What's up guys and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Now, I'm pretty sure we've all seen it, but our airlines are insane right now. TSA lines are forever.

We've seen increased and increased and increased potential threats that are happening to airplanes and even fights and stuff that are breaking out in airplanes, non-airlines. It's crazy what's happening, but we need to dive right into the root of the issue to understand why it's happening and what needs to be done to resolve it. So on February 14th of this year, the Department of Homeland Security officially went into shutdown mode.

What that means is that Congress did not pass a bill to appropriate funding to the department. Now, it's officially been a month and what we're seeing now is unimaginable. Waits and lines for TSA checks are reaching up to four hours, maybe even more in some places, and we're still in the midst of spring break travel.

The effects of the DHS shutdown are leading to these extended waits. They're leading to spring breakers, missing flights, or getting delays and cancellations, or really choosing to not even go on their trips. And the economies of where they're going in some of these states, especially Florida, rely on tourism and get a huge bump from spring break travel.

Let's break down the whole story and figure out what's really happening. As y'all remember last year, last fall specifically, we experienced the longest shutdown in US history, lasting 43 days. In this shutdown, the entire government went dark and was experiencing what DHS is experiencing right now.

Furloughs, working without pay, people calling out, and no-call no-shows. Now, the FAA was affected and that is the department where air traffic controllers lie. So air traffic controllers were not being paid, but they were essential, so they were still having to work.

Very similar to what's happening with TSA right now, but those are the people that guide your airplanes in and out of the airport. That's one thing that makes this situation explicitly different, is the FAA is open. They are not part of the Department of Homeland Security.

They're part of the Department of Transportation. So air traffic controllers are not affected right now. The incoming and outgoing planes are safe, but what is at risk is TSA.

And those are the people that check your bags and make sure that nothing is getting on or off an airplane that doesn't belong there. Now, in the fall, DHS released a contingency plan where they explained that 95% of TSA personnel were deemed essential and had to show up. This is very similar to what we saw back in COVID, when you were an essential worker, and basically everybody was deemed an essential worker and everybody went to work, except in like very few cases.

So it's basically like that. 95% of them are deemed essential because our airlines have to be safe. We have to make sure that weapons and things like that that can hurt people aren't getting on board and that terrorist attacks aren't occurring on our plane, or just generally crazy people that might want to do something bad.

The remaining personnel out of that 95%, so the remaining 5%, there are 2,933 of them out of the 64,130 total TSA agents. Those 2,933 have been furloughed. And according to an article called, Here's How the DHS Shutdown is Impacting Air Travel, TSA, the first day of the DHS shutdown resulted in 5,100 flights into, out of, or within the U.S. being delayed and 460 being canceled.

Now, the next day, so that would be February 15th, 6,500 flights were delayed and 330 were canceled. Now, for comparison, because we want to be fair, we want to get the entire picture, the day before the shutdown, which would be February 13th, data shows that there were 5,500 delays and 120 cancellations. So we didn't see an impact immediately.

We want to show those numbers and be like, Oh my gosh, that's terrible that that happened. But like in reality, it's basically the same. There were more cancellations total.

No, there weren't. Yeah, there was no difference. There was really, really no difference between, well, no, there were more cancellations.

There were about 340 more cancellations after the shutdown on that first day, but there weren't any more actual delays. There were actually less delays. So we really need to keep all of this in mind when we're analyzing this and when we're looking at data and looking at reports.

Now, what the report does show, if we pull it for this past Monday, March 16th, that's one month and two days after the shutdown started. The results are absolutely staggering, y'all. They are insane.

According to FlightAware.com, which provides information relating to flights globally and flights specific to going into, out of, and within the USA, there were 12,926 delays into, out of, or within the U.S. There were 4,863 cancellations. That is a 3,802.5% increase in cancellations and a 135.02% increase in delays. That is absolutely insane, y'all.

Can you imagine being one of those 4,863 cancellations? I can, because when I tried to go to my spring break trip, my flight got canceled and one of my flights got delayed. It's insane what is happening in our airline industry. Now, one of my delays was because I was flying into Miami and President Trump was flying out.

So, that's not really a DHS shutdown problem. That's a airspace is closed for President Trump problem. The cancellation of my flight is kind of unknown.

It was the day that Iran was bombed, so maybe it was a TSA problem. Maybe it was something else, but still, I had the experience and my delay wasn't that incredibly long. I know people who also got their flights canceled.

I know people who experienced incredible delays. I know people who experienced delays because of security concerns and people getting all crazy on their airplane. There are so many problems within our airline industry as a result of not only the DHS shutdown, but also our culture.

And they're all culminating at once. When your culture doesn't know how to act and you don't have the resources in place to do crowd control, bad things happen. And it just invites chaos into your community.

Now, of all these people whose flights are being delayed and whose flights are being canceled, they're business people. They're entrepreneurs. They're people contributing to our economy.

They're students and families trying to have a good time, trying to take a break, trying to grow relationship with each other. And they're spring breakers who are contributing to our society by going to college and being prepared to go get a job, hopefully, if they're getting a good degree. And they want a break before the end of the semester.

They want a break before finals. And what are they doing? They're spending their break in airports, frustrated and upset and losing money on hotels and airlines and all of that. This can even be politicians returning to D.C. from their home states.

And if it gets bad and it gets worse, these politicians may not be able to make it in time for session or be able to make it in time for votes, which could be a huge burden on our actual political system, too. Now, I've mentioned a few times that we're in the midst of spring break. I feel like I keep mentioning that.

And you're probably wondering, why is that so important? Why do we care about all the spring breakers that are going to Panama City Beach to be crazy for a week? Well, Good Morning America reports that an estimated one hundred and seventy three million Americans fly during March and April as a result of spring break. That is spring break specific. States like Florida are hubs of tourism and they have great significant economic benefit from tourism.

Or I should say great and significant economic benefit from tourism. In fact, Florida's GDP is composed of seven point eight percent directly from tourism. So seven point eight percent of Florida's entire GDP, their entire economy comes directly from tourism.

And cities like Miami, Daytona Beach, Panama City Beach, Orlando and even the Florida Keys are significant tourism hubs during spring break. They spring break helps them economically. It helps them.

It helps their amount of people that they're able to employ. It just helps their restaurants, their hotels. It helps everything.

It allows them to be hubs of tourism for Florida, because, as you know, Florida is really big. There are these parts of Florida that we're talking about where people want to go and visit. And then there are farms and rural areas of Florida that nobody really wants to go and visit.

So this is significant and important for the entire state as a whole. Now, when air traffic becomes so congested and so risky and so troublesome, people just opt to not participate. People just say, hey, if I only have seven days for spring break or I only have five days for spring break.

I'm not going to spend X amount of days or X amount of hours in an airport just hoping that I'm going to get where I'm going. So what do they do? They stay home. Imagine you live somewhere where there's a beach or where you're not too far from the beach, somewhere like Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida.

And you can just drive. You can just drive like two hours and get to a beach or get to the mountains or go somewhere cool and really enjoy your time. Would you really opt out of that in favor of sitting in an airport for 12 or 14 hours? Because I know personally, I would just take the car ride and take the loss on not being able to go to Florida or somewhere else.

This harms not only the airline industries who are losing potential customers and who are also just taking extreme losses when people can't make it to their flights. And they're only have half boarded planes that are going really far away and they're not reaching their maximum capacity for what they've budgeted out. It also hurts states and cities that rely on this tourism that we've talked about as a major portion of their economy and for states that rely on these specific cities as a major portion of the state's overall economy.

On March 15th, a letter, a joint letter was written to Congress by seven airline CEOs. It was those from American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, UPS, FedEx and Atlas Air. Now, the letter stated, and I quote, 93 percent of your constituents across the country supported paying federal aviation workers during government shutdowns.

Furthermore, 88 percent of Americans said long lines and extended wait times at airport security checkpoints are likely to be repeated if TSA officers continue to work without pay during the shutdown. So we see that these CEOs, they're advocating for the pay of the TSA workers. They're advocating that even during a shutdown, even during a political feud like what we're seeing, that the airline industry and TSA workers are not caught in the crossfire.

Now, they go on to say, quote, first, leaders should immediately come together to reach an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security. So that's the first big thing in this letter is they are saying, stop, stop fighting, stop being petty, just fund Homeland Security at this point because we need to get the airline industries back on track. They go on to say, and I quote, with spring break travel in full swing, FIFA World Cup 2026 right around the corner and celebrations for America's 250th birthday throughout the year, the stakes are especially high.

U.S. Airlines expect 171 million passengers this spring season, a new record. But too many travelers are having to wait in extraordinary long and painfully slow lines at checkpoints. Wait times of two, three and even four hours have been reported.

Airlines are doing everything we can to mitigate disruption by holding flights for late passengers and rebooking others. So there is a burden that's being put on these airlines. There's a burden that's being cited by these CEOs, because when you hold flights and when you have to rebook people, the airline industries are losing money.

They're messing up other flights when they land and they have to clean the plane and fly somewhere else. All of those are getting delayed, which is why we're seeing that astronomical number of delays that we cited earlier, the 12,000 or 12,900, whatever the number was. And they're just taking losses every single time the companies are taking losses.

And it's just they even said it's not sustainable. I think I read somewhere I didn't include it here. I forgot to look it back up.

But I read somewhere that said that if this doesn't get resolved, there are certain airports that are going to have to go offline until they can resolve everything. This is a huge issue. And if they start taking airports offline, that's going to cause people to have to drive further distances to go to airports.

And if it's not for business travel, then they're not going to go. I don't want to drive all the way three or four hours to go to a different airport to fly another four or five hours. And then when I fly back, have to drive four hours home.

Like, I don't want to do that. I don't think a lot of other people do, too. And as for business travel, you can just Zoom now.

Like, it's the airlines are going to lose so much money if they don't fix this, as well as people just losing enjoyment and businesses. If they choose Zoom, not having that personal interaction, it's a loss all the way around. Now, this leads to the question, why won't they just fund DHS? It's been over a month.

You've just explained all of these negative consequences. Why don't they just fund it? So the Democrats are refusing to support DHS funding unless, as reported by CNBC, mandatory body cameras, disallowing immigration officers from wearing masks and tightening restrictions around warrants and ending quote unquote roving patrols are implemented for our ICE agents and CBP agents that are performing exercises or raids, I guess you could say, to go and extract illegal immigrants and send them back home. So they are demanding all of this.

The Republicans are not budging. They're not allowing immigration and customs enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Patrol, that's ICE and CBP, from operating unmitigated. They want these agencies to operate how they need to operate without caving to the demands of the Democrats.

Because, as we know, according to DHS, this was a report from October 30th, 2025, ICE agents' death threats towards ICE agents have gone up by over 8,000%. So if you thought that the 1,000% from earlier, the 3,800% increases in cancellations on flights was bad, ICE agents are getting an 8,000% increase in death threats, not just regular threats, death threats specifically. That is why they're wearing face coverings, because they will get doxed.

Their pictures will get taken. Their lives will get ruined. Some crazy person is going to go and try to take out ICE agents like the crazy person that took out Charlie Kirk.

Additionally, we are deporting people, violent criminals that are involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking. They are part of dangerous cartels. You really think that the cartels, if they have a picture of these people that some rabid liberal posted, that they're not going to go after them? You really think they're not going to have other people who might not be illegal that are in the same compound not taking pictures of DHS officials so that they can have the cartel later go after them like an assassin? Cartels go after anybody that impedes their ability to traffic humans and drugs or do whatever illicit crimes they want to do.

This is for the protection of DHS agents. Congress, a bunch of old people in suits that go to D.C. and sit in session and talk about paperwork, I respect our politicians, but they don't have any idea what it's like to be an ICE or a CBP agent on the field. They don't know the danger.

They don't know the fear. And they don't know what these people have to do to protect not only themselves or their families. So obviously, I don't think that a bunch of white-collar politicians need to be deciding the policies of agents who just want to go home and see their family at night.

Now, the Democrats continue pushing bills forward that will fund everything except ICE and CBP, which Republicans consistently oppose. So it's this game where Republicans are like, you need to fund DHS or there's going to be a homeland attack. And the Democrats are like, well, you can fund everything and not have that happen, but we're not funding ICE or CBP.

And then the Republicans are opposing because we need ICE and CBP. Now, if you don't know anything about ICE or CBP, here's a little bit about it. So aside from investigating illegal immigration, ICE specifically carries out investigations into human trafficking and customs violations within the U.S. Customs violations can be smuggling, misdeclaration, things like that.

Now, CBP is responsible for securing our border and our ports of entry. This is especially a critical service now that we have the conflict with Iran. Our borders need to be secure.

Our ports need to be secure. We need to make sure that things are not coming into our country that don't belong here. And we need to make sure that people that do not belong here are not coming into our country.

It's been over a month and it is time for us to fund DHS. It is time to get this nonsense over. Again, we are at probably war with Iran, whatever you want to call it.

So our homeland is under threat. We are in the midst of spring break. We are also in one of the busiest tourist seasons in U.S. history because of America 250.

DHS operations need to resume as normal. We're seeing a rapid increase in bomb threats and security threats on airlines as well. If y'all have seen that on social media or the news, there's been many different airports that have had to do full evacuations onto the terminal while they sweep the entire airport.

It happened in Wilmington, North Carolina. It has happened. I know they had to disembark a plane going from Nashville to Fort Lauderdale.

They had to stop, I believe it was in Georgia, to sweep the plane. This is happening in multiple different places and it's got to stop. It has to stop.

And again, TSA is unfunded and understaffed and all this is happening. They're having to stop what they're doing, go and sweep airports, make sure there isn't actually a bomb threat, which so far none of them have actually come to fruition. We're now facing new terrorism threats due to the conflict in Iran.

Yet our airport security is cripplingly understaffed and they're just predisposed to making errors because there aren't enough people. They're exhausted and they're not being paid. Some of these people are sleeping in their cars.

I've read, you know, you're not going to get a good sleep in your car. If you don't get a good sleep, you're not going to be on your A-game. If you can't buy food and you're hungry and you're thinking about that, you're not going to be on your A-game.

You might miss something. You might make a mistake and that could put everybody at risk. We need to fund the departments that stop human trafficking.

We need to fund the departments that stop smuggling. We need to fund the departments that prevent drugs and bioweapons from coming into the U.S. We need to protect our ports of entry from our enemies and from foreign bad actors. It's time to end this shutdown and it's time to restore America's confidence that our elected officials are actually going to be competent and put America first.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of The Reagan Faulkner Show. For more, remember to check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at TheReaganFaulknerShow and Instagram and Facebook at The Wilmington Standard. Give us a like and subscribe to our channel for more and be sure to leave a comment on what topics you want me to cover next.

Thank y'all so much and I will see you on the next one.