Your federal government just shattered its own record for the longest partial shutdown in American history — 46 days and counting — and Congress celebrated this historic achievement by skipping town for a two-week Easter vacation.
Bravo! Truly an inspiring display of public service. Somebody get these people a trophy.
The Department of Homeland Security has been unfunded since Valentine’s Day, which means roughly 50,000 TSA agents have now missed two full paychecks. Airport security lines at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta stretched to nine hours. Two of eight checkpoints were open at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental. At BWI, the security line snaked outside the terminal building, wrapped around, came back inside, and stretched nearly a mile long. Passengers needed 20 minutes just to walk the length of the line before they even started waiting in it.
And where are the 535 men and women we elected to solve problems like this? Excellent question.
Sen. Lindsey Graham got spotted by TMZ at Disney World holding a Little Mermaid toy. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, turned up at a casino bar inside the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Rep. Seth Magaziner is co-hosting a watch party for the premiere of “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island.” A bipartisan group of senators jetted off to Taiwan for a photo op with the Taiwanese president.
Meanwhile, 500 TSA agents have flat-out quit. Callout rates hit 55% at Houston’s Hobby Airport. The people who are still showing up to work haven’t seen a dime in over a month. But sure, Lindsey — grab a Mickey pretzel and enjoy the fireworks show. You’ve earned it.
Democrats caused this mess and they know exactly what they’re doing. After CBP agents killed a man named Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats seized the moment to hold DHS funding hostage. They want mandatory body cameras on border agents, a ban on masked agents, and a pile of new restrictions designed to hamstring the very immigration enforcement that Americans voted for in 2024. Chuck Schumer is out here bragging about party unity like a hostage-taker proud that none of his accomplices broke ranks.
“Throughout it all, Senate Democrats stood united — no wavering, no backing down,” Schumer crowed. Yeah, Chuck, we noticed. Tens of thousands of federal employees aren’t getting paid and you’re doing a victory lap.
The Democrats’ strategy is transparent. They don’t care about body cameras or “reform.” They want to kneecap ICE and CBP so badly that Trump’s border enforcement grinds to a halt. Every day DHS stays unfunded is a day Democrats get what they actually want — chaos at the border and chaos at the airports, all of which they’ll blame on the Republican president.
The House passed a 60-day stopgap bill before leaving town. Only three Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for it. Schumer declared it “dead on arrival” in the Senate. The Senate passed its own bill that funded DHS but carved out ICE and Customs and Border Protection — you know, the two agencies that actually secure the border. Speaker Johnson correctly called that “a joke.”
So both chambers passed completely different bills, shook hands with themselves, and bolted for the exits. Your government at work, folks.
Border Czar Tom Homan put it perfectly: “They’re on vacation right now while tens of thousands of DHS employees aren’t being paid.” Sen. Mike Lee called for canceling the recess, which was the right move — except Lee himself didn’t even bother showing up to the Senate’s pro forma session on Monday. You cannot parody these people. They parody themselves.
The most insulting quote came from Sen. Chris Coons, who defended the recess by claiming, “We’re working every day in our home states.” Sure you are, Chris. Lindsey Graham was working very hard on that buffet line at the Magic Kingdom. Robert Garcia was deeply engaged in constituent services at the blackjack table.
Trump offered to host Easter dinner at the White House if Congress would come back and do their jobs. Nobody took him up on it. He also threw a wrinkle into negotiations by demanding that any deal include the SAVE America Act with voter ID requirements, which Democrats will fight to the death to prevent. (Can’t have people proving they’re citizens before they vote — that would be “racist” or something.)
Here’s what burns me up. We have TSA agents — people making $40,000 a year to pat down grandmothers and confiscate shampoo bottles — working for free right now. Some of them are skipping meals. And the people responsible for fixing this are sipping mai tais at resort hotels and posing with Disney princesses.
The World Cup kicks off on American soil in June. Right now we can’t even process a security line at JFK without a four-hour wait. Foreign tourists are going to land in the United States and immediately wish they hadn’t.
Every single member of Congress who voted to leave town without resolving this should forfeit their own paycheck for every day DHS employees go without theirs. We all know that’ll never happen — but we can absolutely remember their names in November.
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