On April 28, air traffic controllers responsible for as many as 20 flights into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport—some flying at hundreds of miles per hour—lost access to the radar and communications systems, maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration, that help ensure safe passage. “We don’t have a radar,” one controller told a pilot approaching Newark on audio recorded during the blackout, which lasted as long as 90 seconds, “so I don’t know where you are.” After the incident, several controllers took medical leave, citing trauma from the incident. The absences compounded long-running staffing shortages in air traffic control. Since last Monday, hundreds of flights scheduled to depart from and land at the airport have been delayed or canceled.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has vowed to hire more air traffic controllers and revamp the aging technology they rely on. Nonetheless, in February, hundreds of FAA workers were fired as part of the White House’s indiscriminate axing of probationary employees, i.e., those either recently hired or even promoted to new positions, and more than 1,300 FAA employees reportedly replied to an early retirement offer from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Last week’s Newark episode is among the more dramatic examples of how the Trump administration’s war on the administrative state—often already struggling to maintain basic government functions—threatens to undermine the essential, unglamorous work that keeps the country running.

While air traffic controller shortages have understandably been at the center of the story about Trump 2.0–era airline chaos, FAA cuts are gutting more behind-the-scenes positions too. Back in March, The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reported that as many as 12 percent of the FAA’s aeronautical-information specialists—those tasked with updating charts, maps, and........

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