{"id":165578,"date":"2026-02-15T10:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T10:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/165578\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T10:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T10:10:12","slug":"trump-responds-to-el-paso-airspace-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/165578\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump responds to El Paso airspace closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM<\/a>) \u2014 \u201cPeople learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what President Donald Trump said on Friday, February 13, when asked by a reporter about the nearly 7-hour closure over the El Paso airspace, which happened earlier this week.<\/p>\n

When talking to the a group of reporters outside the White House before boarding Marine One, a reporter aske Trump, \u201cAre you pleased with the way Sean Duffy handled the closure over El Paso?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean the way it happened?\u201d Trump responded. After the reporter confirmed, Trump shrugged and said, \u201cPeople learn, you know, people learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to The Hill, a White House official said that FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford pulled the trigger on closing the airspace without notifying the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, or the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of War and the Department of Transportation having been working together for months regarding drone incursion operations. Last night\u2019s action to disable the cartel drones was not a spontaneous action,\u201d the official said in a statement. \u201cAt no point in the process of disabling these cartel drones were civilian aircraft in danger as a result of the methods used by DOW to disable the drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Party balloons? FAA\u2019s surprise El Paso airspace closure fuels questions <\/a><\/p>\n

As KTSM previously reported, for seven hours, from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning, Feb. 11, all aviation operations were grounded, causing the cancellation of multiple flights and forcing a flight with surgical equipment to divert from El Paso.<\/p>\n

The initial closure of the airspace was for 10 days.<\/p>\n

Chaos, confusion and criticism over El Paso drone scare miscommunication <\/a><\/p>\n

Many local, state, and federal leaders voiced their confusion and frustrations, calling out the FAA and the Department of Defense for not notifying anyone of the temporary airspace closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be very, very clear that this should have never happened. You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, and the community leadership. That failure to communicate is unacceptable,\u201d El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) \u2014 \u201cPeople learn.\u201d That\u2019s what President Donald Trump said on Friday, February 13, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[65703,270,67145,145,138,140,139,498,24468,11030],"class_list":{"0":"post-165578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-airspace","9":"tag-closure","10":"tag-department-of-transportation","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-el-paso","13":"tag-el-paso-headlines","14":"tag-el-paso-news","15":"tag-ktsm","16":"tag-sean-duffy","17":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}