{"id":5470,"date":"2026-03-30T09:44:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/i-blame-them-all-travelers-frustrated-with-washington-as-shutdown-drags-on-nbcnews-com\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T09:44:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:44:42","slug":"i-blame-them-all-travelers-frustrated-with-washington-as-shutdown-drags-on-nbcnews-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/i-blame-them-all-travelers-frustrated-with-washington-as-shutdown-drags-on-nbcnews-com\/","title":{"rendered":"'I blame them all': Travelers frustrated with Washington as shutdown drags on – nbcnews.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Amid the long lines and delays at the country\u2019s airports, travelers say they feel deeply sympathetic to the airline workers who have been caught up in the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> \u2014 and deeply frustrated with politicians in Washington for letting it all happen.
\u201cThese are the people who are suffering enough,\u201d Lizabeth Garza-Garc\u00eda, 45, of Fort Worth, Texas, said of Transportation Security Administration agents as she was waiting in line at San Diego International Airport. \u201cWe don\u2019t want another 9\/11. … I\u2019d like these people to get funded.\u201d
President Donald Trump signed a memo Friday directing DHS to pay TSA workers, who have missed paychecks during the agency shutdown that began Feb. 14. Employees are expected to receive most of their back pay starting Monday, according to a TSA email shared by an agency officer.
Trump signed the memo after the House rebelled against a Senate-passed compromise<\/a> that would have funded all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. A senior administration official said the money will come from<\/a> the One Big Beautiful Bill, the tax-cut and spending legislation Trump signed into law in July.
On why Trump didn\u2019t sign the back pay measure until now, a senior White House official said the administration conducted a \u201clengthy review process\u201d that \u201cidentified a pathway\u201d out of the crisis.
\u201cAir travel in America was at a breaking point, and the president took decisive action in the face of a stalled Congress,\u201d the official said, blaming the shutdown on Democrats.
The impasse has led TSA workers \u2014 who also went through an extended government shutdown last year \u2014 to turn to the kindness of family members, friends and food banks<\/a> to get by. People have also faced hourslong wait times at airports<\/a>, with security lines extending out the doors in some places<\/a>.
Travelers at airports said they knew that while long lines were an annoyance, the federal workers had it much worse.
\u201cThey don\u2019t deserve to be without pay,\u201d said Frank Oberon, a San Diego resident returning home from a trip to Austin, Texas, with his wife, Ruth.
Ruth said she witnessed travelers giving gift cards to TSA agents in Austin, hoping they would help them endure without pay.
The couple vote Republican and support Trump, and they said the funding battle won\u2019t change that. Frank, a retired state corrections officer, said he doesn\u2019t blame Trump.
\u201cIt\u2019s really not his thing,\u201d he said, pointing to Congress\u2019 power over funding.
David Goodspeed, 59, of Alexandria, Virginia, who was flying out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Sunday, said: \u201cFailure to fund the TSA is a dereliction of duty by the Congress. They\u2019ve given too much power to the president. That funding resides in their hands. … And Donald Trump has been pushing the Republican leadership in Congress to deny that funding.\u201d
Florida resident David Simmons, 63, who was also at National, said: \u201cI blame them all. It\u2019s their job to work this out and they\u2019re not doing it.\u201d
\u201cI blame the Democrats more if I had to pick a side. Withholding TSA money is not on target for the issue that they\u2019re protesting,\u201d he added. \u201cI get that you don\u2019t like what ICE is doing. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s not a legitimate protest. I\u2019m just saying they\u2019re killing the chicken to scare the monkey. They\u2019re attacking this group to get the change they want.\u201d
An NBC News poll conducted in October<\/a>, during the last government shutdown, found that voters blamed Trump and congressional Republicans more for the impasse. But the share of voters who blamed Democrats was the highest compared with other shutdowns measured in NBC News polling over the last 30 years.
Democrats who spoke with NBC News put more blame on Trump, but frustration with Congress \u2014 and the federal government\u2019s inability to work together \u2014 was widespread.
Patricia Wright, 81, a Democrat from Setauket, New York, was in line at John F. Kennedy International Airport. She called the situation at the airports \u201cridiculous\u201d and said it \u201cseems to me like our president is responsible.\u201d
\u201cLet\u2019s collaborate, let\u2019s cooperate, and let\u2019s get things back to normal,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s crazy that we\u2019re dealing with these lines on top of gas prices going up. It feels like things are falling apart.\u201d
Miraj Shaw-Hudson also blames Trump and said there was \u201cno reason why these TSA agents shouldn\u2019t be getting paid for doing their jobs.\u201d
\u201cWe need everybody to vote, because this situation is not it,\u201d said Shaw-Hudson, 28, a Democrat from Oakland, California, who was also at JFK. \u201cWe need a new Congress, a new government. We need a new president. I don\u2019t have kids, but I wouldn\u2019t want to raise kids in this economy, and that\u2019s not even including the higher gas prices.\u201d
Montville, New Jersey, resident Aime Simeus, 49, said he wasn\u2019t sure who was at fault. Simeus is a Democrat but didn\u2019t vote in the 2024 election.
\u201cI understand why the left doesn\u2019t want to sign the bill, though I think there are few actual leaders in both parties,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody wants to step up to the plate and do something. It\u2019s tough for the Democrats when the country is being run by Donald Trump and you\u2019re on the other side of the aisle and you don\u2019t want to agree with him, even though that might be messing things up.\u201d
Marshall Snyder, 65, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, said at National Airport: \u201cThey all need to look in the mirror. I can\u2019t believe 535 grown men and women [in the House and the Senate] can\u2019t come to an agreement.\u201d
Dennis Romero is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.
Peter Nicholas is a senior White House reporter for NBC News.
Amanda Terkel is politics managing editor for NBC News Digital.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeAmid the long lines and delays at the country\u2019s airports, travelers say they feel deeply sympathetic to the airline workers who have been caught up in the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security \u2014 and deeply frustrated with politicians in Washington for letting it all happen.\u201cThese […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}