While Chuck Schumer and his Democratic colleagues play political games in the Senate, President Trump is taking action to keep America moving. After 41 days of partial shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, leaving TSA agents working without pay and travelers facing hour-long security lines at airports across the country, the president announced in a White House press release that he will sign an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to immediately pay these essential workers. It is not an easy thing to do, Trump acknowledged in that same release, but he is doing it anyway because that is what leadership looks like when the people entrusted with passing budgets would rather posture for the cameras than solve problems.
The shutdown has created chaos at airports nationwide, as reported by the Transportation Security Administration’s official updates. For over a month, passengers have endured security checkpoint waits stretching past the one-hour mark, missing flights and scrambling their travel plans while TSA agents continued to show up for work despite not knowing when their next paycheck would arrive. These are not high-paid bureaucrats sitting in corner offices; these are working-class Americans doing a critical job that keeps our skies safe, and they have been caught in the crossfire of a political battle they did not choose. The Senate held yet another vote on Thursday on a wider DHS funding bill, but as has become the pattern, Democrats blocked it, according to Senate records.
President Trump pulled no punches in his announcement, as detailed in a White House transcript, laying the blame squarely where it belongs. He accused Democrats of siding with criminal illegal aliens over the American people by refusing to enforce immigration law, stating in that transcript, “They almost destroyed our country, allowing 25 million people to enter from prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums, those that are drug dealers, and thousands of murderers, many of whom killed more than one person.” That is not campaign rhetoric; that is the reality of what has happened at our southern border over the past several years, based on data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports, and it is what Democrats are fighting to protect by holding up funding for the agency responsible for securing it.
The president made clear that his executive order is designed to address this emergency situation and quickly stop the Democrat chaos at the airports, as outlined in the White House’s official statement. He took a moment to thank the hardworking TSA agents and ICE officers who have continued doing their jobs despite the political warfare being waged against them by the very people who claim to represent working Americans. There is a special kind of hypocrisy in politicians who take six-figure salaries and enjoy taxpayer-funded benefits telling essential workers they need to wait while those same politicians figure out how to squeeze more concessions for illegal immigrants into a funding bill.
Senate GOP sources told The Hill they expect the White House to take action to address the huge security lines if Democrats refuse to accept the latest concessions. Those concessions, by the way, are designed to ensure that any money appropriated in the Homeland Security appropriations bill does not go toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal operations, as noted in reports from The Hill. Think about that for a moment: Democrats are blocking funding for the entire department, including the TSA agents who screen your luggage and the officers who patrol our borders, because they are afraid some of that money might be used to deport people who entered this country illegally. Their priorities could not be clearer, and they do not include you, your safety, or the working people who keep this country running.
This executive order is classic Trump. He sees a problem, he finds a solution, and he acts while the political class debates whether solving the problem might make someone look bad on cable news. The Democrats have had 41 days to fund DHS and keep TSA agents paid, as documented in congressional records. They chose not to; they chose to let airports descend into chaos and let working families miss their flights rather than allow a single dollar to be spent enforcing immigration laws they do not like. President Trump just called their bluff and made sure those TSA agents get their paychecks anyway. That is what putting America first actually looks like in practice.
Providence watches over the bold.
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