Here’s to hoping this is the only email you get today about a canceled flight. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would cut air traffic at the 40 busiest airports in the US by 10% starting today as the government shutdown continues to strain travel.

The cuts, which could impact up to 1,800 of the nearly 44,000 flights the FAA oversees every day, will be rolled out in phases, starting with 4% of flights before ramping up to 10%. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a press conference that the decision to reduce travel was preemptive and would help alleviate pressure on the air traffic controllers stretched thin during what’s become the longest shutdown in US history.

Controllers are required to work without pay during shutdowns but many have called out sick or taken on second jobs.

How this affects your travel plans

The FAA released a list yesterday of airports with reduced flights, including all the big ones, like NYC’s LaGuardia, JFK; Dallas Love Field; Miami; Denver; Atlanta; LAX; as well as Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway:

• Industry analysts say regional flights—specifically routes between small- and medium-sized cities—will bear the brunt of the cuts.
• United Airlines announced that international flights and trips between its hubs won’t be impacted.

United, American, and Delta all said they would allow refunds for tickets, even barebones economy ones that typically leave travelers high and dry after a cancellation. Frontier CEO Barry Biffle suggested buying a backup ticket with another airline in case you really need to be somewhere.

Big picture: The capacity dip comes right as the travel industry braces for the busiest season of the year. Deliveries of some packages could be slowed, too: While only about 1% of the total weight of shipped goods travels by plane, 35% of those goods are time-sensitive items like pharmaceuticals and electronics.—MM

Elon Musk gets his $1 trillion Tesla pay package. Tesla shareholders voted to approve the CEO’s controversial pay package at the company’s annual meeting yesterday, with 75% support, CNBC reported. The package can net Musk—already the richest person in the world—up to $1 trillion if the company meets certain goals over the next decade. Some major investors and proxy firms had urged investors to reject the astronomical package, but it was expected to pass after Musk threatened to leave the company if it wasn’t approved. The package also gives Musk more voting power over the company, whose stock has recovered this year despite flagging sales and worries over the EV market now that the $7,500 US tax credit has expired.

Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk make deal with Trump admin to lower weight loss drug prices. In a press conference at the White House yesterday, President Trump announced a deal with the two pharma giants to lower the cost of their popular obesity drugs for Americans on Medicare and Medicaid as well as those who pay out of their own pockets. Starting next year, Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo’s Wegovy will cost $245 through Medicare and Medicaid and $350 for those paying directly (they currently cost ~$500 a month). In exchange for lowering the prices, the companies will be exempt from Trump’s planned tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry. Pfizer and AstraZeneca have already made similar deals with the White House.

Nancy Pelosi announces she will retire from Congress in 2027. The 85-year-old former House speaker—the first and only woman to hold the position—announced yesterday that she will not seek reelection after nearly 40 years in the legislative chamber. In separate statements, former presidents Biden and Obama each thanked Pelosi and applauded her ability to unite different factions to advance the Democratic Party’s agenda. First elected to Congress to represent the San Francisco area in 1987, Pelosi became speaker in 2007, helping to pass the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform, and several other landmark bills. She also led the impeachments of President Trump in 2019 and 2021. Trump called Pelosi “evil” and said her retirement is “a great thing for America.”—AE

October left a trail of joblessness in its wake. Companies said they laid off 153,074 employees last month, the most since 2003, according to a report the consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas published yesterday.

That’s nearly triple the number of jobs cut in September, and it puts the total for the year through October at almost 1.1 million jobs lost—44% more than in all of 2024.

Most of October’s redundancies came from just two industries. Warehouses were the biggest job cutters last month with 48,000 layoffs, followed by 33,000 in tech. Amazon, UPS, Paramount, and Target were just some corporate names that announced layoffs last month.

Should we blame AI?

Maybe? When it comes to the reasons companies cited, automation came in second, after the need to cut costs. The Challenger, Gray and Christmas report also listed course corrections from pandemic hiring binges, rising costs, and a pullback in consumer and corporate spending as factors.

Overall for the year, the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts impacting federal employees and those working for government contractors were the most-blamed reason for announced headcount reductions this year.

We don’t have the full picture…of the labor market because the most widely watched estimate of the unemployment rate, the government monthly jobs report, isn’t coming out today for the second month in a row due to the shutdown.—SK

Walt Disney Co. wants a bigger piece of the purse: After struggling to penetrate the gambling market via ESPN Bet, Disney is terminating its subsidiary network’s current sportsbook partnership in favor of a team-up with DraftKings, the company announced yesterday.

Starting next month:

• The ESPN Bet app, which is currently run by regional gambling company Penn Entertainment, will rebrand as theScore Bet.
• ESPN’s newly refreshed app will integrate DraftKings into its betting tab, and ESPN’s on-air banners—like the one that swiftly disappeared while anchors discussed last month’s NBA gambling scandal—will advertise DraftKings instead of ESPN Bet.
• ESPN will keep the ESPN Bet brand alive with the ESPN Bet Live show and digital content.

Cut short: Disney’s sports network and Penn launched ESPN Bet in 2023 as part of a deal that would have paid ESPN $2 billion over 10 years. They mutually decided to end the floundering partnership: Though Penn said its system gained 2.9 million new gamblers, ESPN Bet never came close to challenging industry leaders DraftKings and FanDuel. It’s in seventh place with less than 3% market share, according to industry analyst Alfonso Straffon.

While ESPN worries about sportsbooks…sportsbooks worry about prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which face lighter regulation and are surging in popularity.—ML

A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? $16 billion exclusively from dodgy ads.

Meta projected that 10% of its revenue last year (about $16 billion) would come from ads for scams and banned products, according to internal company documents seen by Reuters. That includes duplicitous investment schemes and ads for illegal online casinos and outlawed medical products, per Reuters:

• Meta reportedly estimated that its users see 15 billion scam ads every day.
• The company only bans advertisers if its automated systems are at least 95% sure they’re scammers, according to the leaked documents. If Meta is less sure but still suspicious, it allows the ads but charges higher rates.

A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that the company’s internal estimate was “rough” and ultimately overstated the true amount of revenue derived from scam ads. He also noted that Meta has reduced reports of scams by 58% globally over the past 18 months.—AE

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