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WASHINGTON (AP) – The Aviation Funding Solvency Act. The Keep America Flying Act. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The Aviation Funding Stability Act.

Again and again, members of Congress have dusted off the same idea: ensuring the federal employees who control air traffic and screen passengers and bags at U.S. airports get paid during government shutdowns.

Bills to make it happen keep getting introduced in one form or another, sometimes with Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors. Yet session after session, the result has been the same — agencies receive their annual appropriations, public outrage over long security lines and flight delays fades, legislation languishes and workers have no guarantees their paychecks won’t stop coming again.

“Once the crisis is over, people assume that the good times are back,” said Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve law professor whose research includes risk management in the aviation industry. “It’s easy to pass the next big bill when you’re still in the throes of the financial crisis, but once the shutdown is done, people have a relatively short memory of the problems that it created.”

Since 2019, after a partial shutdown that spanned the holiday travel season, lawmakers have drafted, revised and reintroduced multiple proposals to pay aviation workers who would have to keep reporting for duty in the event of another budget impasse.

The Aviation Funding Stability Act of 2019 — and 2021 and 2025 — and the bipartisan Aviation Funding Solvency Act introduced after a government shutdown last fall would protect the pay of air traffic controllers. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act, filed in October, extended the protection to Transportation Security Administration agents. The Keep America Flying Act, also from October, would cover both TSA personnel and certain Federal Aviation Administration employees.

Broader proposals, like the Shutdown Fairness Act introduced in January, would maintain the pay of essential federal workers across the U.S. government. Those bills have stalled as well.

“Congress cares about headlines, and as a result of that, it means they don’t always make changes that would be really beneficial,” Chaffee said.
Political gridlock

Shutdowns that disrupt air travel have continued along with the push for aviation-specific pay protections. The 35-day shutdown that arose over funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border during President Donald Trump’s first term resulted in delays at East Coast airports and prolonged wait times at some airports as air traffic controllers and TSA agents went unpaid.

Last fall’s 43-day shutdown broke the record for the longest funding lapse and revived concerns over the consequences of requiring air traffic controllers to work without pay. The FAA, citing risks to aviation safety, took the extraordinary step of ordering U.S. airlines to cut flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports as unscheduled absences deepened existing staffing shortages at air traffic control facilities.

TSA officers who worked through that shutdown also found themselves working through a short one that started on Jan. 31 and yet another when funding for only the Department of Homeland Security lapsed on Feb. 14. Thousands began missing shifts each day as the stalemate entered its second month.

Carlos Rodriguez, a TSA agent and local union leader in New York, said many workers had not recovered financially from last year’s shutdown when this one hit.

“Part of the American dream that I was sold was that working for the government was honorable and stable,” Rodriguez, a second generation Dominican American, said. “But this is not honorable or stable.”

On Friday, the 42nd day of the DHS shutdown, Trump signed an emergency order instructing Homeland Security to pay TSA agents immediately. The action came after House Republicans defeated a Senate deal that would have funded the TSA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The House later in the night passed its own bill to fund the entire Homeland Security department through May 22, but senators had already left town.

Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA division of the American Federation of Government Employees, said union members resent having their livelihoods used as tools and talking points in a game of political brinkmanship.

To them, the machinations of Congress feel like “let’s checkmate the queen with the TSA pawn here, and then we’ll smash them over whenever we feel like it,” Jones said. “We’re on the chess board.”
Public pressure builds

Labor unions, airline leaders and airport executives have issued open letters, taken out newspaper ads and made direct appeals to urge lawmakers to act on at least one of the existing bipartisan proposals.

“Congress has the power to end this dysfunction once and for all, and must use any legislative vehicle to accomplish this goal,” the Modern Skies Coalition said in a joint statement this week. The broad coalition of more than 60 organizations pointed to the Aviation Funding Solvency Act, Aviation Funding Stability Act and Keep America Flying Act as potential options.

The president and CEO of Airlines for America, a trade group representing major U.S. airlines, made a similar case in a Washington Times op-ed this week, writing that Congress “must get to the table immediately” and pass legislation that would prevent more scenes of frustrated passengers, overflowing airport terminals and donation drives for public servants.

“Right now, lawmakers are sitting on their hands doing nothing with three viable, bipartisan bills that could prevent this mess,” wrote Chris Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor hired to lead the trade group last year.

The American Federation of Government Employees joined more than 30 unions this week in urging Congress to pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, warning that funding lapses undermined employee morale, recruitment and retention.
Breaking the cycle

Some TSA workers have reported sleeping in their cars or thinking about selling them to make rent. Union leaders have described workers not being able to fill their refrigerators or gas tanks.

Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter called Gate Access, said the officers he’s spoken with are eager to receive all of their back pay quickly because they are struggling to pay their bills and accumulating debt. But without greater certainty, more officers may miss shifts or decide to quit, he said.

If the president’s emergency order only funds a single pay period, “that’s not enough to bring them back,” Harmon-Marshall said. “It has to be an extended pay for them to come back or want to stay there.”

Previous legislation with bipartisan backing struggled to make it across the finish line. The Aviation Funding Act of 2019 that was introduced by Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, had 13 co-sponsors, eight of them Democrats. It never made it out of committee. A House version introduced by Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio eventually had 303 co-sponsors and cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee but never received a floor vote.

The current political environment in the U.S. may consign the legislation in Congress now to the same fate, Chaffee said.

“We live in a society currently where things are very polarized,” he said. “Whether or not any of these bills get passed, it will need to have political momentum behind it, meaning it will need to be something that the public really wants to see happen.”

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — It was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s show at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where hundreds of right-wing activists from around the country hailed him as Republicans’ clear choice for U.S. Senate.

After meeting with supporters behind closed doors, Paxton crowned the day by standing before thousands as the keynote speaker at the Ronald Reagan dinner.

Paxton thanked them for sticking by his side after he was impeached — but acquitted — for corruption charges by the Legislature four years ago.

“I want you to know, there’s only one reason I got through all that, and it’s by the grace of God,” he said Friday night as a wave of applause rolled through the hall. “He absolutely delivered me, and he used to people of Texas to deliver me.”

If Paxton is going to win the Republican nomination, it will be because of support in rooms like this one. He is in a bitter runoff with Sen. John Cornyn after neither won enough votes in the March 3 primary. Although Cornyn has raised far more money and is backed by the party establishment in Washington, Paxton’s well-honed survival skills and rock-solid foundation with the local Republican base could see him through the May 26 election.

President Donald Trump promised that he would endorse either Paxton or Cornyn weeks ago, but no announcement ever came. Paxton, however, has had no trouble proving his bona fides with the party’s right wing.

While Cornyn did not attend CPAC, which was held at a resort and convention center near Dallas, Paxton was extolled by speakers throughout the day.

“Ken Paxton is emblematic of the grassroots of the MAGA movement across the nation,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who hosts the “War Room” podcast, said referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan that originated in his 2016 campaign.

Earlier Friday, CPAC senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp polled the crowd. Asking for a show of support for Paxton, there was a roar of cheers. When she asked about Cornyn, there was a light ripple of boos.

Cornyn finished first in the primary, which also featured U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. There were briefly concerns among Paxton’s supporters that Trump would back the incumbent. That would have come as a relief to party leaders, who view Cornyn as stronger candidate against Democratic nominee James Talarico.

But Paxton appealed to Trump by embracing legislation known as the SAVE Act, which would mean new, strict proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. The proposal is a priority for Trump, but it has stalled in the Senate because Republican leaders do not want to lift the filibuster.

Joe Ropar, a 72-year-old defense contractor who attended CPAC, said Paxton’s move was “brilliant.” Although Cornyn later said he was willing to change filibuster rules, Ropar believed Paxton had demonstrated stronger loyalty to Trump.

“Cornyn’s trying to change his stripes now,” Ropar said. “It’s too little too late.”

Paxton has another political connection with Trump: They both have portrayed themselves as the victims of political persecution. While Paxton was impeached and acquitted once, Trump went through the process twice during his first term.

James Schaare, a 61-year-old church music leader from Euless, Texas, said that perseverance shows Paxton is the right choice.

“In Paxton’s career, he’s been faithful to what he’s said he’s going to do,” he said.

Some conservative Republicans hold other grudges against Cornyn. They remember his early criticism of Trump’s proposal for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2016, his co-sponsoring of gun control legislation after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, and his dismissive remarks about Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024.

Retired music teacher Valerie Burge, 58, said she voted for Cornyn in the primary because of his long service.

“But I’m not sure about the runoff,” she said. “It might be time for something new.”

Barbara Palmer, a 65-year-old lawyer, said Cornyn had simply been in office for too long. He has been a judge, state supreme court justice and state attorney general, and now he wants a fifth term as senator.

“It’s just time for a change,” Palmer said.

AUSTIN – Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expanded on an initial list of priorities that included “preventing Sharia law” and looking into Medicaid fraud by directing state senators to research a wide range of policy issues ahead of next year’s legislative session, including prediction markets, data centers, THC, and more.

Patrick’s priorities included data centers three times. The Lieutenant Governor, who is in charge of the state senate, gave various committees instructions to evaluate the water requirements of “energy-intensive technologies,” such as data centers, and to think about how to meet their electricity needs. Additionally, Patrick charged the Health and Human Services Committee with researching “the impact of THC on increased health care costs, mental health emergency detentions, and the risk of being diagnosed with a THC-induced psychotic disorder,” indicating a continued focus on outlawing hemp-based THC products.

Patrick expressed interest in prediction market gambling because, despite the state’s ban on sports betting and casinos, markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have grown thanks to a federal loophole. Regarding property taxes, Patrick reiterated “Operation Double Nickel,” his plan to lower property taxes by raising the portion of a home’s value that is exempt from taxes in order to fund public education.

GRAPEVINE – On Friday, the Texas Tribune reported that Bo French, a Republican running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, called for the deportation of 100 million people, or almost one-third of the nation’s population. “I’m going to say something that’s going to make some people uncomfortable: The problem is, we call it Sharia [law], but the problem is actually Islam,” French said.

During a panel discussion titled “Do not Sharia My Texas” at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine, French, a former Tarrant County GOP chair who has previously faced criticism from his own party for his frequent use of derogatory language on social media, made the remarks. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 14 million undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2023. This means that French is advocating for the deportation of millions of Americans. Gov. Greg Abbott praised his efforts to combat Islam in Texas at a later CPAC panel, stating that it is “something that we have been fighting for well over a decade.”

ABILENE (AP) – Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Texas after OpenAI declined to pursue it, in a move that will make the two companies neighbors at one of the nation’s largest complexes for running artificial intelligence.

Data center developer Crusoe said Friday it is working with Microsoft to build two new “AI factory” buildings and an on-site power plant in Abilene, Texas, right next to where Crusoe has been building an even larger computing campus for OpenAI and Oracle.

OpenAI’s existing project, the flagship of a broader initiative called Stargate, is so massive that President Donald Trump was the first to officially announce it just after his inauguration last year to signal AI investments he called a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential.”

Microsoft was once OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider and still holds a roughly 27% stake in the ChatGPT maker, but the two companies are increasingly pursuing AI development separately, even though they are on the same tract of land.

Crusoe has already completed two buildings for OpenAI and its other cloud partner, Oracle, supplying a surge of computing power that helps build and operate technology like ChatGPT. SoftBank was also an investment partner. Crusoe is still completing six more buildings for OpenAI and Oracle due to be completed by the end of this year.

OpenAI said earlier this month that it dropped plans to expand its Abilene project even further.

“Our flagship Stargate site is one of the largest AI data center campuses in the United States,” said Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s head of compute infrastructure, in a post on X. “We considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations.”

Katti said OpenAI has more than half a dozen sites under development across the United States, including one it is building with Oracle in Wisconsin.

Microsoft’s additional two Abilene facilities announced Friday will bring the total number to 10 data center buildings, expected to supply a stunning 2.1 gigawatts of computing capacity from what was once a vast tract of mesquite shrub lands, home to coyote and roadrunners.

Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs after ChatGPT sparked an AI boom.

Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a written statement that a new power plant attached to the Microsoft project will be able to generate 900 megawatts to “continue building the industrial foundation for American AI — at a velocity the industry has never seen.”

That will be larger than the existing 350-megawatt, gas-fired power plant attached to the OpenAI and Oracle project. Oracle has previously described that on-site plant as a backup source of power, since the data centers primarily draw from the region’s electricity grid, which includes power supplied by nearby wind farms.

The AI race has been complicating tech companies’ commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. “We’re burning gas to run this data center,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said while visiting Abilene last year, adding that “in the long trajectory of Stargate” the hope is to rely on many other power sources.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The astronauts set to become the first lunar visitors in more than half a century arrived at their launch site Friday, joining the towering rocket that stands poised to blast off next week and send them around the moon.

Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman flew in with his three crewmates from Houston. It was the closest they’ve come to launching. Fuel leaks and other rocket issues caused two months of delay and double hangar-to-pad rollouts.

NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman greeted the astronauts as they emerged from their T-38 training jets at Kennedy Space Center. Besides Wiseman, the crew includes NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen.

NASA is aiming for liftoff as soon as Wednesday. The space agency has the first six days of April to launch the Space Rocket System rocket before standing down for nearly a month.

The Orion capsule atop the rocket will carry the four on NASA’s first astronaut moonshot since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day flight will end with a Pacific splashdown.

Earlier this week, Isaacman outlined a fresh plan for the moon base that NASA intends to build under the Artemis program. The upcoming moonshot will be followed in 2027 by a lunar lander demo in orbit around Earth and in 2028 by one and possibly two lunar landings by astronauts.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — New U.S. House districts in Missouri backed by President Donald Trump can be used ahead of the midterm elections, despite the potential for a voter referendum on the new map, a judge ruled Friday.

The decision by Cole County Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe marked a triumph for Republicans, who hope the districts will help them win an additional congressional seat in the November midterm elections.

Opponents of the new districts asserted they should have been automatically suspended in December when more than 300,000 petition signatures were submitted calling for a statewide referendum on the plan.

But Stumpe said opponents lacked the legal grounds to sue, had done so too soon and were asking the court to get involved in a political question best left to the executive and legislative branches. He said the new map can be suspended only if it is ultimately determined that the referendum petition meets legal muster and contains enough valid signatures.

“Without verification requirements, any group could suspend legislation merely by submitting boxes of invalid signatures, signatures of unregistered voters, forged names, or other fraudulent submissions,” Stumpe wrote. “Clearly, the framers of Missouri’s Constitution could not have intended such an easily exploited system that would allow bad-faith actors to paralyze the legislative process.”

Under state law, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has until Aug. 4 — the date of Missouri’s primary election — to make a final determination on the validity of the referendum petition.

Missouri is one of several states engaged in a national redistricting battle that began last summer when Trump called upon Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to try to give the GOP an advantage in this year’s midterm elections. After Texas acted, California Democrats reciprocated with their own new districts, and a tit-for-tat redistricting clash soon spread among states.

The redistricting fight, so far, has resulted in only a slight edge for Republicans as they try to hold on to their narrow House majority. But voters in Virginia are deciding in an April 21 election whether to authorize a mid-decade redistricting that could help Democrats win several additional seats.

It’s uncertain whether all the manipulation of voting district boundaries ultimately will make a difference in which party wins control of the House. The party in power typically loses seats in the midterms and Trump faces negative approval ratings in polls.

Missouri currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats under a map passed in 2022 based on the most recent census. At the time, Republican lawmakers turned back an attempt by some in the party to push a map giving Republicans a shot at winning seven seats. They cited concerns that it could spread Republicans too thin and backfire in losses if Democrats enjoyed a favorable election year.

But Republicans set aside those concerns last year under pressure from the White House to revise the districts for partisan advantage.

A new map passed during a September special legislative session was intended to help Republicans win a Kansas City-area seat currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. It reassigned portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts represented by Republicans and stretched the remainder of his 5th Congressional District eastward into Republican-heavy rural areas.

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal challenge asserting that mid-decade redistricting wasn’t allowed under the state constitution. A trial court also recently rejected a legal challenge asserting that the new districts violate constitutional requirements to be compact. Plaintiffs have appealed that case to the state Supreme Court.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.

Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground.

“It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since.

Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he wasn’t choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5 ½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt.”

“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress,” he said, with all six gathering around him. “It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”

Fincke said he can’t provide any more details about his medical episode. The space agency wants to make sure that other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.

The space station’s ultrasound machine came in handy when the event occurred, he said, and he’s gone through numerous tests since returning to Earth. NASA is poring through other astronauts’ medical records to see if any related instances that might have occurred in space, he said.

Fincke identified himself late last month as the one who was sick to end the swirling public speculation.

He still feels bad that his illness caused the spacewalk to be canceled — it would have been his 10th spacewalk but first for crewmate Zena Cardman — and resulted in an early return for her and their two other crewmates. SpaceX brought them back on Jan. 15, more than a month early, and they went straight to the hospital.

“I’ve been very lucky to be super healthy. So this was very surprising for everyone,” he said.

Fincke stopped apologizing to everybody after NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman ordered him to stop.

“This wasn’t you. This was space, right?” his colleagues assured him. “You didn’t let anybody down.”

Ever the optimist, he’s holding out hope that he can return to space one day.