Did Jacob Frey miss the headlines—or just hope viewers did?
The Minneapolis mayor raised eyebrows Sunday after going on national television and suggesting that Donald Trump could simply “hire out more TSA agents” to fix the mounting airport chaos.
There’s just one glaring issue: during a partial government shutdown, that’s not how it works.
Appearing on The Weekend, Frey seemed to overlook a basic reality—funding for the Transportation Security Administration is frozen, thanks in part to a political standoff in Washington. And yes, that includes resistance from his own party when it comes to funding the broader Department of Homeland Security.
The mayor’s comments came after host Jonathan Capehart pressed him about what he called an “incredible threat” from Trump—referring to the president’s suggestion that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to help with long airport lines.
Frey wasn’t impressed—and didn’t hold back.
“When he says that he’s going to do security like no one has ever seen before, he doesn’t actually mean that he’s going to keep people secure. If the goal here was safety at airports, he could hire out more TSA agents that do an incredible job at keeping our airports safe,” he said.
The problem? That suggestion ignores the shutdown reality entirely. No funding, no hiring—simple as that. Even more striking: no one on the panel stepped in to correct the claim. Frey doubled down, pivoting to broader criticism of the administration:
“If the goal was keeping our streets safe and our cities [safe], he would work with cities around hiring additional police officers and creating the kind of safety infrastructure that we need to keep people safe.”
Then came the accusation that raised the political temperature:
“But of course, we all know that’s not the goal. The goal is to terrorize people. And for someone that states that they care so much about bringing the economy back — causing a ton of fear in airports, preventing the kind of safe air travel that we need for commerce, is not a good mechanism to do it.”
Strong words—but they sidestep an inconvenient truth.
Just days earlier, Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed funding bill that would have kept TSA and other Homeland Security functions running smoothly. It marked the fifth such standoff in recent months. Democrats have pushed alternative funding proposals—ones that redirect money away from immigration enforcement—but Republicans have rejected those efforts.
Meanwhile, the situation at airports has been deteriorating fast.
As the shutdown dragged into Day 36, reports surfaced that thousands of TSA workers were calling out sick daily. Hundreds more had already quit. That left roughly 50,000 agents scrambling to manage growing crowds and increasingly frustrated travelers. Faced with that pressure, Trump floated a stopgap measure: using ICE personnel to help ease the burden and move lines faster. It’s not a perfect solution—but in a funding freeze, options are limited. And that’s the part Frey conveniently left out.
