President Biden’s age and age-related stumbles are top of mind on Capitol Hill. Will he step down, should he step down, who would replace him, can he recover, what are the next steps for his campaign, etc.
It’s an important issue, but it can’t be allowed to distract D.C. from dropping the ball when it comes to national security.
Viral videos abound of irate airline passengers attacking flight attendants, fighting on planes and causing general in-flight mayhem. Some have had to be restrained by their fellow passengers. This begs the question: where are the air marshals?
They’re at the southern border.
The government has been sending 200 air marshals to the border on 21-day deployments, leaving major flights vulnerable to threats, Sonya LaBosco, a retired supervisory federal air marshal who speaks on behalf of the Air Marshal National Council, told the New York Post.
What are they doing there? “Handing out water, making sandwiches, Uber Eats runs … bringing diapers and stuff into the facilities and unloading trucks,” LaBosco said.
While attacks on passengers and flight staff are a serious problem, a larger threat looms.
Recently, feds have been conducting major sweeps of alleged ISIS terrorists and those associated with terror-tied smuggling rings who have been released into the country. Some still remain at large. And getting on a commercial flight is as easy as buying a ticket, thanks to states that issue drivers licenses regardless of immigration status.
“The long-haul flights are super important for us to be on because those are the same flights the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and took that day on 9/11,” said LaBosco.
The stop-gap border control “solution” was as well thought out as many plans by the Biden Administration. A federal watchdog report found that Transportation Security Administration failed to “assess the operational impacts” the deployments had on its “primary mission of safeguarding the nation’s transportation system.”
It wasn’t only a bad move, it was an expensive bad move. The watchdog also found that TSA spent $45 million on the border deployments between May 2019 and August 2023,
The Biden Administration spent $45 million to keep Americans less safe while flying. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has identified a “high risk of foreign and domestic terrorism” in 2024.
Limiting the number of asylum seekers crossing the border isn’t going to fix this. Neither is a dog and pony show aimed at convincing voters that the president is up for the job despite his age.
Biden should get a grip on securing our country by instructing the Dept. of Homeland Security and TSA to pull back the air marshals and put them where they need to be – on commercial flights.
It would be a good idea to beef up their ranks as well.
As for the need for food runs and handing out supplies at the border? Progressive Democrats who support open border policies should step up and volunteer for the task. Think of the photo ops.
Biden has been spending taxpayers’ money like there’s no tomorrow – at least he can fund ways to keep us safe. Stop sending air marshals to the border, Mr. President, and put them back in the skies where they’re needed.
