Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy accused Elon Musk’s DOGE team of trying to fire air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a report.
Duffy made the claim at a tense Cabinet meeting on Thursday that saw tensions flare between Musk and several members of Donald Trump’s administration, The New York Times reported.
After Musk confronted Duffy over how the FAA was being run, Duffy fired back that baby-faced staffers at DOGE had tried to fire air traffic controllers, but he had intervened.
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“What am I supposed to do?” Duffy asked Musk, while Trump and over 20 other officials watched on, according to the Times. “I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?”
Musk called the accusation a “lie,” but Duffy said he had heard it from the DOGE staffers directly. Musk asked who had been fired, requesting specific names. Duffy responded that there were no names, because he had stopped the firings.
The FAA has been a political flashpoint amid a string of aviation disasters and near-misses during the early days of Trump’s term, including the mid-air crash that killed 67 near Washington, D.C. Trump has variously pinned blame for the crash on Democrat DEI policies and issues with the air traffic control system.
Musk’s DOGE team has purportedly been working to update the FAA’s technological systems, especially pertaining to air traffic control.
In mid-February, the FAA announced that it had laid off 400 employees, but Duffy said at the time that “zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.” It’s unclear if this was when the DOGE staffers tried to fire air traffic controllers.
Less than two weeks after that, Musk publicly pleaded for air traffic controllers to come out of retirement.
“There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers,” he wrote in an X post. “If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so.”
In a different moment during the meeting, Musk claimed that there were DEI hires working as air traffic controllers. When Duffy pushed back on the allegation, Musk didn’t offer any further details.
The tense back-and-forth only ended when Trump finally intervened, telling Duffy he needed to hire “geniuses” from MIT as air traffic controllers.
Asked for comment, the Transportation Department directed the Daily Beast to Duffy’s tweet about the meeting, posted less than half an hour after the Times’ report published on Friday.
Despite calling the meeting “productive,” Duffy’s post seems to hint at the tensions that arose between him and Musk.
“DOGE is doing incredible work helping agencies identity inefficiencies as well as advising us as we work on the critical upgrades to our air traffic control system,“ he wrote. ”During the Cabinet meeting, I discussed the importance of safety, particularly at the FAA and with air traffic controllers. The DEI Department at the FAA was eliminated on day 2.”
He added that the Transportation Department “will continue to work closely with @elonmusk and his team to revolutionize the way government is run. This is an exciting time to be an American!”
Duffy also endorsed Trump’s announcement, which came on Thursday after the fiery meeting, that the next phase of DOGE cuts would be made with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet.”
The fiery Cabinet meeting also saw Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio butt heads. Musk, who has been taking a chainsaw to the federal government, accused Rubio of firing “nobody” at the State Department. Rubio said that wasn’t true, pointing to 1,500 staff who took an early retirement option.
The argument dragged on until Trump again played peacemaker, saying that Rubio had done a “great job” and urging everyone to work together.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Beast that “this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost-cutting measures and staffing across the federal government. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”
Based on the Times‘ account, though, the Cabinet meeting laid bare tensions between the unelected tech billionaire and the rest of the president’s administration.
