There has been widespread disruption at airports across the US, where travellers have faced hours-long queues due to a shortage of TSA officers at security checkpoints.<\/p>\n
Around 50,000 agents with the TSA have been working without pay since mid-February. This has reduced the number turning up to work each day and led to hundreds quitting.<\/p>\n
Currently, only a third to 50% of its TSA checkpoints are operating, according to Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for the Houston Airport System.<\/p>\n
A few hours before the Senate vote, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would sign an executive order “to immediately pay our TSA Agents”.<\/p>\n
“Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and US air travel,” said the Republican Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, addressing the chamber after the vote.<\/p>\n
“We’re here because, thanks to Democrats’ determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year,” he said.<\/p>\n
Schumer said the package included funding for the TSA, US Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency.<\/p>\n
He told the chamber that “in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate democrats were clear: no blank cheque for a lawless ICE and border patrol”.<\/p>\n
There has been mounting controversy over the actions of ICE agents, particularly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where US citizens Good and Pretti were shot by federal agents during operations earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Democrats want any deal on DHS funding to include measures like an end to ICE agents wearing masks, a ban on racial profiling and a requirement for judicial warrants to be issued before agents can enter private property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been widespread disruption at airports across the US, where travellers have faced hours-long queues due to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-499904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}