Spirit Airlines, an impish upstart that shook the industry with its irreverent ads and deep discount fares, announced Saturday that it has gone out of business after 34 years.

The ultralow cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had "started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately."

The airline said on its website that all flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available.

"We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our guests for many years to come," the announcement said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that Spirit had a reserve fund set up for customers who bought directly from the airline to get refunds. People who bought from third-party vendors like travel agents would have to seek refunds from them. He had a stark message for people flying with Spirit.

"If you have a flight scheduled with Spirit Airlines, don't show up at the airport. There will be no one here to assist you," Duffy said.

He said United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest were offering $200 one-way flights for people who could confirm that they had Spirit confirmation numbers and proof of purchase for a limited time. Duffy also said other airlines would help with Spirit employees who might be stranded as well as offering them a preferential application process as they look for work.

Spirit said in a statement it was working to get more than 1,300 crew to their home bases and that the final Spirit flight landed at Dallas Forth Worth International Airport from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The company advised customers that they could expect refunds but there would be no help in booking travel on other airlines.

Five Spirit flights were still showing as "on time" on Saturday morning on the departure board in Atlanta, one of the airline's smaller stations.

A trickle of passengers who hadn't heard the news were still showing up, including Joshua Sigler, who had bought a ticket Friday for a flight Saturday to Miami.

"I'm just going to go back home," said Sigler, who didn't try to take advantage of deals some other airlines were offering to displaced Spirit passengers.

He said he had gotten no communication from Spirit, which he had flown multiple times in the past. "They get you there," he said of past flights. "It was cheap."

Former Spirit flight attendant Freddy Peterson was on a Spirit flight from Detroit that arrived in Newark around 11 p.m. Friday. He said that despite rumors flying on social media Friday, things seemed kind of normal, with more than 200 passengers on the plane.

"All our aircraft were packed," he said.

Peterson, 60, said he set his alarm clock for 3 a.m. Saturday to check the company website at the hour of the rumored shutdown.

"I said, OK, well, since all this going on, they said Spirit is supposed to close at 3, I'm going to bed. I set my alarm clock for 3 o'clock, went onto the website and it said, 'Spirit flights have been canceled,'" Peterson said.

He said Delta Air Lines brought him and another flight attendant back to Atlanta on Saturday morning, with Peterson leaving from there to drive to his home in Shellman in southwest Georgia.

"I'll probably do my boo-hoo crying and all that other stuff once I get in the car."

Peterson said he had been a flight attendant with Spirit for 10 years and the company has "done wonders for me." He said the airline's reputation for bargain basement chaos was largely undeserved, but he did fault management for not communicating with the employees in the closing days, saying a promised employee town hall was canceled.

The Trump administration had considered a government bailout for the cash-strapped business to keep it from going under, but a deal was not reached. Of the potential bailout, Duffy said Saturday "we often times don't have half a billion dollars laying around."

President Donald Trump had floated the idea of a bailout last week after the airline found itself in bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in less than two years with jet fuel prices soaring because of the Iran war.

As late as Friday afternoon, Trump had said that "we're looking at it" and had given the budget carrier a "final proposal" for a taxpayer-funded takeover.

Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.

The White House had blamed President Joe Biden administration for Spirit's tenuous financial situation. Biden, a Democrat, opposed a proposed merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2023. On Saturday, Trump administration officials took to social media to amplify voices of conservative critics who faulted Biden for Spirit's demise.

On Saturday, Duffy concentrated blame on Biden as well as his predecessar Pete Buttigieg.

"Many at the time said that this was a disaster. This merger should have been allowed," he said.

Supporters of a rescue including labor unions representing Spirit's pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers said a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.

Budget-conscious and leisure travelers would likely feel Spirit's absence the most, especially in places where the airline has a big footprint such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Spirit also has sharply reduced its capacity, with about half as many seats available this month than in May 2024.

The former leader of a Minnesota nonprofit who was convicted for her role in a staggering $250 million fraud case that helped ignite a federal immigration crackdown should spend 50 years in prison, prosecutors argued in a court filing.

Aimee Bock, who ran the organization Feeding Our Future, which claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children in need during the pandemic, is set to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in Minneapolis. President Donald Trump used the fraud cases to initially justify a massive surge of federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, leading to a pushback by residents and the deaths of two people.

"Feeding Our Future operated like a cash pipeline, open to anyone willing to submit fraudulent claims and pay kickbacks," prosecutors said in the Monday filing. "The ripple effects of her actions are profound, immeasurable, and will have lasting consequences for both Minnesota and the nation."

Bock was convicted last year of multiple counts involving conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery. She has long insisted she is innocent.

Her lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, argued in a separate filing that she shouldn't have to serve for more than 37 months in prison, saying she had provided information to investigators. He argued that Bock had been unfairly painted as the mastermind and insisted that two co-defendants were responsible for running the scams.

The nonprofit sat atop a fraud network that included a web of partner organizations, phony distribution sites, kickbacks and fake lists of children supposedly being fed, prosecutors say. Dozens of people, many from the state's large Somali community, have been convicted for their roles in a series of overlapping food fraud cases that have spent years in the courts.

Trump, who has long derided Somalis, last year blasted the state as "a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity." He also criticized the leadership of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in the 2024 election.

"Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from," Trump wrote on social media.

Bock is white and the U.S. Attorney's Office says the overwhelming majority of defendants in the cases are of Somali descent. Most are U.S. citizens.

The immigration surge led to repeated protests and confrontations between residents and federal officers and resulted in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Federal agents can no longer make arrests without exceptional circumstances in and around three Manhattan buildings where immigration proceedings occur, a judge ruled Monday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel brings an abrupt halt to a practice begun under the Trump administration that enabled agents to take into custody individuals who follow requirements to appear before immigration judges.

The arrests have resulted in dramatic scenes in courthouse hallways as those being detained were sometimes pulled away from emotional family members.

Castel said in a written decision that while there was "a strong governmental interest in enforcing immigration laws," there also was a serious interest in letting individuals attend removal proceedings and pursue asylum claims before a judge "without fear of arrest."

He noted that federal agents still can detain individuals at locations away from immigration courts and also can make arrests at immigration courthouses when there are serious threats to public safety.

He said the boundaries set out in federal policy five years ago can remain in effect, but a court case before him was likely to result in a finding that a withdrawal of that policy after President Donald Trump took office was "arbitrary and capricious."

Castel also noted that government lawyers recently reversed their position, saying they've learned that 2025 policies regarding arrests in and around courthouses set by the Trump administration did not apply to immigration courts after all.

The judge, who last year had declined to ban the practice, said the new position by government lawyers meant it was necessary to "correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice."

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road NY and others.

It was praised by Amy Belsher, director of the NYCLU's Immigrants' Rights Litigation.

She called it "an enormous win for noncitizen New Yorkers seeking to safely attend their immigration court proceedings."

Messages seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security were not immediately returned. A spokesperson for Justice Department lawyers declined comment.

Castel's decision, which did not apply nationwide, pertained to immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street and 290 Broadway in Manhattan. New York's FBI headquarters is also located at 26 Federal Plaza, a large building across from two federal courthouses near City Hall.

The organizations first brought the lawsuit last August on behalf of immigrant advocacy groups African Communities Together and The Door.

"In the face of this administration's ongoing targeting of our young members, this decision brings us hope," said Beth Baltimore, deputy director of The Door's Legal Services Center.

"Our staff continues to work tirelessly to support Door members who were terrified to go to their required court appearances. We stand with our members to fight for those impacted by courthouse arrests, including those who remain detained, and other cruel policies," Baltimore said in a release.

President Lyndon B. Johnson knew the legislation he was about to sign was momentous, one that took courage for certain members of Congress to pass since the vote could cost them their seats.

To honor that, he took the unusual step of leaving the Oval Office and going to Capitol Hill for the signing ceremony. It was Aug. 6, 1965, five months after the "Bloody Sunday" attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, gave momentum to the bill that became known as the Voting Rights Act.

In the six decades since, it became one of the most consequential laws in the nation's history, preventing discrimination against minorities at the ballot box and helping to elect thousands of Black and Hispanic representatives at all levels of government.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked out a major pillar of the law that had protected against racial discrimination in voting and representation. It was a decision that came more than a decade after the court undermined another key tenet of the law and led to restrictive voting laws in a number of states.

Voting and civil rights advocates were left fearful of what lies ahead for minority communities. "It means that you have entire communities that can go without having representation," said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter. "It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that's not exaggeration."

Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice's Washington office, said the court's steady work to erode the Voting Rights Act, culminating in Wednesday's decision, amounted to "burying it without the funeral."

The Supreme Court's ruling came in a congressional redistricting case out of Louisiana after the state created a district that gave the state its second Black representative to Congress.

It found that map to be an unconstitutional gerrymander because it took race into account to draw the lines. In an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court's conservative majority said the provision of the Voting Rights Act in question, called Section 2, was designed to protect voters from intentional discrimination.