John Oliver hopes he can survive the 2024 election ‘in one piece’
“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver talked with USA TODAY about his new Emmy competition and the 2024 presidential election at the Emmys.
HBO’s popular “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” briefly featured a 2019 Courier Journal story during a segment about challenges faced by air traffic controllers in the U.S.
During the June 1 episode, Oliver referred to the story when referring to how aviation workers were under financial pressure amid a partial government shutdown from 2018-19, which centered around funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall. The Courier Journal story described workers holding signs with messages like “Stop the Shutdown” and “Don’t Gamble with Aviation Safety” outside of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
The Louisville area workers were among the 800,000 federal employees who had missed a paycheck due to the shutdown.
Oliver also noted how the FAA is under discretionary, not mandatory spending, which he said makes the department “vulnerable to being caught up in federal budget fights.” Workers who were interviewed for the 2019 Courier Journal story said they were concerned with how they would provide for their families during the shutdown and the impact it would have on a known shortage of air traffic controllers.
As USA TODAY reported May 30, air traffic controller shortages have remained an issue for years. The problem has intensified at times when other issues occur, such as when the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey saw equipment outages in April. The FAA is short about 3,000 air traffic controllers nationwide, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said May 1.
FAA data on air traffic control staffing shows the Standiford Tower, which serves the Louisville airport, had 34 fully trained staff in September 2023. For 2024, the recommended staffing target set by the Collaborative Resource Workgroup, a partnership between FAA air traffic control management and the controllers’ union, was 52.
This is not the first time a story from The Courier Journal has been featured on Oliver’s show. In a 2024 “Last Week Tonight” segment about traffic stops, Oliver referenced a 2022 Courier Journal article about a federal judge ruling a Louisville Metro Police officer had violated the constitutional rights of a Black teenager during a 2018 stop.
Reporting from former Courier Journal reporters Billy Kobin and Rachel Smith contributed to this story.
Reach reporter Leo Bertucci at [email protected] or @leober2chee on X, formerly known as Twitter