Delta’s perks to Congress included benefits such as airport escorts and red coat services. Its Capitol Desk reservation line is still open, but lawmakers will be “treated as any passenger based on their respective SkyMiles status”
WASHINGTON — Delta Air Lines is punishing Congress for failing to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
The airline company has temporarily yanked its special congressional desk service to lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill until Congress finally funds the DHS, which has been in a partial shutdown since Feb. 28.
“Due to the impact on resources from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta,” the company said in a statement first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Next to safety, Delta’s No. 1 priority is taking care of our people and customers, which has become increasingly difficult in the current environment.”
Delta’s perks to members of Congress included benefits such as airport escorts and red coat services. Its Capitol Desk reservation line is still open, but lawmakers will be “treated as any passenger based on their respective SkyMiles status” for the time being.
Last week, Delta CEO Ed Bastian delivered a fierce rebuke of Congress for allowing funding for DHS to lapse, which has resulted in Transportation Security Administration employees going without full pay for over a month.
Bastian called the situation “inexcusable” and railed against lawmakers for using TSA workers as “political chips.”
“It’s inexcusable that our security agents, our frontline agents, that are essential to what we do, are not being paid, and it’s ridiculous to see them being used as political chips,” Bastian told CNBC last Tuesday. “We’re outraged.”
Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Infamously, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was subject to some of the worst TSA wait times of over four hours during the funding lapse, leading to lines that stretched outside the airport.
Across the country, TSA lines have exploded, with call-out rates, which hovered around 2% before the shutdown, jolting past 10% due to the funding lapse, according to acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl.
Close to 400 TSA workers have quit since the partial shutdown began.
Stahl also warned that there’s a risk that several small airports will be forced to close down if the funding lapse continues.
TSA workers last got a full paycheck on Feb. 14, then received a partial one on Feb. 28 and missed their next pay period on March 13, according to an agency spokesperson.
Friday is their next pay period.
Democrats have been using the Senate filibuster to block a DHS funding measure as part of an effort to get sweeping reforms to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.
Republicans have rejected the push to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from wearing masks and demands for a tighter judicial warrant process.
On Monday, President Trump deployed ICE to airports across the country to help alleviate staffing pressures on TSA caused by the partial shutdown.
This is the third funding lapse TSA workers have weathered in six months.
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Why The Senate Filibuster Must Be Put On The Chopping Block
It is imperative that the Senate filibuster be put on the proverbial chopping block if Republican leadership has any intention of passing legislation, large or small, between now and the remainder of President Trump’s term.
It is bad enough already that such little legislative progress has been made since the President assumed office on the coattails of the greatest political comeback, and unprecedented landslide victory, in American history.
The decisiveness of 2024 has historically given presidents with similar margins of victory a mandate to implement a legislative agenda centered on key campaign promises without issue.
For 2024, on the domestic policy side, the President ran on ending the Biden border crisis, reforming the election system, and ending the weaponization of the justice system.
To date, the President has only been able to get a few of his campaign promises through the Congress, and arguably none of the most popular ones.
The One Big Beautiful Bill helped extend tax relief from his first term, while making good on several notable campaign staples like no tax on tips, social security, and overtime.
However, aside from the OBBB, Congress has been derelict in passing other high demand bills – including legislation to fortify election integrity measures and to fund Homeland Security, the primary agency responsible for mass deportations.
And all this lack of progress has occurred under a Republican controlled Congress; imagine what might happen if one or both chambers were to swap parties following a disappointing midterm election, or any other event like a special election that could well transfer the razor-thin Republican-controlled Congress into Democratic hands.
This underscores the tremendous stakes of the moment, particularly with mounting legislative priorities like the Save America Act and resuming funding for Homeland Security, which are currently in limbo.
The inaction from the Congress, which has been the least active Congress measured by legislation passed in modern American history, heightens the need for a radical course correction.
Congressional rules must be changed to either dramatically modify the filibuster and revert it to its original design, which historically required Senators to physically get up and “talk a bill to death” if they disagreed with legislation (rather than just make the threat, as became commonplace in recent years, a lazy alternative that had the same effect of the traditional filibuster without any of the effort), or to rid themselves of the filibuster completely, as the President has strongly advocated for.
With the filibuster in place, Republicans must win over several of their Democratic colleagues – to reach the 60-vote threshold, the minimum number under current Senate rules to advance legislation.
The problem, however, is evident: no Democrat is willing to sign off on any Republican-supported legislative program whatsoever.
The Democratic Party constantly panders to the far-left flank of its party. That flank, which includes Antifa and BLM activists as well as Palestinian protestors, believes ICE and, really, all law enforcement agencies ought to be defunded outright.
There are no moderates anymore. Thus, there is no realistic scenario where Democrats, save for a low-interest appropriations package that keeps the bare essential functions of government operational, will side with their Republican peers. And especially not for legislative items that the President strongly backs.
To add insult to injury, there are deep factions within the Republican party writ large. Especially in the Senate, which is traditionally the establishmentarian counterpart to the more rogue House of Representatives, there is a great prejudice in that body towards upholding the pre-Trump status quo, and thus to not move on any policy that would generally be considered a win for the administration (and the hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans who support it).
John Thune, the departing majority leader, cares not in the slightest about the President’s priorities, and never relinquishes an opportunity to double down on any bad press affecting the administration, particularly negative press centered on a popular MAGA policy or its chief enforcers, such as mass deportations.
There is also the issue of priorities: many Republicans, particularly in the Senate, do not feel compelled to do anything on the domestic policy front.
Their attention, these types believe, is best placed elsewhere, such as on foreign policy, where their campaign contributors tend to reap the biggest profits.
This calculus proves at one and the same time a lucrative business for them as well as a convenient distraction from having to deliver results on the substantive policies that so many millions of Americans had otherwise held out hope they would do everything possible to help realize.
One would expect, for at least a few of them, that the past five or six years would have chastened them a bit – teaching them a little bit of humility, if not some necessary political strategy, to work in tandem with President Trump’s administration, and not oppose his every move, in order to enact a legacy-defining, massively popular legislative agenda with staggering results for the American people.
Instead, facing the prospects of a Democratic comeback, the Republicans have opted to play it safe: which in Washington, means do nothing – lest they offend their friends across the aisle, and risk being the target of Democratic persecutions if and when the latter should reclaim power.
On that note, it’s apt to mention the problem is indeed the p-word: power. Whereas Democrats know what to do with power, Republicans shun it with every possible move.
Nobody in their right mind thinks that if the roles were reversed, Democrats would not immediately eliminate the filibuster (among other procedural blockades) and do everything within their capacity to augment their power, while sidelining Trump and his Republican accomplices. Of course they would!
This is why the urgency to pass the Save America Act could not be overstated: Republicans have a one-time shot to solidify election systems, and curb some of the excesses of an electorate contaminated by illegal voters and other procedural abnormalities that have corrupted the integrity of our elections.
This is also why Democrats have pulled out every stop to prevent such reforms from taking place.
They are fortunate to have an opponent in the modern Republican Party that is not known for revolutionary action, making their obstructionism a walk in the park – and Chuck Schumer’s job easier than it should be.
This is why it is hence incumbent upon the President, once again, to rescue our political system, lest we forfeit the opportunity handed to us, and risk descending one more into banana republicanism, at which point we will have nobody to blame but ourselves.
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