alt.hn

3/29/2026 at 1:32:25 PM

TSA lines are so out of control that travelers are hiring line-sitters

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2026/03/28/tsa-line-sitters/

by bookofjoe

3/29/2026 at 2:22:51 PM

From the last few paragraphs:

> There is an official way for travelers to bypass long TSA waits if they’re willing to spend: hiring concierge services to escort them through security.

> Perq Soleil is an airport arrival and departure assistance service that can help travelers through TSA in about a minute flat by accessing alternative lines usually reserved for airport staff and airline personnel. The company — which operates in more than 300 airports and 150 countries — charges a base rate that varies by location.

Talk about burying the lede. Apparently the airports “highly discourage” line-sitters, but if you use services that pre-bribed airports you can skip the lines entirely.

by oefrha

3/29/2026 at 2:34:57 PM

The people arriving on private jets have always bypassed these bureaucratic procedures. Brotherhood and equality.

by PearlRiver

3/29/2026 at 9:15:13 PM

It's true equality: The rich and poor alike are allowed to fly on private jets or hire a departure assistance service!

by ryandrake

3/30/2026 at 3:29:20 AM

well jokes on you: if it was 17th century, we peasants wouldn't even be allowed to use that service

by sysguest

3/29/2026 at 6:37:38 PM

As somebody who doesn't travel on private jets, I'm very, very happy that I'm not anywhere close to those people.

Imagine the pandemonium that would ensue if Taylor Swift were to enter an airport terminal through the normal entrance.

by miki123211

3/29/2026 at 2:38:57 PM

Why should private plane passengers be subject to TSA? TSA (paid for by you and me by the way, not for free) exists to protect the public from harm, on public flights by common carriers. It used to be contracted by airlines themselves. Unless you are the most extreme of pro-seatbelt law people, it would make little sense for TSA to screen anyone on a private plane manifest unless the client asked them to.

by hammock

3/29/2026 at 2:49:11 PM

No, the TSA exists because 19 people hijacked 4 flights and succeeded in crashing 3 of them into various important buildings in the US on 9/11/2001.

Private planes are just as capable of crashing into buildings as commercial jets. The TSA has picked up some ancillary public safety functions over the years, but their raison d'etre is to prevent hijackings.

by AlotOfReading

3/29/2026 at 7:08:24 PM

No, the TSA exists because politicians felt they needed to be seen doing something after 9/11. If there were actually much political will for it to fulfill actual security purposes, it surely would’ve been reformed after it’s continually abysmal performance on security audits.

by thfuran

3/29/2026 at 6:23:51 PM

No; the TSA exists because we needed a government jobs program that was easy to promote under the guise of terrorism.

by garciasn

3/29/2026 at 8:00:10 PM

It's not nearly enough jobs to be a jobs program

by verall

3/29/2026 at 9:36:17 PM

By what standard?

Federal civilian workforce (ex Postal Service and Military) is only 3 million.

TSA has 60k employees.

That's a lot of permanent jobs.

by caminante

3/30/2026 at 3:44:02 PM

By your own numbers - 60k employees just doesn't touch a jobs program in a country of 350M people. The point of a jobs program is to provide jobs.

TSA was created to accomplish a goal - security theater (mostly), preventing another 9/11 (maybe more in theory than in practice), etc.

The New Deal WPA, according to wikipedia, supplied about 3M jobs at its peak in 1938, when the population was ~130M.

2.3% of the population vs 0.017%.

Also empirically - if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..

by verall

3/30/2026 at 11:54:09 PM

>if it was a jobs program, it would be way better staffed..

You're saying it's not comparable to the size of the New Deal, the biggest jobs program ever in the US.

That doesn't disqualify it from consideration as a jobs program as there are many jobs programs much smaller.

Adding 60k to ~3 million is significant because it's permanent. These are low skilled workers (and security theater as you astutely say) mostly concentrated in large cities.

Whereas the New Deal was temp jobs that disappeared once grants and funding disappeared.

by caminante

3/30/2026 at 12:15:45 AM

And they get Federal pensions and healthcare funded by tax dollars.

by AustinDev

3/29/2026 at 5:05:37 PM

In terms of menace potential, any private plane will lose to a van full of fertilizer and a baddie intent on causing destruction. It's a matter of scale.

Little planes, like this one [1] just don't do damage on the same scale as airliners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack

by schmookeeg

3/29/2026 at 5:58:25 PM

Most private planes taking off from commercial airports (the ones where TSA generally operates) are much larger than a Piper Dakota.

(But regardless, it’s not clear that the TSA is even performing that kind of calculus.)

by woodruffw

3/29/2026 at 9:21:12 PM

A G650 still loses to a motivated U-haul. :)

No argument though, just saying it's a hard problem, and the scaling issue makes it somewhat awkward to deploy security resources in proportion to the threat.

I don't have a solution. I'm not exactly thrilled with the current setup, but I try to stay quiet since I can't think of anything better.

by schmookeeg

3/29/2026 at 9:54:55 PM

Government building codes already anticipate the "van full of fertilizer" attack, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Federal building security is a separate matter though, with its own agency called FPS that predates DHS and TSA by decades.

by AlotOfReading

3/29/2026 at 10:30:35 PM

What about a private plane full of anfo

by paradox460

3/29/2026 at 5:50:48 PM

[dead]

by ratrace

3/29/2026 at 2:42:27 PM

The TSA was created because a plane crashed into a building. Private planes can crash into buildings. Why should they be exempt from TSA checks?

by frankbreetz

3/29/2026 at 2:49:10 PM

Lots of things can crash into buildings. Should they all be screened by TSA? Drones and their operators prior to every launch? 30 minute helicopter tours and high-rise HVAC drop offs? Private satellites?

Or is licensing and registration (of pilots and aircraft and manifest and flight plan) enough?

by hammock

3/29/2026 at 3:50:12 PM

Governments are reactive. So if any of these other things ever successfully destroy a building then you can absolutely count on new rules and laws that, at a minimum, will include screening.

by Eddy_Viscosity2

3/29/2026 at 2:52:06 PM

Commercial drones can't bring down buildings. And they're still subject to an awful lot of regulations.

by jdiff

3/29/2026 at 2:54:56 PM

So it’s complete building destruction that is the protective mission here? Not loss of life or general terrorism or something else? I’m glad we are clarifying

I wasn’t aware that DJI drone with 60lb payload was subject to more regulations than a Citation leaving TEB but I guess I’m open to learning what those are.

by hammock

3/29/2026 at 6:31:36 PM

Why are you spending so much effort helping the most privileged people on the planet? Makes no sense to be their white knight

by Gud

3/29/2026 at 7:40:18 PM

Why are you wasting time here? Even a letter to the editor would be more effective than an HN comment.

by robocat

3/29/2026 at 2:43:21 PM

Were you born after 2001? Did you remember those planes that flew into the buildings?

Private planes can do the same thing.

by AzN1337c0d3r

3/29/2026 at 6:12:07 PM

And the TSA wouldn’t do anything to stop that

Hell the TSA doesn’t do much to prevent that on commercial flights, but requiring private flights to start going through commercial security would be completely pointless

by kgermino

3/29/2026 at 6:25:57 PM

Inconveniencing wealthy people might create motivation to fix the problem.

by joquarky

3/29/2026 at 9:44:24 PM

Doesn't work.

If TSA were added, there still wouldn't be any lines at private terminals.

by caminante

3/31/2026 at 12:04:24 AM

Even if you're flying commercial, wealthy people can just pay Perq Soleil $250 a pop to waltz them through the employee line with no wait.

by ranger_danger

3/29/2026 at 2:55:56 PM

This reminds me of when Steve Job's had his ninja throwing stars confiscated by (airport security) getting on his private jet.

Edited to clarify NOT TSA

by Simulacra

3/29/2026 at 3:30:46 PM

The danger of Steve Jobs hijacking his own private plane was obviously quite high! We can only thank the dutiful TSA officers for their brave service. I’m sure they risked their lives averting this danger. Have they been awarded any medals yet?

by tempodox

3/30/2026 at 9:57:46 AM

Apparently I forgot the “/s” on my parent comment.

by tempodox

3/29/2026 at 6:30:30 PM

It seems to me that the people flying private jets are the biggest threats to humanity.

by Gud

3/29/2026 at 2:49:17 PM

HN can always be counted on to have a good contingent of temporarily embarrassed billionaires ready to stick up for them at the slightest provocation.

by idiotsecant

3/30/2026 at 10:22:21 AM

Yeah let’s screen every kid and his 172 because rich people bad!

by gos9

3/29/2026 at 2:52:38 PM

You don’t have to be a billionaire to fly out of an FBO and you don’t have to fly out of an FBO to be interested in freedom of movement. No Kings.

by hammock

3/29/2026 at 2:59:26 PM

[flagged]

by SubmarineClub

3/29/2026 at 2:43:13 PM

[dead]

by kacesensitive

3/29/2026 at 2:26:45 PM

I don’t even understand why this is an issue, because TSA screening is funded through user fees. There’s a line item of $5.60 per one-way ticket for exactly this that’s separate from airfare and other fees. (https://www.tsa.gov/for-industry/security-fees)

If this is so, why does Congress have to fund the program? Why not pass the funds through directly to the agency?

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 2:45:25 PM

The question itself feels like it calls for "Schoolhouse Rock" level basics about how the federal government works.

The federal government does not work like a private escrow account where a fee collected for X automatically goes to Y. Tax revenue comes in to the Treasury, and Congress decides what agencies are allowed to spend. So even if TSA screening is funded in part by a per-ticket user fee, TSA still does not get to just collect that money and use it directly. Congress has to authorize and appropriate it.

On a practical level, imagine the chaos if every federal department acted as its own tax collector and then set its own spending priorities. That is basically an argument for gutting Congress's oversight of TSA and treating it like an independent agency, just because Congress and the executive branch invented the modern shutdown in the 1980s.

Keep in mind shutdowns are a fairly new concept, that nearly no other country has. The US also didn't have it for most of its history. Congress could stop at any time it wanted.

by Someone1234

3/29/2026 at 10:16:57 PM

Many government services do directly use fees to pay for operating the service. Those services can operate with no government appropriation, and the funds never leave the specific agencies' own accounts.

Examples:

* USCIS (source: https://www.aila.org/library/practice-alert-what-happens-if-...)

* 1,823/7,001 Fish and Wildlife service staff (https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025-09/do...)

* 38,252/74,210 of the FDA (https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy-2026-hhs-contingency-sta...)

* USPS (although as a government owned corporation the separation of funding is more obvious)

* Customs (the actual folks that process tariffs are paid for by the tariffs, unlike border patrol)

by advisedwang

3/29/2026 at 6:04:14 PM

SFO doesn’t use TSA for security and works like this with whatever contractor it hire. I wish all airports would just use private security funded via usage fees, then we would never be held hostage because some whacko wanted to use masked thugs to beat up and shoot Americans.

by seanmcdirmid

3/29/2026 at 6:46:44 PM

Where did you get the information that SFO doesn't use TSA?

by brunoborges

3/29/2026 at 6:56:26 PM

From like the way it is and has been for many years?

From their website:

Covenant Aviation Security, a private company under contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), provides passenger and baggage screening at SFO.

Visit Covenant Aviation Security to learn more about security screening at SFO.

https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/safety-secur...

More coverage here: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/nx-s1-5759273/not-all-airport...

by jhfdbkofdchk

3/29/2026 at 7:21:15 PM

I thought it was common knowledge, but anyone who has been through SFO in the last decade should know that they aren’t using TSA for the checks to get to gates. Always seems fast.

by seanmcdirmid

3/29/2026 at 3:21:45 PM

You’re right that that’s the default state. However, Congress could have set things up such that the fees would pass through to TSA’s budget (i.e. earmarked) but chose not to.

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 5:30:33 PM

Many are run by user fees, such as USCIS that keeps operating during shutdowns.

by ivewonyoung

3/30/2026 at 10:23:37 AM

Money is fungible.

by gos9

3/29/2026 at 2:48:46 PM

If you scroll down on the page, it'll show that the user fees only offset ~20% of the overall security expenses.

In addition, most fees (including most of the TSA fee) collected by the US Federal government isn't earmarked - it just goes into the general fund.

More breakdown here: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/us/tsa-funding-security-fees-...

by icegreentea2

3/29/2026 at 3:13:53 PM

Thanks!

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 2:48:14 PM

AFAIC there's no good reason for airport security to be a federal jobs program in the first place. The airports and/or their contractors are perfectly capable of operating x-ray machines and metal detectors on their own, and from what I understand are even still permitted to but all choose to let the government do it and pay for it.

What the fuck is the TSA even supposed to be doing? The 9/11 guys supposedly used box cutters. Does anybody seriously think you can't get a little blade like that onto an airplane in your carry on luggage? I bring double sided razor blades with every time I fly and they have never flagged it. And more importantly, does anybody actually believe you could still hijack a plane with a pocket knife? All the other passengers now know the score, they all die unless they throw themselves on you which they will and have done many times since. What's more, you won't get into the locked cockpit anyway. Airport security is solved. Basic bitch scanning for guns is all you need and we had that solved in the 90s which is the reason the hijackers used pocket knives, which no longer works. Disband the TSA.

by mikkupikku

3/29/2026 at 2:59:55 PM

I'm not the first to suggest this, but I think "fly at your own risk" airlines would be popular with some people. Keep the cockpit door reinforced, and maintain a gentleman's agreement among travellers on what to do if a passenger threatens a flight. Airport security is now reduced to 10 seconds.

by m348e912

3/29/2026 at 8:16:26 PM

As noted elsewhere, that approach doesn't stop someone flying the plane into a building.

by daveoc64

3/30/2026 at 3:49:18 AM

My understanding is that flight security protocols and cockpit hardening introduced after 9/11 made it significantly harder to replicate what happened that day.

by m348e912

3/29/2026 at 2:44:06 PM

The same article you linked has a chart that shows that actual expenses are around 4x the fees that are collected.

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 2:56:11 PM

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the 5.60 per person per flight doesn't cover the cost of TSA airport security operations leaving congress responsible for the gap.

If you are wondering how that could happen, it starts with no-bid contracts and ends with inefficiency and has been heavily influenced by a guy whose name sounds a lot like Schmical Schmertoff.

by m348e912

3/29/2026 at 2:52:29 PM

Because the fee revenue was created by congress, so the money goes 1/3 to Treasury to help pay national debt (doesn't really make a dent), about $1.6B goes to the government general fund. But FY24 collected $4.5B in fees, but the budget was almost $9.5B.

So even if all the money went to TSA, less than half their budget is covered. There is inherently bloat in that, but that is for a different discussion.

But bigger still, if Congress didn't reappropriate that money from TSA, they'd either have to spend less (less likely), raise taxes (not likely), or go deeper in debt (very likely) in order to cover whatever they are currently covering with their 70% share of the fee.

by jermaustin1

3/29/2026 at 2:08:02 PM

It seems that SFO's policy of having an intermediate company that buffers salaries is working well because I flew through there to Taipei after this whole situation and there was no wait.

by arjie

3/29/2026 at 2:22:50 PM

I _just_ went though the line. It wasn't too bad (5-10min, despite having bio ID), but it was by far the worst I've encountered at SFO in the decade I've been flying out of there.

by elromulous

3/29/2026 at 5:13:48 PM

P.s. And as usual, TSA doesn't understand anything about queueing theory and doesn't implement round robin / starvation prevention. Global services and clear get absolute priority over other queues.

by elromulous

3/30/2026 at 12:04:56 AM

That's a feature, not a bug

by 1986

3/29/2026 at 11:56:56 PM

Probably because people are going via SFO when they might otherwise go via Oakland or elsewhere.

by NewJazz

3/30/2026 at 1:59:11 AM

I thought all of the lines went away after ICE came in? That's what I heard, but you can't trust the news these days.

Either because ICE is more competent than TSA or their presence is scaring away a lot of people

by Ferret7446

3/29/2026 at 2:22:01 PM

buffers salaries?

by nubg

3/29/2026 at 2:33:12 PM

A strange way of saying, not TSA at all, and handled by a private for-profit company instead.

by Someone1234

3/29/2026 at 3:40:20 PM

No, it's accurate, because TSA (or at least the feds) ultimately pay for it, but the company has some runway it can spend to keep the employees working on the assumption it'll be paid later, I.E. a buffer.

by BobaFloutist

3/29/2026 at 2:26:17 PM

yeah SFO seems to be completely uneffected

by ozi

3/29/2026 at 2:35:07 PM

Only FOUR people actually used these services?

Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.

by jt2190

3/29/2026 at 1:50:53 PM

https://archive.ph/cwDaq (No account needed)

by miyuru

3/29/2026 at 3:21:00 PM

I have been kind of experimenting with using single archive pages for archive.is /.ph/.today links and then experimenting with either putting these on my github pages (and then archiving) just for more preservation purposes.

Today I wanted to try something different so I used singlefile to make a html and then make pdf file from that html and uploaded it to archive.org

https://archive.org/details/tsa-lines-are-so-out-of-control-...

I don't wish to have news articles in my github as it clutters or I am not sure how these laws might follow (there is definitely a reason as to why archive.is creator is anonymous) and so I am looking for more anonymous ways to upload (my main intentions are that archive.ph can be nice but I feel like its not validated within wikipedia/all the controversies it has and I am just experimenting with things right now)

I have also uploaded this on catbox.moe (https://files.catbox.moe/mt9sus.html) but it has plain/text content-type, does anyone know a more anonymous content-type plain/text -> html where I can upload things perhaps, I have thoughts about creating something like this (where people can give links to text .html files and I can then display the html) but I am also a bit worried that it might be used for nefarious purposes.

I am not sure what I should do actually about it, I like thinking about archiving though, but anything other than archive.org like archive.is, can only function best if they are anonymous and I am not really anonymous/intend to be.

This makes me sympathetic of them against the journalist who tried to dox them but also I kind of understand that journalist tried approaching first from a more curiosity, maybe a threat-actor model, I had done something like this once to a service because I wanted to know if govt.'s would be able to catch them or not (they had a reddit proxy) and I found that they had their opsec secure and I was really impressed but I sometimes wonder, if the journalist also did something like this and the archive.is owner felt like it was a threat to archive and decided to ddos and all the things that followed, I sort of understand both the perspectives, so it just makes me sad as how this ended up folding up.

(This comment might've been more relevant within the archive.is drama hackernews thread but I think that its long gone and I was still forming my opinion on all of this which clearly has some nuance)

by Imustaskforhelp

3/29/2026 at 2:14:47 PM

Doesn't this guy's server just DDoS some dude's blog with your own browser? Didn't click.

by arcza

3/29/2026 at 2:21:01 PM

Yes, and: If I recall correctly, cloudflare is sinking all the extra traffic for him, so it doesn't actually impact him.

Last I heard it's a morally objectionable thing at this point rather than something that's having any practical impact.

(Which of course doesn't make it ok... I'm just a little less inclined to judge people that still use archive links when needed.)

by javawizard

3/29/2026 at 7:44:32 PM

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805

The archive.today domains have also poisoned DNS lookups from some privacy-preserving DNS providers, and in rare cases have been caught tampering the archive data. Make of that what you will.

by gradientsrneat

3/29/2026 at 1:53:29 PM

In Indian temples line-sitters are very common. Many queues are 5+ hours long.

by porridgeraisin

3/29/2026 at 3:16:13 PM

Fascinating. Is there something specific about those temples that draws the crowds, like something akin to a famous cathedral? Must worship take place in a temple? I don't know how the religion works but did get to visit a local temple once with some coworkers and enjoyed the atmosphere.

by hellojesus

3/29/2026 at 4:15:35 PM

Yeah each temple has its speciality.

Every family has a "kuladeivam" which is basically a temple for that (patrilineal) lineage. Every family has one. Every temple has few families.

Then it's special for people in the same town as the temple. Modern migration makes this a different set from the one above.

Then each temple has special events on specific days/week/month/year.

And then on top of that some few hundred temples are special in general and are crowded 365 days of the year with people from all over.

Adds up.

> Must worship take place in a temple?

Just my understanding. You can worship anywhere even in your head, but temples are one thing which improve "quality" of worship by a lot. The logic roughly goes - since most people aren't capable of high (enuf) quality worship in their head or at home, temples help them. More of a magnitude thing rather than a binary thing.

by porridgeraisin

3/30/2026 at 12:06:14 PM

Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like a neat system.

by hellojesus

3/29/2026 at 4:04:01 PM

maybe they are considered direct link between heaven and earth :)

by functional_dev

3/29/2026 at 10:04:00 PM

Status symbols among certain tribes. I went to <x> place. Most (all?) religions don’t prevent the poor from salvation, but humans like to make up hurdles to see who can overcome them.

The status isn’t even necessarily money related, but can just be to see who is more “devoted”.

by lotsofpulp

3/29/2026 at 7:30:06 PM

I flew out of SeaTac yesterday (March 28th), and the TSA there were pretty well staffed. Took me around 6 minutes, and that was only because the person in front of me was talking to the agent about the tote bag they got from Trader Joe's.

by GaProgMan

3/30/2026 at 12:45:36 AM

those tote bags are the town's talk!!!

by natas

3/29/2026 at 6:14:02 PM

The basic competence of elected officials and they people they appoint matters.

by api

3/29/2026 at 2:02:14 PM

I keep hearing about these long lines but I literally went to a major airport the other day for a flight and got through security in minutes.

by deadbabe

3/29/2026 at 2:06:05 PM

It’s really just a handful that have long lines part of the day. LAX for example hasn’t has a line at all really. Takes longer for my bag to be secondary checked every time than it does to wait in line.

by dawnerd

3/29/2026 at 2:09:34 PM

That's why anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much.

by amelius

3/29/2026 at 2:23:12 PM

They are both anecdotal

by groundzeros2015

3/29/2026 at 2:06:02 PM

I’ve heard this is very airport dependent

by fourside

3/29/2026 at 2:11:55 PM

Essential Air Service travelers aren't seeing any major pain either traveling outbound. Fortunately (though kind of sadly) the TSA folks only work a couple hours a day at the checkpoint for the single flight in and out so most of them are working side jobs anyways as their day job from what I hear. Our checkpoint doesn't even open until ~45 minutes before boarding starts in the middle of the day.

by kotaKat

3/29/2026 at 2:37:37 PM

I wonder why Trump just doesn't sell this himself, like golden tickets that you can buy from ICE where they just push back the free-tier line enjoyers to insert the patriotic gold level travelers.

In Turkey people with connections to the government get strobe lights permit to skip the traffic through the emergency line. There's so many opportunities both for monetization and loyalty rewarding.

Due to lapses like that sometimes I question my theory that all those people(Erdogan, Trump, Putin etc) are in the same group chat.

by mrtksn

3/29/2026 at 2:41:18 PM

If some of his minions gave him this idea he’d probably do it.

by tartoran

3/29/2026 at 2:38:18 PM

we already have this with TSA Pre

by foolfoolz

3/29/2026 at 2:41:17 PM

Where does the money go? With ICE implementation they can split the proceeds and the customers can enjoy seeing people pushed around on prem.

by mrtksn

3/29/2026 at 6:15:04 PM

The TSA Pre lines are often as long as the standard lines.

by squidsoup

3/30/2026 at 2:19:25 PM

we already have premium tsa pre with clear

by foolfoolz

3/29/2026 at 2:24:22 PM

Capitalism works quite well at solving problems.

by ReptileMan

3/29/2026 at 2:52:59 PM

Efficiency is when you make a problem and then make people pay you to solve it. Or maybe that was some other word, I forget.

by idiotsecant

3/29/2026 at 3:56:06 PM

[dead]

by jeremie_strand

3/29/2026 at 2:01:13 PM

[flagged]

by cyanydeez

3/29/2026 at 2:24:52 PM

I thought the whole reason they're not funded was that Democrats refused to pass the bill unless it contained ICE reforms? Even if you're sympathetic to those reforms it's a bit disingenuous to characterize it as "Republicans are working hard to abuse people"

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 2:28:03 PM

The Senate unanimously passed a DHS (excluding ICE/CBP) funding bill this week, which Mike Johnson blocked in the House. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/27/politics/senate-agreement-dhs...

by delecti

3/29/2026 at 2:39:17 PM

And it's important to note that ICE and CBP don't need additional funding. They were overfunded with the last spending bill by about 10x their actual needs.

That's the reason why ICE and CBP agents are still collecting paychecks while the rest of DHS is not.

It's actually a bit silly that Republicans, the party of limited government, have been holding up funding the TSA and FEMA because an agency they already overspent on won't get additional dollars. Not very DOGE.

by cogman10

3/29/2026 at 2:28:22 PM

Why won’t Republicans agree to the reforms? Seems like a pretty reasonable ask from the Democrats to restore law enforcement norms that reflect a civil society.

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 2:36:15 PM

>Why won’t Republicans agree to the reforms?

Doesn't that mean statements like "Republicans are working hard to abuse people" are just a long winded way of saying "grr I hate Republicans"? It doesn't matter who's doing the blocking, because your side is always right and Fighting For The People™, and the other side are just obstructionists blocking reasonable reforms?

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 3:11:09 PM

Would you mind answering the question, please, instead of embarking on a side quest?

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 3:25:27 PM

>Would you mind answering the question, please, instead of embarking on a side quest?

Funny you're accusing me of derailing the topic when in my initial comment I specifically mentioned I wasn't interested in arguing over the merits of those reforms

>[...] Even if you're sympathetic to those reforms [...]

And for the record, in case you wanted to interpret my refusal of discussing that topic as some sort of sign I'm against them: I'm not. I just believe the topic has been discussed to death and there's no point relitigating it.

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 3:29:15 PM

Then why are you even participating in the discussion? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Don’t enter a ring if you can’t take a punch.

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 3:49:03 PM

So if you want to derail the discussion it's "Don’t enter a ring if you can’t take a punch", but when I do it, it's "... instead of embarking on a side quest"?

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 4:32:39 PM

Do you ever answer questions directly? Feels like you’re not engaging in good faith, but would rather argue for arguments’ sake and try to “win” through any means other than substantive contribution.

To ask why Republicans won’t participate in passing these reforms is not “derailing” the conversation. It speaks to the very heart of the problem, because if they would, we wouldn’t be in this quagmire. The public has made it pretty clear that they don’t like the status quo about how ICE has been operating lately.

by otterley

3/29/2026 at 2:36:33 PM

its seems far more likely that they are just playing politics as sport. that is they are quite content to cause suffering if they can point the finger at the other team. just like the snap monies in the last shutdown.

by convolvatron

3/29/2026 at 3:00:20 PM

>just like the snap monies in the last shutdown.

You know, prior to this sentence "they" could have referred to either party. After all, the last shutdown was largely because the Democrats were fighting for ACA subsidy extensions, but I guess it's only "playing politics as sport" when you don't agree with the justification?

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 3:39:52 PM

this is the problem isn't it? this is supposed to be why trump co is running the country. that governance has collapsed and they were supposed to refocus it on things that's mattered. see how that's going.

but yes, I think the result is that we have even less effective governance then we had a year ago. and I find it pretty troubling that the narrative that's being actively reinforced is that we really don't need to bother with the legislative process anymore since they are obviously completely useless

by convolvatron

3/29/2026 at 2:15:22 PM

I know, I can't believe they refuse to pass the bill that would fund TSA.

Wait a minute, I'm getting additional information....you're not gonna believe this, but Republicans have been voting for it. I wonder who the holdup is, then....

by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

3/29/2026 at 2:19:05 PM

Yesterday morning, CNN:

> In a remarkable 24 hours in Washington, House Republicans snubbed a bipartisan funding deal cut by their own Senate GOP counterparts and instead approved an entirely different plan — prolonging the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

> Then, they left town.

It's obvious what's happening.

https://lite.cnn.com/2026/03/27/politics/dhs-shutdown-fundin...

by rpdillon

3/29/2026 at 2:24:27 PM

Not just bipartisan. That bill was unanimously passed in the Senate.

by cogman10

3/29/2026 at 2:58:15 PM

Negative. It was passed with unanimous consent, there was only maybe five people there. I think that's a big difference between "passed" which gives the connotation that people actually voted on it, "unanimous consent" of the present.

It was also at 2 o'clock in the morning

by Simulacra

3/29/2026 at 3:22:47 PM

You make this sound like it was a democrat plot, it was not.

Thune, the republican senate majority leader, was the one that put up the unanimous consent motion.

There were more than just 5 people there. Though it was late at night.

You can't push something through unanimous consent if there's not a quorum. That requires at least 51% of each party to be present.

Now, it's possible they waited until some of the big objectors to the bill fell asleep or left. But, that doesn't really change the fact that Thune pushed this through.

by cogman10

3/29/2026 at 3:46:57 PM

I made no claim as to party, it's just how it was done. If anything it was the Republicans who are the majority. I wanted to clarify that it was by unanimous consent, not a recorded vote.

by Simulacra

3/29/2026 at 3:52:39 PM

Fair enough. But I do still have to push back on the notion that it was just 5 people there. If that were the case, you could have expected one of the more lucid members to have done a quorum call.

by cogman10

3/29/2026 at 4:07:44 PM

Fair point. My understanding is that the Senate "assumes" a quorum unless someone suggests there is not. Since it was AFAIK around 2am... my guess is not and they all just wanted to get the heck out of there. Since no recorded vote we may never know. So I stand corrected on the number.

by Simulacra

3/29/2026 at 4:26:06 PM

Your understanding is correct. The quorum call has a priority and can be done by any member.

The session has to start with a quorum and it's assumed that there is still a quorum since nobody has done a quorum call.

I have to assume that if someone actually objected to this, they would have done a quorum call before leaving the session. That or the few objectors simply left early not thinking this would go to 2am. Though, they could have always came back. They almost certainly would have had staffers there who'd inform them that something like this was coming up.

by cogman10

3/29/2026 at 3:03:51 PM

But what effects does it have on the legislative process? It sounds like at the very least, all the senators vaguely wanted it to be passed, but didn't want to be on the record for voting for it.

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 2:20:09 PM

In the Senate.

You are correct. The Speaker of the House is a toady who is held in line in the house by a small cabal of super MAGA people. Given some of his unusual personal situations, (for one, he supposedly has no bank account or financial assets) there’s likely a blackmail situation. His supine nature is also probably the strategy for the “3rd term” loophole.

by Spooky23

3/29/2026 at 3:08:33 PM

>Given some of his unusual personal situations, (for one, he supposedly has no bank account or financial assets) there’s likely a blackmail situation

1. source on the bank account claim?

2. I don't think you need to involve theories that he's being financially blackmailed, when it's pretty clear that Trump has a tight grip over the Republican party, and isn't afraid to attack or back primary challengers for Republicans that he doesn't agree with, eg. Thomas Massie.

by gruez

3/29/2026 at 2:20:20 PM

And this is why bills sound cover one topic and not a bundle of topics. "I heard it was X who blocked the bill that would actually make gas prices low (which also meant voting was eliminated)"

by antiframe

3/29/2026 at 2:26:08 PM

The party who controls all three branches of federal government?

by bobmcnamara

3/29/2026 at 2:37:58 PM

[flagged]

by gsibble

3/29/2026 at 3:05:55 PM

At least it is a break from the endless stream of anti-LLM posts written by LLM with half the comments being serious replies and the other half fake-politely debating whether it was written by LLM.

Plus there is a bonus start-up opportunity to LLM-code an app that enables travelers to earn money while they wait in line at the airport.

by isthatafact

3/29/2026 at 7:10:28 PM

How do you feel about complaints about complaining?

by joquarky

3/29/2026 at 2:51:58 PM

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

.......................

Nowhere does it say it must have to do with technology.

by bookofjoe

3/30/2026 at 12:08:47 PM

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

They've been covering all of this on TV news.

by gsibble

3/30/2026 at 4:30:11 PM

There's my problem: I don't watch TV news.

by bookofjoe

3/29/2026 at 3:39:39 PM

Technology businesses need to fly employees around. Most airline traffic is for business not pleasure. I knew a guy who worked sales at IBM who practically lived at the airport.

I also like articles like this because I learn from the discussions from other commenters.

In the worst case, if I am not interested in the topic, I just move on to one of the other posts. I deliberately skip over the LLM posts, but I don't tell them to stop discussing it just because it isn't of interest to me. I'm not that self centered. There is enough space on the internet for everyone's discussion.

by fhdkweig

3/29/2026 at 2:39:45 PM

I know it's bad, but yeah, I just hate waiting, it's stupid. So whenever I can I just go through "first class" security and nothing bad happens, just skipping the queue. Look decent, look busy, keep on walking and bam you're past the security in a minute compared to tens of minutes or hours. And don't ever remove that "short connection" or "priority" tag from your luggage, it indeed goes out first. Airports are so freaking annoying way to commute, take a bus/train/tram/taxi/car to the airport, figure out the maze, wait in queue, get bored after security (because you arrived to early not knowing how much you're going to wait in security), go to a gate, then a different gate, queue again, get inside, and wait again. Why did we do this to ourselves!?

by alfanick

3/29/2026 at 6:59:39 PM

Some people are challenged by the choice whether to go without medication or food this week.

by joquarky

3/29/2026 at 1:32:33 PM

[flagged]

by bookofjoe