After Spirit Airlines announced it was shutting down early Saturday, critics pointed out that Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren persuaded the Biden administration to stop a planned merger that might have saved the ultra low-cost carrier.
The 34-year-old airline — which had a workforce of more than 17,000 employees and primarily served lower-income customers — ceased operations after a proposed half-billion dollar bailout from the government fell through, multiple outlets reported. However, months before the airline first filed for bankruptcy in 2024, fellow low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways called off its intended $3.8 billion acquisition of Spirit following years of opposition by then-President Joe Biden, Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Warren, who was the planned merger’s biggest opponent in Congress. (RELATED: Spirit Airlines Prepares To Ground Flights After $500 Million Federal Bailout Falls Apart)
Between the time the merger was first announced in July 2022 and its termination in March 2024, Warren, a former presidential candidate and leading figure in the progressive movement, forcefully warned against the move and lobbied the Biden administration to stop it.
In a June 2023 letter to Buttigieg, she and eight left-wing House Democrats — including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — wrote, “We urge DOT not to be pressured by misleading comments generated through JetBlue’s Astroturf campaign, and to continue its careful scrutiny of the JetBlue-Spirit deal.”
Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno blasted his Democratic upper chamber colleague in a Saturday morning X post, hours after the more than three-decade-old airline announced it was ceasing operations.
“The 14,000 employees at Spirit who’ve lost their job loss, the travelers who will now pay higher fares, and the shareholders and debt holders who have been wiped out can thank Elizabeth Warren,” Moreno wrote. He quoted Warren’s March 2024 X post where she appeared to take a victory lap for her advocacy in stopping the merger.
The 14,000 employees at Spirit who’ve lost their job loss, the travelers who will now pay higher fares, and the shareholders and debt holders who have been wiped out can thank Elizabeth Warren.
Electing left politicians, who have ZERO business experience, has consequences. https://t.co/rcLqVdfSL4
— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) May 2, 2026
“Electing left politicians, who have ZERO business experience, has consequences,” added Moreno, who before unseating an incumbent Democratic senator had owned over a dozen car dealerships. Warren by contrast was an attorney and law professor before running for elected office.
“I’ve warned for months that a [JetBlue]-[Spirit Airlines] merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote in the post, sent the day after the acquisition attempt was called off. She added that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division and the then-Buttigieg-led DOT “were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.”
“This is a Biden win for flyers!” Warren emphasized in the post.
Buttigieg’s successor under the Trump administration, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy pointed to the failed merger and Warren’s role in stopping it in his remarks about Spirit shutting down.
“I think it’s important to talk about why are we here today. There was a proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit, and Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, along with the Biden DOJ, decided that they did not want that merger to take place,” Duffy said during a Saturday morning press conference. “Now, many at the time said this was a disaster. This merger should have been allowed, and this today would indicate this is not better for travelers, this is not better for pricing, this is not better for competition, actually, it’s worse.”
“Also, Elizabeth Warren, at the time, cheered the blocking of the merger, is saying … this is a Biden win for flyers,” he added.
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“I think it’s important that we always look with a keen eye when airlines want to merge,” Duffy continued. “If the markets are saying there needs to be a merger because there’s health issues with one of the airlines, or more than one airline, we have to take a look at it and make sure we make the right choices. And in this situation, history has judged the denial of the merger between JetBlue and Spirit through the Biden administration with I think a view that it was a massive mistake.”
Also on the morning of Spirt’s shutdown, economist and investor Peter Schiff replied to Warren’s X post from just two days earlier lamenting that the “Big Four airlines (American, Delta, Southwest, United) control 75% of the U.S. market” adding “Fewer choices = higher prices for you.”
“So why did you block the Jet Blue, Spirit Airlines merger?” Schiff asked. “The combined company would have been better competition than Jet Blue alone. now that Spirit is gone thanks to your intervention.”
Shortly after being singled out by critics, Warren weighed on Spirit’s shuttering, writing on X that skyrocketing oil prices due to the Trump administration’s war in Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz were “the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted” airline. (RELATED: Oil Hits Four Year High As Iran Negotiations Continue)
“FWIW [For what it’s worth], 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,” the senator wrote, referring to U.S. District Judge William G. Young’s January 2024 ruling.
Young ruled at the time that the proposed ruling was in violation of the more than century-old Woodrow Wilson-era Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.
Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline.
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.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 2, 2026
Furthermore, GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan wrote in a Saturday morning X post that the wartime surge in fuel prices had ultimately doomed Spirit, who he said had grossly underestimated oil costs.
“Spirit’s restructuring plan assumed jet fuel costs of about $2.24 a gallon in 2026 and $2.14 in 2027, but prices had climbed to about $4.51 a gallon by the end of April,” De Haan wrote in his post.
When asked for comment Warren’s office referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to both her and De Haan’s X posts.
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