IN EL PASO, TRUMP'S COWBOYS WANT TO CREATE AN AIRBORNE MINNEAPOLIS

In my post yesterday, I was obviously wrong to speculate that a war with Mexico was about to start. I say this even though it's clear that President Trump desperately wants to invade Mexico, as he said in two separate Fox interviews last week. One was with Sean Hannity:

President Donald Trump suggested in a new interview that the U.S. military could launch land strikes on drug cartels in Mexico.

“We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water. And we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview aired Thursday night.

“The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country,” Trump said.

The other was with Larry Kudlow:

Speaking in an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, Trump said his administration initially focused on disrupting drug shipments at sea, claiming those efforts reduced drug flows by roughly one-third. He said the strategy is now shifting to land-based operations to prevent traffickers from adapting by rerouting shipments.

“Now we’re going to start on land,” Trump said, arguing that hitting trafficking networks on land would stop smugglers from simply moving operations back to boats.

I'm sure you know by now that air traffic was shut down in and around El Paso after a U.S. anti-drone laser was fired at a target that turned out to be a party balloon. CBS News (which still seems to be functioning as a legitimate news organization) reports that tests of anti-drone technology have been underway for months, and the Department of Defense/War has insisted that the tech doesn't endanger commercial air traffic:

The Pentagon had undertaken extensive planning on the use of military technology near Fort Bliss, a military base that abuts the El Paso International Airport, to practice taking down drones.

Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser.

But the folks at the Pentagon had to act like cowboys:

Meetings were scheduled over safety impacts, but Pentagon officials wanted to test the technology sooner....

The airlines were under the impression that the airspace closure was put into place out of an abundance of caution because the FAA could not predict where U.S. government drones might be flying. The drones have been operating outside of their normal flight paths. The airlines were also aware of the apparent impasse between the FAA and Pentagon officials over the issue because the Pentagon has been using Fort Bliss for anti-cartel drone operations without sharing information with the FAA, the sources said

An aviation industry official told POLITICO that the restriction was put in place because the Defense Department has been using drones & testing some counter-drone techn in the airspace, which neighbors Mexico, without sharing critical safety info on such operations w/ the FAA https://t.co/kvHdiuby2b

— Oriana Pawlyk (@Oriana0214) February 11, 2026

But it wasn't the military that deployed the weapon that endangered commercial air traffic, as The New York Times tells us:

The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.

To me this feels a little like Minneapolis: Wannabe macho men in the Trump administration are choosing to act in ways that recklessly threaten public safety, while refusing to coordinate their actions with other parties that have a stake in the matter. And, of course, the macho men include immigration agents.

To some extent, this is part of the Trump/GOP War on Democrats, as Forbes notes:

Local officials, primarily Democrats, criticized the abrupt closure, and said local officials were not given proper warning. “I want to be very clear: this never should have happened,” El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said in a statement on social media. “You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, hospitals, and community leadership. That failure to communicate is unacceptable.” Johnson said emergency flights were grounded during the closure, forcing medical flights to reroute to Las Cruces, New Mexico, a city about 45 miles northwest of El Paso. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., also said he would demand answers from the FAA about “why the airspace was closed in the first place without notifying appropriate officials.”

The Pentagon and CBP kept the FAA out of the loop and then the FAA kept local officials out of the loop. The notion that we'll fight over some issues but work together on others is antiquated and passé. It's a war of all against all now. I'm sure that'll make America great.