President Donald Trump’s Transportation Department, which is led by his fellow former reality TV star Sean Duffy, is making it easier for airlines to rip off their customers.
“Last month, the Transportation Department announced that 10 types of flight disruptions would no longer be attributed to the air carrier,” wrote The Hill reporter Addy Bink on Sunday. “Instead, the 10 disruptions, listed below, will be tracked in the new ‘Section 511(b) category’”
The new disruptions include cybersecurity attacks, a baggage or cargo delay not caused by the airline’s own bag system, aircraft cleaning needed after the death of a passenger, aircraft damage caused by extreme weather or foreign object debris or sabotage, overheated breaks that cause emergency procedures, medical emergencies not caused by the airline, the removal of unruly passengers, government shutdowns, airport closure due to natural events like ash or wind or wind shear and unscheduled maintenance.
The result could very easily be “quite a big blow potentially for customers,” Clint Henderson, the managing editor for The Points Guy, told Nexstar. He added, “The one that is especially outrageous to me as a consumer advocate is that if a plane goes mechanical or has maintenance issues, that is no longer considered a reason the airline would give you compensation,” not even food or airline vouchers, if one of the incidents arises.
“the airline wouldn’t necessarily give you food or hotel vouchers.” He predicted there will be more flight disruptions and that passengers will need to “have a backup plan in case things go sideways.”
This is not the first time Trump has pursued policies which seem to harm the working class voters who supported him. Trump’s Agriculture Department, following his 2025 executive order against subsidizing wind and solar energy, first restricted and has now effectively ended solar funding through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which has existed for decades so that farmers and rural businesses can sell excess power back to the grid to cut energy costs and earn extra income.
“It’s like stacking the deck against family farms, and entrepreneurial businesses in small towns that are trying to bootstrap themselves,” Matt Russell, the executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union, told Grist. “It’s picking winners and losers, and the losers are the very kinds of farms and businesses and communities that I think the vast majority of American taxpayers think that they’re investing in.”
Trump has also weakened labor unions and presided over 400,000 in job cuts, including 75,000 manufacturing jobs as well as many other jobs from working class and union-protected positions. As a labor studies scholar recently wrote for The Conversation, “For America’s unionized workforce, the overall state of the economy is bleak. Threats from AI and robotics abound. Pledges by U.S. and international corporations to invest in new plants remain largely pledges. The roughly 400,000 federal job cuts during President Donald Trump’s second term have disrupted lives. Many of these jobs were previously represented by labor unions.”
The president has not spared supporters in states that overwhelmingly voted for him. An August report revealed that Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce, which included 377,000 people, and noted that the hardest-hit groups were often those most likely to back Trump. Within 10 states “most of which voted for Trump in 2024 and half with sizable rural populations, the federal workforce was slashed by 25 percent or more,” reported NBC News’ Ashley Mowreader on Tuesday.
Mowreader continued, “Across all departments, close to half of federal job cuts from June 2025 to January 2026 impacted more staff in states with a larger-than-average share of rural residents.”