Latest News

Trump Administration airs video in airports accusing Democrats of shutdown

The Trump administration began playing a video in airports around the country on Thursday, blaming Democrats for a nine day-old shutdown of the government that has caused significant flight delays.

They are still required to show up at work, but not paid. Next week, they will receive a partial pay for the work done before the shutdown.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the video was being shown at U.S. Airports. Fox News reported that Homeland Security Secretary KristiNoem is heard in the video saying, "Democrats refuse to fund federal government and as a result, many of operations are affected and most TSA employees work without pay."

Since Monday, there have been over 19,000 delays in U.S. flights - including 3300 on Thursday. Many of these are due to the FAA delaying flight because air traffic controllers were absent. Both Republican and Democratic leaders blame each other for the shutdown that began on October 1, after Congress failed approve new spending legislation.

Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic Leader, said: "Everyday that Republicans refuse negotiations to end this shut down the worse it gets to Americans and it becomes clearer who is fighting for them."

The TSA reported that wait times at airport security are still low. On Wednesday, it screened approximately 2.4 million passengers with an average waiting time of 6.28 mins for standard screening.

Many government agencies posted banners on their websites accusing Democrats of the shutdown.

In 2019, the number of controllers and TSA agents absent increased during a 35 day shutdown as workers missed their paychecks. This led to longer waits at checkpoints in some airports. The authorities were then forced to slow down air traffic in New York. This put pressure on legislators to end the standoff quickly. (Reporting and editing by Deepa Babyington, with David Shepardson)

(source: Reuters)