Why Congress Won't Stop Hijacking Air Travel

Lever Time

The Lever

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.8 • 560 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hours-long TSA lines, air traffic controller shortages, and skyrocketing flight prices. Deadly crashes, failing safety regulations, and international threats. There’s no doubt about it: U.S. air travel has been a hot mess in 2026. How did we hit such turbulence? And how does the current crisis tie into a decades-long master plan to hold airplane safety hostage for political gain? Today on Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Bill McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, to answer the question everyone is asking: Is it still safe to fly? Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join. To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're not going to be a dictator, are you?
0:01.7	I said, no, no, no, other than they won.
0:04.0	How did Donald Trump turn the presidency into a king? Well, it didn't start with him. It was the goal of a decades-long master plan. When the president does it, it is not illegal. I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. Where they won't act, I will. I'm David Serota from The Lever. On our new season of the award-winning master plan podcast,
0:22.3	we uncover the stealth plot to create an all-powerful president, or as some call it,
0:27.7	a unitary executive, the unitary executive, the unitary executive. Our journalists reveal the
0:33.2	hidden scheme to eliminate checks and balances, crush democracy, and turn government by the people
0:38.8	into government by one man. I have the right to do whatever I want as president.
0:44.4	Check out master plan season two, the kingmakers. Visit masterplanpodcast.com or search
0:50.1	master plan in your podcast app to start listening right now.
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1:29.7	Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known.
1:35.9	I'm David Remnick and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening, alongside politicians and thinkers like Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney,
1:45.7	Tim Walts, Katanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God,
1:52.1	and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
1:59.1	The assignment with me, Audie Cornish.
2:01.9	The Oscars will be out, like the Golden Globes will be out.
2:04.3	There's a Super Bowl coming up with Bad Bunny.
2:06.7	Yeah.
2:06.9	The start of the year every year is really a time where some of these water cooler moments kick off.
2:12.9	People really need anything that's galvanizing or hopeful.
	...

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