The Trump administration sparked a frenzy of speculation Wednesday after issuing an “unprecedented” order to shutter the airspace around a major Texas airport for 10 days, only to reverse the order hours later, and without explanation.
Early Wednesday morning, Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) around El Paso, Texas spanning a 10-mile radius and up to 18,000 feet. The order stunned aviation experts, who said it had “no modern precedent” and suspected the order to be related to “something big,” such as secret military testing or threats to national security.
Yet, despite the order being issued through Feb. 21, the FAA mysteriously lifted the flight restrictions just hours later, and with no explanation.
“It gets even stranger,” wrote Joyce Alene, a former U.S. Attorney under the Obama administration and writer with more than 1 million followers on X. “Late night announcement of 10-day closure. Now lifted. Who is running this clown show?”
Another, former CIA officer Sarah Adams, joined in on clowning the Trump administration’s FAA for unnecessarily sparking “conspiracies.”
“Ohh the conspiracies are going to run rampant now,” Adams wrote in a social media post on X to her more than 380,000 followers. “Whomever did this in the first place is an absolute moron.”
While the reasons for the FAA lifting the flight restrictions remain unknown, an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters that “Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace,” and that the “Pentagon took action to disable the drones.”
The FAA’s ongoing silence, however, has only left onlookers baffled.
“WTF are y’all doing,” wrote Marty Taylor, political consultant and self-described veteran pilot, in a social media post on X. “I have been a pilot for 50 years and have never seen a closure this large and long except on 9-11. No explanation? Bunch of amateurs.”
A Fox News reporter had even joined in to question the Trump administration’s strange silence on the entire ordeal.
“Some transparency is needed here,” wrote Ryan French of Fox News 13 out of Tampa, Florida, in a social media post on X.
“What was [the] purpose of the TFR? What government agency requested it? What prompted its cancellation? I’ve never seen a TFR not clearly tied to an event, incident, and not disclose the requesting entity.”
It gets even stranger. Late night announcement of 10-day closure. Now lifted. Who is running this clown show? https://t.co/fdRxgybOca
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 11, 2026