{"id":173384,"date":"2026-02-20T21:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/173384\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T21:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:07:07","slug":"us-official-says-closing-el-paso-airport-was-not-mistake-will-brief-congress-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/173384\/","title":{"rendered":"US Official Says Closing El Paso Airport Was Not Mistake, Will Brief Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) &#8211; \u2060U.S. \u2060Transportation Secretary \u2060Sean Duffy said \u200bFriday it was not \u200ca mistake to \u200cclose the \u2060airport \u2060in El Paso, Texas last week \u200band said next week the department would \u200bbrief lawmakers who have raised \u2060significant \u2060concerns about the \u2060decision.<\/p>\n<p>The \u200bFederal Aviation Administration initially said \u200bit was closing \u2060the El Paso airport for 10 days before \u2060reversing course within hours.<\/p>\n<p>Reuters and other outlets \u2060reported the FAA closed the airspace because of concerns about a military laser-based anti-drone system. Asked if his social media \u2060post about the incident was wrong, Duffy said: &#8220;I use the information \u200bthat I get.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by \u200bDavid Shepardson)<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) &#8211; \u2060U.S. \u2060Transportation Secretary \u2060Sean Duffy said \u200bFriday it was not \u200ca mistake to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[70083,70082,4018,138,140,139,1468,70081,27,1499,464],"class_list":["post-173384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-collections-top-news","tag-collections-us","tag-drones","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-mexico","tag-reuters","tag-texas","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173384","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=173384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}