How an imminent government closure could disrupt transport and cybersecurity

The government could close this evening and each sector of American life could be affected.

Later in the day, the Senate should vote again on a Stopgap bill that the Republicans have managed to pass. If it is approved, the bill would temporarily finance the government until another financing bill is agreed. But, at least for the moment, democratic legislators are firm in their opposition to the bill, demanding the inclusion of health care policies such as the overthrow of Medicaid cups and the extension of subsidies from the affordable care law.

The regular annual credit bill finances most of the government and it expires at midnight this evening. If the Republicans do not make concessions on a new bill or do not successfully suit the Democrats to give in by then, the government will close. This reality seems more and more likely after a meeting on Monday afternoon between democratic and republican leaders, including Trump, borne any fruit.

If the government stops, many departments and agencies will be without adequate funding, which will result in large -scale layoffs and disturbances in federal work.

The White House management and budget office asked agencies to prepare to dismiss employees who are not considered “essential”, according to the Washington Post. Imminent potential layoffs would also be made at a time when hundreds of thousands of federal employees accept the acquisitions given as part of the Doge of Elon Musk initiative. In fact, so many employees should leave the American wage bill this week that the federal government has faced its greatest exodus of civil servants in a single year for almost 80 years, according to Reuters.

The layoffs induced by the judgment will be the icing at the top, in particular for key industries such as transport and cybersecurity.

More pressure on air traffic

The bill on existing credits that expires this evening has only provided 17% of the financing of the Ministry of Transport. If the government stops, most DOT programs such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration Airport program will continue to be financed by the trigger of the motorway and the airport and air -binding fund.

But the department will lose around $ 25.5 billion in new credits, told Gizmodo, a member of the ENO center for transport, in Gizmodo, and this will be felt on the operational side of the FAA.

For the transport sector, this can mean flight delays and cancellations. Air traffic controllers and some TSA workers will have to operate without salary, under the exception “protection of life and goods”. But anyone else may leave.

When the government is the last closure, from December 2018 to January 2019, under the first Trump administration, the pilots were unable to obtain medical certification and FAA meetings concerning the safety of the tracks were canceled.

The judgment lasted 33 days, which is a record in the history of the United States, and only ended when 10 air traffic controllers called the patients and closed trips to Laguardia airport in New York, causing delays at the national scale. The disruption of travel forced Trump to engrave democratic requests and to accept a temporary financing bill.

The air travel industry is at a particularly sensitive moment, entering this potential closure. The FAA faces a critical shortage of air controllers, and air traffic is already mired in safety and staff problems. The authorities are still faced with the consequences of a terrifying incident of Newark airport where the airport has lost all communication with planes for about 90 seconds, and a fatal accident in DC airspace at the start of the year.

“This threat of closure arrives at a critical moment – on the heels of the congress approving $ 12.5 billion to modernize the FAA outdated traffic control system; In the middle of the hiring of “supercharging” to obtain fully dominant air traffic control installations and the number of reports for press travel TSA on Tuesday.

Online cybersecurity bill

There are also a lot of things from the point of view of cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Agency (CISA), which operates under the Ministry of Internal Security and works to protect the country from physical threats and cybersecurity, should lose 1,651 employees in the event of closure. This is equivalent to about two thirds of the entire agency.

The agency has already undergone a considerable loss of funding and staff this year. A third of CISA employees have left the agency since Trump took office in January, according to Axios. DHS secretary Kristi Noem expressed interest in reducing the agency even before it confirmation, saying that agency’s surveys on online foreign disinformation campaigns had been “far from the mission”. The CISA has since reduced its work on the fight against online disinformation. Some experts fear that the agency’s additional funding will make the country more sensitive to cyber attacks.

The credit bill also acts as an obstacle in a way for the action of the unrelated congress, because the members will not move to other bills before the government’s closure is avoided. Cybersecurity Information Information ACT ACT in 2015, which allows technological companies to share information on Internet traffic and other user data with the American Department of Internal Security (and from there, NSA, DOD and FBI).

Last week, a group of bipartite cybersecurity chiefs wrote a letter asking the congress to prioritize the re -authorization of the law.

“Erosion of intergovernmental and public-private information sharing, in particular following recent federal and staff programs cuts, would present significant risks to national security and to our collective cyber-defense,” said the letter.