If you’re one of the thousands of travelers stuck in hours-long security lines at airports across the country, you can thank President Donald Trump for that.
On Sunday, Trump rejected an idea from Senate Republicans that would fund the Transportation Security Administration and other Department of Homeland Security functions but would exclude Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Of course, Democrats have been proposing that plan for weeks, only for Senate Republicans to block those funding attempts.)
What’s new is that Senate Republicans now said they would pass ICE funding in a budget reconciliation package, which would allow them to advance the legislation on a party-line vote without the need to court Democratic support or make any ICE reforms—likely a politically unpopular move but one that would fund TSA and other things like the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Yet Trump rejected that idea, writing in a rambling Truth Social post that nothing in Congress should be done until the voter suppression SAVE America Act is passed.
Trump wrote:
I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass “THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.” It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people – UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children. Put it all together, and also, let Leader Thune clearly identify those few “Republicans” that are Voting against AMERICA. They will never be elected again! In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Of course, the SAVE America Act—which will require more documentation to vote and is now weighed down with more of Trump’s culture-war nonsense—will almost certainly not pass. Too many Republicans have said they will not kill the filibuster for the SAVE America Act, which even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board called a dumb piece of legislation that could have unintended negative consequences on Republican voters.
And now that means whatever hell you experience at the airport is squarely Trump’s fault since he’s put impossible conditions on passing TSA funding.
“President Trump is leaving no doubt that he is the one responsible for the lack of funding for TSA and the long airport lines,” Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, wrote in a post on X.
In the meantime, Trump is trying to make it look like he’s helping with the mess at airport security lines across the country by sending ICE agents to assist TSA workers.
However, it’s unclear what ICE agents can even do to help.
They’re not trained to do TSA security functions, so they can’t do the things that would reduce wait times, like watching the bag x-ray machines or pat down travelers who set off the magnetometers.
At best, ICE could do crowd control. At worst, though, they could cause even more chaos, scaring airport-goers or even causing would-be travelers to avoid booking flights altogether. And that could hurt the airlines, which are grappling with the rise in jet fuel prices thanks to Trump’s war in Iran causing oil shortages.
In fact, images show ICE agents in their tactical vests standing around, not appearing to actually do anything to help cut down on security lines.
But hey, at least they aren’t wearing masks like they do when they violently arrest Black and brown people for the “crime” of looking undocumented.
In the end, Trump is again choosing to employ the worst possible strategy that will cause Americans to suffer and hurt his party in the midterms.
“It’s hard to imagine a dumber political strategy to respond to long TSA lines than sending personnel from an agency that 2/3s of Americans don’t like and declaring you won’t fund TSA unless the Senate passes the politically toxic SAVE Act,” Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a post on X.
