The FAA halted every U.S. departure for more than four hours after a telecom failure hit all 22 high-altitude control centers.
The FAA ordered the nationwide ground stop Friday, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” The 22 centers guide planes flying above 18,000 feet. “At 8:15 tonight, Eastern time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, warning that departures would resume slowly.
| Figure | Status |
|---|---|
| Every U.S. departure | Ground stop |
| High-altitude centers hit | 22 of 22 |
| Airspace reopened | 8:15 p.m. ET |
| Canceled | 6,300+ |
| Delayed | 9,500 |
- 6,300+ canceled, drawn at 6,300
- 9,500 delayed
Duffy blamed an “incredibly old” system whose routers “got overloaded with data.” Multiple sources told CBS News that an update to the network, which contractor L3Harris runs, made it reboot and crash. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called it a telecommunications outage, with no sign yet of a “nefarious act” and “no connection” to this week’s Microsoft outage. Asked about a possible AI link, he said “you just can’t rule out anything at this point.”
“This isn’t another 9/11. I just can’t repeat that enough.”Markwayne Mullin, Homeland Security Secretary
The last nationwide ground stop, in January 2023, came when the system that sends pilots safety alerts failed. Former NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt called this one “absolutely unprecedented.” When it began, about 3,100 aircraft were in the air bound for U.S. airports, per Flightradar24 data cited by CBS News; the Guardian put the figure at more than 1,000.
If your flight was canceled, or a domestic arrival landed three or more hours late, DOT rules let you decline the trip and get a cash refund, even on a nonrefundable ticket.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says four agencies wanted Nvidia buyer Megaspeed blacklisted for months, but Commerce “has the pen.”
He named Treasury, the War Department, State and the U.S. Trade Representative, and told CNBC he was “frustrated” by the delay. Megaspeed is a Singapore-based buyer of Nvidia chips. The U.S. has identified its former chief executive, Alice Huang, as a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, per Axios.
Bloomberg reports that Dell sold 22 servers carrying Nvidia H800 chips to Aperia Cloud Services, a Singapore Nvidia partner. Chinese filings list them among servers in Shanghai pledged as collateral by a unit of a company Alice Huang founded in 2016. She gave up her stake in 2017.
- 22 Dell, with H800 chips barred from sale to China since 2023
- 52 Super Micro, with H100 or H200 chips
- 119 Gigabyte, chips unidentified
The reported 485 million yuan ($73 million) values all 193 servers, not the 22 Dell machines. The filings do not show how the chips got there.
Commerce chairs the committee that adds companies to the entity list, Commerce’s trade blacklist, but a listing needs a majority vote of its members: Commerce, State, Defense and Energy. Bessent: “The real story here should be: Did Nvidia know their client?”
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The Supreme Court agreed to rule on Trump’s ban on asylum claims by people who cross the border between official crossings.
Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 proclamation bars asylum for anyone who crosses between the official crossings staffed by U.S. officers. District Judge Randolph Moss found it unlawful in July 2025, and the D.C. Circuit upheld him in April 2026. The ban stayed in force throughout.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer called it the president’s “main tool” against illegal crossings and warned that a loss would “open the floodgates.” The ACLU’s Lee Gelernt: “The president does not have the right to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger.”
Arguments are likely between February and April 2027, per the Washington Examiner, with a ruling due by the end of June. If so, the ban will have run for nearly two and a half years before a final answer.
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States can wait until July 1, 2027 to drop anyone from Medicaid for missing the new work hours.
The 80-hour monthly rule for work, volunteering or school still formally starts Jan. 1, 2027. States that opt in to a six-month “hold harmless” period keep checking hours but cannot cut coverage through June 30. The announcement names no states that plan to use it.
- 956 coded as no response
- 134 the rest
The rule covers adults 19 to 64 who got Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act expansion. Arkansas’s 2018 work rule cost 18,164 people coverage within months, and a New England Journal of Medicine study found no measurable rise in employment. The Congressional Budget Office projects the requirement alone will add 5.3 million people to the uninsured in 2034.
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Trump, Xi and Putin will meet together Thursday, Nov. 19, in Shenzhen, and Trump wants it to start three-way nuclear arms talks.
They meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit; NBC and The Washington Post report it will be the first time the three meet as a group. A senior U.S. official said no agreements are expected.
China’s deployed count was about 24 a year earlier.
New START, the U.S.-Russia treaty that capped deployed long-range warheads, expired in February 2026. China has refused three-way arms talks for years, citing its far smaller arsenal; on Oct. 16 its Foreign Ministry said it is “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic” to ask China to join such talks “at this stage.”
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One group’s review of Trump’s disclosures dates a $1 million–$5 million Nvidia stock purchase to days before he rescinded Biden’s AI-chip export rule.
The anti-corruption group DeKleptocracy, reported by the Guardian on Friday, matched Trump’s financial disclosures against his chip-export decisions.
The Nvidia purchases, as the group dates them
- May 2025
- One purchase of $1 million–$5 million, days before his administration rescinded Biden’s “diffusion rule,” a cap on advanced AI chips to most countries.
- After Dec. 2025
- At least three more, each $250,001–$500,000, dated after his December 2025 decision to let Nvidia sell H200 chips to China.
The disclosures report dates and dollar ranges, not exact amounts, and the timing finding rests on this one group’s reading. The Guardian notes he also bought Apple, Meta and Microsoft shares and appears to have made dozens of Nvidia trades since taking office. The White House says outside managers run the accounts by copying stock indexes such as the Schwab 1000; if so, the buys would track the index, not policy news.
The president is exempt from the main federal conflict-of-interest law, though the 2012 STOCK Act bars presidents from trading on inside government information.