Trump News

Republican lawmakers now have a powerful personal incentive to strike a deal with Democrats and restore funding to pay TSA employees — Delta Airlines has suspended the VIP perks that allow members of Congress to skip security lines.

With a two-week congressional recess looming, the Atlanta-based carrier announced it would temporarily halt all special services for lawmakers flying Delta, blaming the cascade of problems created by the ongoing partial government shutdown.

"Due to the impact on resources from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta. 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," the airline said in a statement.

Delta — like most major U.S. carriers — routinely provides special treatment for lawmakers who frequently shuttle between Washington and their home districts while simultaneously overseeing the nation's aviation system.

The suspension is comprehensive. Members of Congress will lose airport escorts, priority seat upgrades, rebooking assistance, and other VIP treatment. The only concession — lawmakers will retain access to a dedicated phone line for making reservations.

The move comes as the aviation system buckles under the strain of the shutdown's consequences. Travelers have faced hours-long security screening delays as Transportation Security Administration employees continue to work without paychecks — a situation that began in mid-February when Congress failed to fund the Department of Homeland Security amid disputes over immigration enforcement.

The staffing crisis has worsened dramatically, with TSA resignations climbing as underpaid workers abandon their posts. President Donald Trump has attempted to offset the crisis by deploying immigration agents to more than a dozen airports to assist with crowd control — a move that has drawn sharp criticism from TSA workers who argue the agents lack proper training for security operations.

Donald Trump's improvised comments about Iran while boarding Air Force One on Monday demonstrated his chaotic approach to military strategy — and his apparent blindness to critical consequences unfolding around him, according to a report.

The president made a comment revealing that Iran's regional retaliation caught planners of the military action against the country off guard.

"Look at the way Iran attacked unexpectedly all of those countries surrounding them. That was not supposed to-- nobody was even thinking about it," the president conceded before reasserting without substantiation, "But they wanted to take over the Middle East."

The remarks prompted analysis from New Republic correspondent Greg Sargent and Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.

Sargent highlighted the troubling implications on his podcast. "He said no one anticipated that Iran would attack other countries in an effort to widen the war," he commented. "But in saying that, Trump revealed that he didn't anticipate it — which is a striking admission about his own lack of foresight."

He continued, "We think this captures something broader. On one front after another, Trump plainly didn't prepare for eventualities that most experts fully did anticipate. So how directly responsible are these failings for what we're seeing right now — that by most indications, the war is getting worse for Trump and the U.S. on many fronts?"

Duss responded, "Well, we know that this is going much worse than Donald Trump himself thought it would. We know that Donald Trump does not do the reading. We know that Donald Trump has the attention span of a fly. We know that he just makes stuff up all the time. Trump made this threat over the weekend to bomb power plants — which is clearly a war crime, to attack plants that produce power for civilians. And then I think he woke up and saw that the stock market is in trouble, oil prices are continuing to go higher."

Duss dismissed Trump's characterization that the attacks blindsided everyone as fundamentally dishonest.

"Everyone anticipated this," he stated flatly. "Every one of these countries that Iran has attacked — we should have expected it, whether it's Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, obviously Israel. This is part of Iran's defensive strategy. This is part of how they believe they were creating deterrence."

He went on, "So Iran is following through — they have to follow through, in a sense, if they want to make sure that this doesn't happen again in the future. So yes, to answer your question, of course, people knew Iran was going to do this. Again, Donald Trump does not bother to do the reading."