halting new grant-making activities during a lapse in funding.What is the impact on the CDC?The CDC will continue to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, but it will be hampered in providing the public with health-related information, its contingency plan said.The agency also won’t be able to provide state and local health departments with guidance on issues like preventing opioid overdoses, HIV and diabetes.Certain other operations are also being halted, including responses to inquiries about public health issues and the analysis of surveillance data for certain diseases, the Department of Health and Human Services said.The department also said ahead of the shutdown that slightly more than a third of the staff at the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will continue working during the shutdown.How are nutritional programs for the the poor and women and children affected?The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) will continue to provide benefits during the shutdown “subject to the availability of funding,” according to the Department of Agriculture’s contingency plans posted Tuesday afternoon.The document added that a May letter from the Office of Management and Budget previously committed funds for SNAP for October, ensuring the programs would run through that month. It added that SNAP has multiyear contingency funds available, but did not specify how long those funds would last.However, the Department of Agriculture, which houses WIC, said in a letter to state agency directors of the program on Wednesday saying they would not receive their next funding allocation as a shutdown continues. The nonprofit group National WIC Association warned that a shutdown that lasts longer than one or two weeks could cause “devastating disruptions” for people who rely on the program. Will national parks stay open?A National Park Service contingency plan released Tuesday night said parks remain partially open during the shutdown.Open-air sites — such as park roads, outlooks, trails and some memorials — remain accessible to the public. Restrooms remain open, and trash is still being collected.The National Park Service advised, however, that emergency services will be limited.Buildings that require staffing, such as visitor centers or sites like the Washington Monument, are closed. The agency said it will not issue new permits during a shutdown, either. The National Park Service’s contingency plan said certain excepted activities would continue during a shutdown, including trying to suppress active fires, sewage treatment operations and the protection of borders and coasts. Can I still go to Smithsonian museums or the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.?The Smithsonian Institution’s museums and National Zoo — major draws for visitors to the nation’s capital — said Tuesday afternoon that they will use funds from the previous year to remain open to the public at least through Oct. 6.An FAQ page on the zoo’s website said animals at the zoo and the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute will continue to be fed and cared for, but animal cams will no longer broadcast.Raquel Coronell UribeRaquel Coronell Uribe is a breaking news reporter. Megan LebowitzMegan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 7, 2025, 3:21 PM EDTBy Maya Rosenberg and Jay BlackmanWASHINGTON — Federal funding for air travel in rural areas will run out Sunday if the government shutdown continues, threatening to isolate remote communities across the country.The Essential Air Service (EAS), established in 1978, provides funds to airline carriers to operate out of rural airports for routes that would otherwise be unprofitable. The program is a lifeline for remote communities because it connects them to cities with larger airports, ensuring access to medical treatments, work opportunities and commercial goods that would otherwise be a lengthy travel away. “Money runs out this Sunday. So there’s many small communities across the country that will now no longer have the resources to make sure they have air service in their community,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press conference Monday. “Every state across the country will be impacted by the inability to provide the subsidies to airlines to service these communities.”The EAS gives money to regional air carriers in 177 communities across all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico, according to DOT. The Regional Airline Association, an advocacy group for regional airlines that receive EAS funds, said that “commercial air service at EAS airports had an economic impact of $2.3 billion and supported more than 17,000 U.S. jobs” before the pandemic. FAA announces possible staffing issues potentially caused by government shutdown 02:10“This program is an essential economic lifeline for over 500 rural communities who are often hit the hardest whenever there is disruption in the National Airspace System,” the association said in a statement. “[We] continue to urge Congress to come together and reopen the government for the good of the American public. The current government shutdown only adds stressors to an air transportation system that is already plagued with delays, disruptions, and cancellations.”As the shutdown continues with no end in sight, the Federal Aviation Administration is already confronting staffing shortages and slight increases in sick calls as air traffic controllers work without pay. NBC News reported Monday that no air traffic controllers were expected at Hollywood Burbank Airport in the Los Angeles area for hours, and that the main airports in New Jersey and Denver also experienced staffing issues.We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the government shutdown, whether you’re a federal employee who can’t work right now or someone who is feeling the effects of shuttered services in your everyday life. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.Congress appropriated nearly $500 million to the EAS in 2024; The expenditure is typically bipartisan, serving rural communities in states across the country. However, earlier this year, President Donald Trump looked to slash the program’s budget by $308 million in his discretionary budget. He had recommended eliminating the program in its entirety in a budget blueprint during his first term. The federal funding is particularly important for Alaska, where the state’s hundreds of islands and vast swaths of tundra make traveling by air a necessity. According to an October 2024 Transportation Department report, Alaska received more than $41 million in EAS subsidies. Duffy told reporters that the “number one user” of rural airspace is Alaska, and that the state “will be impacted” if funding runs out. “This is almost breathtaking, when you think about the implications for these communities, because there is no road for any of these places,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told NBC News on Monday. “This is a big stressor right now.”Murkowski said that Alaska Airlines would maintain service at a handful of airports regardless of EAS funding but that she was worried for smaller carriers. She added that she was trying to get in touch with Duffy. Alaska Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Meanwhile, Murkowski’s fellow Alaska senator, Republican Dan Sullivan, said he was already in talks with the transportation secretary about the issue. “We’re working through it to make it have as little impact as possible. These are EAS subsidies, but this just goes to the whole damn Schumer shutdown,” Sullivan said, referring to the GOP nickname for the shutdown, which Republicans say was caused by Democrats. “But right now, what I’m trying to do is work with the secretary of transportation, who I was exchanging text messages and voice messages with, to try and limit that kind of damage.”Ryan Huotari, the manager of the Sidney-Richland Airport in Sidney, Montana, said the airport and his community depend on EAS funding.“If the EAS didn’t exist, I don’t think it would be able to function,” Huotari said of the airport. “Our winters out here are 20-below, they’re pretty treacherous. It’s pretty scary driving from here to Billings. I’d rather be in an airplane than a car.” Sidney is only an hour flight away from Billings, Montana’s largest city, but it’s about a four-hour drive each way. Huotari says that the airport is crucial for people who can’t make the eight-hour round trip, like the elderly who need medical care in Billings, or the oil workers who commute between the two areas. Huotari, who helmed the airport during the last shutdown in 2018, said he’s used to the EAS being on the budgetary chopping block but, with no solution in Congress in sight, this time he’s worried.“My biggest concern is getting people paid. There are a lot of federal grants out there that I’ve got right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of money hanging out there, like in the millions.”Maya RosenbergMaya Rosenberg is a Desk Assistant based in Washington, D.C.Jay BlackmanJay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas as transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.Brennan Leach and Frank Thorp V contributed.
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Oct. 4, 2025, 6:00 AM EDTBy Jared PerloEarly last week in the Chinese tech hub of Hangzhou, a slick, larger-than-life video screen beamed out four words that would drive tech giant Alibaba’s stock to historic levels and signal a shift in China’s approach to artificial intelligence: “Roadmap to Artificial Superintelligence.”During his 23-minute keynote address at the flagship Alibaba Cloud conference, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu charted out a future featuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI). These terms point to a theorized era in which AI becomes roughly as smart as humans (AGI) and then much, much smarter (ASI).While these terms have been tossed around Silicon Valley for years, Wu’s presentation was notable: Alibaba is now the first established Chinese tech giant to explicitly invoke AGI and ASI.“Achieving AGI — an intelligent system with general human-level cognition — now appears inevitable. Yet AGI is not the end of AI’s development, but its beginning,” Wu said. “It will march toward ASI — intelligence beyond the human, capable of self-iteration and continuous evolution.”“ASI will drive exponential technological leaps, carrying us into an unprecedented age of intelligence,” Wu said, highlighting ASI’s ability to help cure diseases, discover cleaner sources of energy and even unlock interstellar travel.The U.S. and China are the world’s leading AI powers, each with immense computing capabilities and top-tier researchers developing cutting-edge systems. Yet observers have framed the countries as having different approaches to AI, with perceptions that China focuses more on real-world AI applications.For example, commentators recently argued that Beijing is currently “winning the race for AI robots” against the U.S., as China is home to much of the world’s most advanced robotics supply chains and a growing network of robotics, or embodied AI, labs.“There’s been some commentary in Western media recently about how the U.S. is missing the point by pushing for AGI, while China is focusing solely on applications,” said Helen Toner, interim executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “This is wrong.”“Some Chinese researchers and some parts of the Chinese government have been interested in AGI and superintelligence for a long time,” Toner said, though she noted this view was primarily held by smaller startups like DeepSeek.China’s push for global AI dominance04:44Afra Wang, a researcher focusing on China’s tech scene, said Alibaba’s invocation of AGI and ASI was remarkable.“This ASI narrative is definitely something new, especially among the biggest tech companies in China,” she told NBC News.Alibaba’s “roadmap to artificial superintelligence” seems to scramble mainstream perceptions. Any number of California techno-optimists, like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or xAI’s Elon Musk, might have delivered Wu’s speech, selling a technology-enabled utopia while largely sidestepping darker questions about how humanity would co-exist with or survive an era of digital superintelligence.The concept of superintelligence has long been on the minds of — if not explicitly guiding — prominent American AI companies. For example, OpenAI released an article focused on the safe development of superintelligent AI models in May 2023. “Now is a good time to start thinking about the governance of superintelligence — future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI,” the statement said.The possibility of superintelligence is now even being acknowledged in Congress. On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Ill., announced a draft bill that would, among other actions, “assist Congress in determining the potential for controlled AI systems to reach artificial superintelligence.”To some, ASI might seem like an outlandish concept when today’s AI systems fail to understand basic tennis rules, hallucinate or fabricate basic information, or do not seem to actually comprehend how the external world functions.At the same time, AI systems continue to approach and sometimes surpass human capabilities in many domains, from driving cars safely to winning international coding competitions, leaving many experts to say it’s a matter of when, not if, humans develop digital superintelligence.As the idea of superintelligence gradually enters mainstream debates, many American politicians have announced that the U.S. is in an AI race with China. The White House’s current AI manifesto is titled “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” while Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, proclaimed that “as a matter of economic security, as a matter of national security, America has to beat China in the AI race.”Yet charges of an AI race are muddied by a lack of an agreed end goal and swirling definitions of AGI. At worst, experts think an unfettered race toward AGI or ASI could lead to widespread catastrophe or even the end of humanity.But there’s also plenty of skepticism around talk of AGI and ASI and whether it’s primarily for marketing purposes.Alibaba is one of China’s largest tech companies, known for providing powerful, free AI models — also called open-source models — for download. Alibaba’s Qwen model series, a competitor to models like OpenAI’s GPT-5 or Anthropic’s Claude, is the most popular open-source AI system in the world.OpenAI launches Sora 2 wth AI social media app05:48Wu announced a new series of Qwen models in his speech last week, including a model that combines text, images, video and audio capabilities.Many observers point out that narratives about a U.S.-China AI race and a resulting sprint to build AI infrastructure serve AI investors by propping up company valuations and increasing their soft power. Alibaba’s stock has soared since Wu’s speech last week, part of a larger $250 billion comeback this year that has made it China’s hottest AI company.To unlock a powerful, superintelligent future, Wu predicted that large AI models will replace existing operating systems as the link between users, software and computational power. This future network of large AI models will run on cloud computing networks like Alibaba Cloud, he said.Irene Zhang, a researcher on China’s AI ecosystem and an editor of ChinaTalk, noted the business undertones of Wu’s announcement.“This is a vision of AGI and ASI that’s directly based on Alibaba’s business model,” she said.“Alibaba Cloud dominates China’s cloud computing market, and its global market share is now bigger than Oracle’s,” she said. “Alibaba’s commercial strategy and its publicly stated views on ASI/AGI are symbiotic.”Matt Sheehan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed.“ASI is the ultimate frontier, as far as the discourse goes on AI,” Sheehan said. “It’s notable that Alibaba set this grandiose goal, but in reality, they’re selling cloud services.”Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.
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