Air traffic controller tells lawmakers he’s working as a DoorDash driver to pay for daughter’s tuition

An air traffic controller taking part in NewsNation’s Cuomo Town Hall on Wednesday revealed to the live show’s panel of lawmakers and pundits that he is being forced to work as a DoorDash driver because of the ongoing government shutdown.

Jack Chris from Dallas, Texas, who has worked for the Federal Aviation Authority for 16 years, stood up at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to explain that he had worked through previous shutdowns under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump and expressed the fear that the present impasse could run on much longer because of the polarized political climate.

Poignantly, Chris added that he is currently being forced to work a second job as a delivery driver to help pay his daughter’s tuition fees.

Among those responding was California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who thanked Chris for “making it clear this is not a game.”

“There are people like you who aren’t going to get paid, aren’t getting paid,” Khanna continued. “Why is it that every member of Congress and senator isn’t locked into the Capitol complex until we get a deal? Why is it… In the other previous shutdowns, I used to have my phone on, and we used to get a text [saying] ‘We’re voting on something.’

“This speaker, and I like the speaker, I came in with the speaker. He’s a man of faith but he’s literally shut down the Congress. And he’s shut down the Congress because he doesn’t want to swear Adelita Grijalva in because they don’t want to vote on the release of the [Jeffrey] Epstein files.”

The congressman was alluding to the case of Arizona Representative-Elect Grijalva, who won a special election on September 23 but has still not been given the chance to swear her oath of office. House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to call a “pro forma” session in which to do so.

“The House will follow customary practice by swearing in Rep-Elect Grijalva when the House is in legislative session,” Johnson has told The Independent in a statement.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has threatened to sue Johnson over the matter and, like Khanna, has alleged that the speaker is holding up proceedings because Grijalva has indicated a willingness to make her signature the decisive 218th added to the discharge petition that would force a vote on the Epstein files, which could prove politically explosive.

The speaker has rejected that accusation as false. “It has nothing to do with that at all,” he said last week. “We will swear her in when everybody gets back.”

At the NewsNation event, Khanna and Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan sparred over the latter’s claim that Democrats were to blame for the shutdown before host Chris Cuomo returned the focus to Jack Chris.

“He is emblematic of who wins the midterms,” Cuomo said. “Whoever wins the vote of the man who has to drive DoorDash because of what Congress put him in as a position is going to win the midterms.

“It makes you want to cry that he has to do that, when he’s doing something that keeps us alive, that’s what’s going to be what wins the midterms.”

Rounding off the segment, pundit Stephen A Smith became so incensed at Chris’s plight that he had to leave the stage, but not before denouncing the state of play in Washington in ferocious terms.

“I don’t think Washington understands how ticked off we truly are,” Smith said. “A young man walked up to the microphone and said that he had to leave here to go and work on DoorDash to help pay for his daughter’s tuition. Meanwhile, everybody up here [is] getting paid, but he ain’t.

“It’s this kind of stuff right here… This is why you have so many Americans excuse my language, so p***ed off at Washington, because somehow, some way, you get to have these conversations, engage in specific elements of it, to talk about what we need to do to get things better.”

He concluded, “A government shutdown is going on right now. A man has to work on DoorDash when he’s really an air traffic controller… and we’re up here talking about how much some money is gonna cost, and the only person that don’t have a check coming is him. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna take a break…”