How Trump is complicating TSA funding

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: The DHS shutdown is causing chaos at airports, but Donald Trump has his own set of priorities. 

What’s happening? Lawmakers are negotiating this week over a possible measure to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security — but not ICE — before a scheduled Easter recess starting on Saturday. The ongoing DHS shutdown has meant that TSA workers are not getting paid, and some are either quitting or calling out sick, resulting in increasingly long security lines at airports. 

Those talks are facing their own difficulties — Sen. Angus King (I-ME) called a GOP DHS proposal today “illusory” — but President Donald Trump is throwing extra sand in the works with his demand that lawmakers pass a bill called the SAVE America Act along with DHS funding. 

“I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it,” Trump said on Tuesday about negotiations. 

What would the SAVE America Act do? At its core, the bill would introduce stringent new voter ID requirements, including requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote and cracking down on mail-in voting. 

More recently, Trump has also tried to graft unrelated new requirements onto the bill; on Sunday, he posted, “All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children … lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!”

Is this going to happen? It is not. Despite Trump’s demands, the SAVE America Act has no clear path to passage in the Senate, whether or not it’s tagged onto a DHS funding measure (a version of the bill already passed the House last month). 

Under pressure from Trump, however, Republican senators have still been going through the motions of trying to advance the bill.

What does this mean for airport lines? For now, there’s no agreed-upon plan to reopen DHS, though one could materialize as senators stare down the prospect of missing Easter recess. If that happens, the next question will be whether Trump lets his SAVE America fixation get in the way.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

Here’s a remarkable story from Vox’s Unexplainable podcast about environmental activist Casey Harrell. After being diagnosed with ALS in 2020, Harrell eventually lost the ability to speak. Now, microelectrodes implanted in his brain are helping him talk once more. 

Have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!