Karin Demirjian

And the people that end up getting hurt, the TSA workers, then end up getting supposedly bailed out, but maybe not really, by ICE.

And then that becomes a next political talking point where you have, you know, the GOP being like, look, they're trying to help.

We're trying to do this even though they're trying to defund ICE.

Here they are.

And Democrats being like, look, they're not doing anything.

This is even more ridiculous and all the more reason that ICE is, you know, not deserving the money.

And so cue the next chapter of the mudslinging.

Look, the TSA administrator told lawmakers in testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning that we're seeing some of the longest security lines in history and the longest wait times in history.

And that also, since the start of the shutdown, 480 TSA workers have quit their jobs.

Now, 480 workers out of a workforce of 50,000 is not going to make or break a system.

But the problem is that it takes apparently four to six months to train up a new TSA officer.

And the problem on the horizon is that even if you had all of those 480 people ready to hire today...

That won't get them up and running and fully able to function in all the requirements of the job before we have the first games of the World Cup this summer when we're expecting a huge influx of travelers.

And, you know, hopefully the shutdown gets resolved by then, but you're going to have a whole lot more people trying to use the system.

And that's going to potentially be another chapter of this problem, even if we're not in the shutdown at that point.

So the number to pay attention to is really the call-outs number.

If that keeps increasing higher than, you know, the 40% level, 50% level at some of these airports, or if you start to see numbers like that at many, many more airports across the country, we are going to see how much stress this fragile system can actually take.

There have already been warnings by top Trump administration officials that, you know, smaller airports could have to close if things get much worse.

And certainly there's always the option that those lines can get even longer.

How deep and how far we get into that potential system breakdown, though, really depends on whether Congress can come to an agreement sooner rather than later.