The shutdown of Spirit Airlines on Saturday has triggered a political fight over who is responsible, with the Trump administration pointing to a Biden-era court ruling that blocked the airline’s merger with JetBlue, and Democrats pointing to fuel prices driven up by the U.S. war with Iran.
Here’s how each side is making the case.
The Trump administration’s case
In an interview Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for opposing the $3.8 billion JetBlue-Spirit merger that a federal judge ultimately blocked in January 2024.
“This is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration,” Bessent said. “In September 2022, Elizabeth Warren, who loves to write letters, sent a letter to the Justice Department, to the Transport Department, saying that they should oppose the merger with Spirit Airlines.”
Bessent said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had been working on a deal to save Spirit before talks broke down. “If JetBlue had merged with Spirit, we would have all these jobs that were lost yesterday. We had 30 regional airports who have lost service,” Bessent said. “We shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the same argument Saturday, telling reporters that Spirit “was in dire straits long before the war with Iran” and that fuel prices were “not the impetus.” Duffy called blocking the JetBlue deal a “massive mistake.”
The Democratic and labor response
Warren pushed back on X on Saturday, framing the airline’s collapse as a consequence of the war with Iran rather than the blocked merger.
“Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline,” Warren wrote. “FWIW, JetBlue merger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal. Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.”
Her office pointed Fox Business to data from GasBuddy showing Spirit’s restructuring plan had assumed jet fuel costs of about $2.24 per gallon in 2026; prices had climbed to roughly $4.51 per gallon by the end of April. Spirit President and CEO Dave Davis made the same point in his shutdown statement, citing “the sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks.”
Warren previously celebrated the merger block. In a March 2024 post on X, Warren wrote that the JetBlue-Spirit merger “would have led to fewer flights and higher fares” and called the block “a Biden win for flyers.”
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 55,000 flight attendants, had supported the JetBlue-Spirit merger when it was on the table and pressed the administration to keep workers in mind in any rescue talks. “Thousands of flight attendants and other frontline workers have their lives, paychecks, healthcare, homes, and retirement hanging in the balance,” Nelson wrote on X on April 22. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Spirit’s more than 2,000 pilots, said in a statement Saturday that workers “deserved better than this outcome.”
The judge who blocked the JetBlue-Spirit merger, U.S. District Judge William Young, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, as Warren noted. Young ruled in January 2024 that the deal would drive up fares and reduce competition. The Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ruling “a victory for tens of millions of travelers.” The Department of Transportation under Biden also publicly backed the block, calling Spirit “the largest, most aggressive ultra-low-cost competitor.”
Where the partisan frame breaks down
The fuel-price argument has drawn agreement from across the political spectrum. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter wrote on X that “it was high fuel costs that was the final death knell for Spirit — caused by a pointless war that has left everyone worse off.” Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Associated Press that the Trump administration “also bears responsibility,” pointing specifically to Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “bad foreign policy” that drove up jet fuel prices. “They were already in trouble,” DeHaven added, framing events of the last few months as “a compounding effect in terms of policy.”
The bailout question divided Republicans too. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called the Trump administration’s proposed $500 million Spirit rescue an “absolutely terrible idea” on X last month, even as he pinned blame for Spirit’s troubles on the Biden administration.
Davis, in his shutdown statement Saturday, thanked the Trump administration and Lutnick by name for “their extraordinary efforts to try to preserve jobs and service across the country.”
