It's pretty painful for everyone. So the TSA workers aren't getting paid now. This is the

second week that the paychecks have essentially bounced. And as a result, you're seeing people not

show up for work. You said it 10%.

And for the for the people traveling, we're seeing sort of pockets of disruption. There's not

sort of a blanket disruption across the country. You have airports like Atlanta, Houston. Here in

New York, you have disruption. It seems manageable at this point, annoying for sure. Anyone who's

traveling, I'll go back to Frankfurt tonight. Tonight? I can report back. God willing. Yes. Elon

Musk willing maybe, so we we shall see.

But it's it's at a point where it's bad and annoying, but it's not quite bad

enough that that that the pain point isn't quite there yet. And that might explain why

we're at this impasse. We're not seeing the movement that we saw a couple of months

ago during the shutdown where you actually had aircraft taken out, flights taken out. That's not

the case of where we are now.

Speaking of DC, Wendy Benjamin, what are we seeing? I mean, is Benny right? Is there

just not enough pressure still on lawmakers to get this done? I heard, one Republican, I

think it was Kennedy, saying this week, you should just take out the ICE portion of

this bill and debate it separately so that they can get DHS funded. Any signs of

life there on Capitol Hill? Any likelihood this is gonna get resolved?

There are beginning to be glimmers. Okay? I mean, that's the best, you know, that we

can do. And but to but to senator Kennedy's point, the thing is that ICE is

already being funded through other means. So funding DHS and stripping that out wouldn't really do

anything because they are they were always being funded through this. The the play that the

Democrats made and, you know, I think it was a smart one at the time, was

to, you know, say to them, no. We are not going to fund the entire agency

until you give us these restrictions on ICE enforcement tactics. Now the White House has come

back led by Tom Homan. The border czar, the White House has come back overnight with

a plan that gives some of the things the Democrats wanted, but not everything. The Democrats

came out of the meeting, didn't talk to reporters, and they did not indicate whether they

were gonna take the deal. As the pain that my colleague, Benedict, described there, Democrats might

consider taking partial measures, getting some of the wins, and that would be body cameras on

ICE agents and other, like, not arresting people in church, you know, things like that.

Using federal warrants or judicial warrants instead of what they're using now.

Exactly. Actually, having a warrant

before you burst

into someone's home. Yeah. So the, so that those are now in negotiation, and we're waiting

to see. Because at some point, this was demic right after the killing of Alix Prady,

of course, this was Democrats' moral stand. But as the pain on travel and as we

get through spring break and closer to summer travel, the democrats' moral stand may look, obstreperous

at some point.

When you're bringing up summer travel, Benny, let me turn to you on on that point.

I just booked some tickets for a summer vacation at the August. Hold that on your

calendar so that you'll be here when I'm out. Of course, Christina.

Leading me to the vacation request. I really gotta get on it.

Alright. Did have a moment of some relief that I was able to do that before

we saw this huge upswing in prices. I'm curious as you've listened to executives throughout the

aviation industry, Ben Beni, what they're saying about the prospect for tickets going up in price

in the near term and the medium term. How are they wrestling with the, dislocation that

we've seen in in energy prices here over the last few weeks?

I mean, ticket prices will go up. There is no doubt about that. They have to

pass on the higher costs and principally the, the fuel cost to the consumer. That will

happen. So you did the right thing by booking early, and that's what we're seeing across

the board at the moment. We spoke to a bunch of, aviation executives this week, and

they're on a bit of a sugar high to be honest because everyone is booking right

now. Everyone is piling in. They United told us they had some of the best booking

days in history in March so far. Just everyone is piling in because everyone is sort

of has that sense of FOMO. Is it is it gonna get really expensive? I better

book my ticket now. Spring break, you mentioned it, but the summer vacation. So the question

is, at what point will the higher ticket prices kick in? And as a result, at

what point will people then stop booking? You know? So you might see people going on

shorter trips. You might see people taking the car. So right now, things are looking great,

unexpectedly great for the industry, but that could turn very quickly.

Can I follow-up on that quickly? If we get to August, prices are still elevated. Is

my ticket is someone's ticket safe and secure, or is it likely to lead to cancellations

and backups if we we're seeing airlines having to wrestle with much higher prices?

It depends a little bit on the routes. Scott Kirby, the CEO of United, he said

we are preparing for the higher prices by taking out some routes at this point. So

we're take we're taking out some what's called capacity out of the market. So they are

making sure that sort of nonprofitable, nonkey routes, may not be addressed anymore. So it really

depends on where you're going. So if you're on a popular route, you're safe. But if

you're going somewhere esoteric, then you might be in trouble.

I love esoteric.

Are you feeling better about your vacation now? Can ask Wendy's question? Sorry.

Back to Wendy. My selfish segment there. Sorry. I wanted to have that confirmation from Beni.

That's really why I brought him here.

Of course.

There are a couple votes coming up. The senate is supposed to vote Sunday, on the

motion to advance the nomination of Mark Crumpton, who would replace Christy Noem as the secretary

of Department of Homeland Security. He that did make it out of committee, I believe, by

one vote. Correct me if you're wrong. Do we think that will go through at this

point? It's it seems like that's gonna happen. The other thing they've got going is a

possible $200,000,000,000 Iran war request from the Pentagon and the Save America Vote Eligibility Act. Run

us through those.

Okay. So taking them one at a time, Mark Wayne Mullen is going to be confirmed.

I mean, no Democrat will vote for him, you know, on just on on partisan principle,

and because I'm sure they don't want him to continue these policies that, that Christine Nowman

Donald Trump wanted. But senators love senators. They do believe a president gets his own cabinet,

and there's a majority of Republicans. So that one's done. The next one was, oh, the

$200,000,000,000 for the war.

Yes. We talk about that so cavalierly, Wendy, but this is an incredible sum of money.

It's two thirds of, I believe, the defense department's something like two thirds of the defense

department's actual budget. It is it is a tremendous amount of money. And congress is, you

know, staring down those midterms where their jobs are on the line, and funding this war

at the level of $200,000,000,000 is enough to even make republican size water. And I think

there may be some pushback yet. We have yet to see a real Republican pushback to

any of Donald Trump's policies. Andy, then on to the other hand, I've got multiple hands

here. We on the other hand, you know, that is that's a tremendous amount of money,

and this war is deeply unpopular. And there was another big

And we've also got that's okay. I'm gonna stop bombarding you with questions. But we've also

got there's supposed to be a debate and a vote on this voter eligibility act, the

Safe Guard America. This is a a pet project of a lot of Republicans, something that

they campaign on. Is that likely to get passed if they have the votes for that?

That's that one's a little gonna be a little interesting to watch. I'm not really sure.

It's got some poison pill stuff that will make Democrats not vote for it, including the

the bans on transgender treatment and athletes. So that's a bit of a poison pill that's

stuck in a voting bill. Some Republicans may vote against it, however, because of the mail

in voting ban. Right. That became very popular during COVID, but it's still very, very popular

among older and rural voters. And where do they live? In Republican states, in Republican districts.

And so, there will be people who are cognizant that their constituents like mail in voting.

It's convenient. And so this this may may not get through. Although Trump is lobbying this

one, though, to quote him, the likes of which have never been seen. I mean, he's

really hammering them on this.

But there

is irony

there because we saw the president flip flop a bit on mail in voting after he

you know, after after Republicans didn't do as well as Democrats. He was trying to get

out the vote and tell people, go ahead. It's okay. After saying it wasn't safe and

people weren't doing it, use that mail in voting. But this is trying to curtail the

number of people who can mail in vote. So I guess Yeah. I guess that does

make sense.

We'll see we'll see what happens there. As, again, congress is in session over the course

of this weekend. We're tracking that with our colleagues on the hill with Wendy as well.

Wendy Benjamin's in our senior editor, covering the DC bureau on weekends for us. Wendy, great

to see you. Benedict Campbell, and in from Germany flying back tonight.