May 6 2025

FAA's Aging Systems Under Fire After Newark Scare; Decades of Underfunding Blamed as Overhaul Looms

DHS Offers $1,000 Stipend, Travel Aid for Voluntary Self-Deportation Via New App

Trump Admin Pushes Columbia University Towards Federal Oversight with Consent Decree, to Block Harvard from New Federal Research Grants

Pentagon Shake-Up: Hegseth Orders Cuts to Top Brass, Slashing About 100 General and Admiral Posts

Israel Prepares Fresh Gaza Assault Amidst U.S. Distraction; Analysts Question Trump's Leverage

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KANSAS AT WAR: PT 1

1. FAA's Aging Systems Under Fire After Newark Scare; Decades of Underfunding Blamed as Overhaul Looms

At about 1:30 in the afternoon on April 28, air-traffic controllers overseeing the busy airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport suddenly faced a frightening scenario. The chatter from pilots they were communicating with went silent. Radar screens filled with dots showing aircraft positions went dark. Backup systems failed. Planes bound for the area went into holding patterns. About 90 seconds later, the traffic-control systems started blinking back to life. But problems lingered with the radar, and controllers worried the radios would go out again. “We don’t have a radar, so I don’t know where you are,” a controller told United Airlines Flight 674 arriving from Charleston, S.C., instructing its crew to watch out for other planes without controllers’ help. There were no crashes, but scores of flights coming and going were delayed for hours, and dozens scheduled to arrive in Newark were diverted to other airports. The controllers who oversee Newark airspace from the Federal Aviation Administration’s thinly staffed facility in Philadelphia were rattled. Four left the facility that day and sought short-term, trauma-related leave, according to people familiar with the situation. America’s air-traffic control system has been troubled for years, the culmination of years of anemic funding, archaic technology and staffing problems. A wake-up call sounded on Jan. 29 with a midair collision near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have pledged to overhaul the system. The Government Accountability Office said last year that about three-quarters of the FAA’s 138 air-traffic systems were either obsolete or potentially too difficult to reliably maintain. Duffy said he is preparing to unveil a plan this week to upgrade the FAA’s network of facilities, radars and other technology, which industry and government officials believe could cost $20 billion to $40 billion.

WSJ

2. DHS Offers $1,000 Stipend, Travel Aid for Voluntary Self-Deportation Via New App

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a historic opportunity for illegal aliens to receive both financial and travel assistance to facilitate travel back to their home country through the CBP Home App. Any illegal alien who uses the CBP Home App to self-deport will also receive a stipend of $1,000 dollars, paid after their return to their home country has been confirmed through the app. Self-deportation is a dignified way to leave the U.S. and will allow illegal aliens to avoid being encountered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even with the cost of the stipend, it is projected that the use of CBP Home will decrease the costs of a deportation by around 70 percent. Currently the average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an illegal alien is $17,121. The first use of travel assistance has already proven successful. An illegal alien that the Biden Administration allowed into our country recently utilized the program to receive a ticket for a flight from Chicago to Honduras. Additional tickets have already been booked for this week and the following week.

DHS.gov

3. Trump Admin Pushes Columbia University Towards Federal Oversight with Consent Decree, to Block Harvard from New Federal Research Grants

A. The Trump administration has presented Columbia University with a proposal for a consent decree, a form of federal oversight that would give a judge responsibility for ensuring Columbia complies with the agreement, according to people familiar with the matter. Columbia leaders are negotiating with the government and weighing what to do, the people said. The university’s board is undecided on whether to accept a consent decree, they said. For a consent decree to take effect, Columbia would have to agree to enter it. The government has told the school that it can either negotiate and accept a consent decree, or face a court battle that could end up with the school facing more public scrutiny and in the end the same kind of legal agreement to make changes, perhaps with worse terms, they said. With a consent decree, the government is seeking viewpoint diversity among Columbia’s faculty and that the school not consider race in admissions, the people said.

B. The Trump administration has said it will block Harvard University from eligibility for new federal government research grants, escalating its attack on the elite university.

WSJ

FT

4. Pentagon Shake-Up: Hegseth Orders Cuts to Top Brass, Slashing About 100 General and Admiral Posts

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday directed significant cuts to the U.S. military’s senior-most ranks, saying the elimination of positions held by about 100 generals and admirals is necessary to slash “redundant force structure” and streamline the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy. The plan was announced with scant detail in a one-page memo signed by the defense secretary. It calls for a “minimum” 20 percent cut to the number of four-star generals and admirals — the military’s top rank — on active duty and a corresponding number of generals in the National Guard. There also will be another 10 percent reduction, at least, to the total number of generals and admirals across the force.

Washington Post

5. Israel Prepares Fresh Gaza Assault Amidst U.S. Distraction; Analysts Question Trump's Leverage

When President Trump hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House in early April, a reporter reminded Mr. Trump that his 2024 campaign promise to end the war in Gaza remained unfulfilled. Israel had recently broken a tenuous cease-fire in its 18-month war with Hamas and renewed its bombardment of Gaza. But Mr. Trump professed optimism. “I’d like to see the war stop,” he replied. “And I think the war will stop at some point that won’t be in the too-distant future.” One month later, prospects for peace in Gaza have dimmed even further. Mr. Netanyahu warned on Monday of an “intensive” Israeli escalation in the Palestinian enclave after his security cabinet approved plans to call up tens of thousands of reservists for a fresh assault there. Israeli hawks insist that only force can pressure Hamas into finally releasing the more than 20 hostages it still holds captive and end the conflict. But many analysts say a major Israeli escalation could kill any hope left for peace. The question now is how Mr. Trump will react. Analysts said that, after an early flurry of diplomacy to free the hostages and reach a long-term settlement, Mr. Trump and his senior officials have grown distracted from the conflict. That has amounted to something of a free hand for Mr. Netanyahu, who appears prepared to use it.

NYT

May 6, 1935: FDR creates the Works Progress Administration (WPA)

On May 6, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/air-traffic-control-fix-problems-2bffc11c?mod=hp_lead_pos1
2. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-travel-assistance-and-stipend-voluntary-self-deportation
3. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/trump-columbia-university-consent-decree-proposal-d21830f2?mod=hp_lead_pos8
4. https://www.ft.com/content/5c8bca38-8e6d-4df1-bbb1-d84e0b2a5962
5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/05/hegseth-cuts-generals-admirals/
6. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/politics/trump-israel-gaza.html