How Houston’s airports became the face of TSA funding woes

Good morning. The Senate reaches a deal to fund DHS, after President Trump announced

a separate plan for TSA workers. The Associated Press talks to us from Texas and explains

what it's like at one of the country's busiest airports.

Houston specifically has become sort of the symbol of the problems with security and

travel worlds around the country.

The White House says progress is being made in Iran, but economic indicators are going

the other way.

And to mark the nation's birthday, the world's largest steam train is crossing the U.S.

It's Friday, March 27th. I'm Cecilia L.A.

And I'm Gideon Resnick. This is Apple News today.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the Senate agreed to fund most of DHS without immigration

enforcement, after a week's long partial shutdown that had become the longest in history.

The bill must still be passed by the House, but the expectation is that that will happen

later Friday.

Pressure had been building as line spiraled at airport terminals across the country,

and TSA officers haven't been paid in over five weeks. At a cabinet meeting yesterday,

President Trump pledged to act if no deal was reached.

We're not going to let the Democrats get away with this stuff and people are wise to

them, so they need to end the shutdown immediately or we'll have to take some very drastic measures.

Before the Senate passed the funding bill, President Trump said that he would sign an executive

order to pay TSA workers immediately. He said he was using his, quote, authorities under

the law, but it wasn't clear what legal powers he was referring to, or where the money

was being directed from.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised the president, but described it as a short-term

solution. Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Trump should have

announced this week's ago.

The situation had been getting painful on the ground, and that's unlikely to change

immediately today, even if TSA payments were issued.

The acting TSA had told Congress this week that wait times at airports were the highest

that they've ever been in the agency's history. But some airports are worse than others.

You might have seen some viral videos of chaotic airport scenes, and many of those are coming

from Texas. At one point on Wednesday, it took four or more hours to get through security

at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. It got so bad at one point that TSA

payments from other airports in the state were deployed there to help.

Juan Lassano is an AP reporter in Houston who set a front row seat to this week's chaos.

The Houston Airport System has their director said that they have been dispatching other

employees like IT employees, custodial employees, office workers to help out with the line.

So they've been using those employees to help out with the long security lines at the

airports.

Most 500 TSA agents have quit since this partial shutdown began in February. But Houston

has been a significant choke point. Lassano reports that on Tuesday, for example, 11% of

TSA workers nationally did not show up for work. But at the Houston Airport, that number

was much higher.

I know on Tuesday, the TSA reported that the push had to come down to the airport at a

call rate of nearly 40%, and hobby Houston Hobby Airport had 43%, which were the highest

rates on that day or on the country.

There were a number of reasons why Houston might be faring so much worse. It's one of

the busiest airports in the country, and it's a hub for United Airlines. So delays there

can create downstream impact for flyers on those planes.

There's also the factor of high living costs. Some TSA workers cite long and expensive

commutes. Here's a TSA union spokesperson in Texas speaking to a CBS affiliate earlier

this week. He said this second government shutdown was starting to take its toll.

Last time we went three and a half paychecks without a pay. And this weekend will equivalently

be our third Miss paycheck.

On top of all that, March has been an extremely busy month of hosting for Houston.

We had the rodeo here in Houston, which had over two million visitors and a lot of

those people coming in from out of the metro area. We had the World Baseball Classic

earlier in the month where people come in from around the world, come in Houston for

some games. And this week we have Sarah Wake, which is a large energy conference, which

is over 10,000 participants from around the world.

It's unclear just how quickly the situation will improve, but getting a funding bill passed

is the first step. Cecilia has more news coming up next.

He was a deadline that started at 48 hours, then stretched to five days, and now another

10. While Trump has moved the goalpost several times, he's still threatening to attack Iran's

power plants if the state of her moves stays closed. But he's still looking for diplomatic

progress. Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday that talks were ongoing despite

Iran's claims to the contrary.

And they'll tell you we're not negotiating. We will not negotiate. Of course they're

not negotiating. They've been obliterated. Who wouldn't negotiate? They are begging to

make a deal. We'll see if we can make the right deal. And they make the right deal. Then

the straight will open up. Harmful straight will open up.

Trump says his latest deadline came at the request of the Iranians. And if you're keeping

track, that's April 6. This past week, the Trump administration said they sent a 15-point

ceasefire plan to Iran via mediators. The details have been kept private, but

some reports speculate it includes calls on Iran to dismantle its main nuclear sites,

end enrichment of uranium, and suspend its ballistic missile work.

Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Whitcoff, was at the center of the last round of talks

with Iran before the war. At that same cabinet meeting, he said the administration's proposals

have been circulated to Iran with the help of Pakistan.

I can say this. We will see where things lead. And if we can convince Iran that this is

the inflection point with no good alternatives for them, other than more death and destruction,

we have strong signs that this is a possibility, and if a deal happens, it will be great for

the country of Iran for the entire region and the world at large.

Iran is not saying that, at least publicly. In fact, they've rejected those proposals,

but they've also delivered their own conditions, which include an end to hostilities, assurances

of no-future aggression and war reparations. As for the Strait of Harmuz, an Iranian official

told state media, it was theirs to control. Bloomberg's Jumana Bersechi explained why that

could create another wedge.

They would like to retain sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, which of course is

not acceptable to many Gulf regions, and also any nation really around the world that

one country would have this much authority over such an important choke point when it

comes to global energy flow.

In other words, while talks have ramped up this week, the two sides remain very far apart.

The situation on the ground hasn't decisively moved either. Yesterday, doubts of any progress

was reflected in the markets. There were steep drops in the US and Europe, and they may

fall further. Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, told the Economist

magazine yesterday that the markets might still be overly optimistic of a return to normal.

The technical experts are telling us in terms of capacity, extraction, refinery, distribution,

too much has already been damaged, and there is no way that it can be restored in a matter

of months. Most people are actually talking about years.

So far, the US has escaped the worst of the economic pain of the war, as Europe and

Asia bear the brunt of Iran's hold on the Strait of Harmuz. But several economic indicators

suggest that could be changing. American gas prices continue to rise up 10 cents compared

to last week. The national average now sits just shy of $4 a gallon.

And yesterday, the OECD, a global policy forum warned that the war will push US inflation

1.2% higher than previously expected.

When it comes to immigration, Trump's second term has set itself apart from his first,

and the numbers make the case. Arrests have more than doubled, border crossings are way

down, and a record number of migrants have had the protected legal statuses revoked.

Detentions are up too, both for people with criminal convictions and those without. A

new pro-publica investigation has been looking at one particular slice of Trump's immigration

crackdown, cases involving parents of US-born children.

What we've found is that there were at least 11,000 US citizen kids who had an immigrant

parent detained during the first seven months of Trump's second term.

Data reporter Jeff Ernsthausen told us about his team's findings. They looked at an ice

data set that included the last three years of President Biden's term through the summer

of last year.

We found key differences in how they are treating parents of US citizen children. So Trump

is detaining and arresting these parents about twice the rate as Biden did. And the thing

that really stood out to us in analyzing this data is how differently mothers of US citizen

children are being treated. So Trump has deported these moms of US citizen kids at about four

times the rate Biden did.

Parents without any legal status present complicated challenges for the federal government. Immigration

officials can't legally detain children with US citizenship along with their parents

or deport them. According to former officials, that leads to family separations, even if

only briefly. That's what happened with a woman in Florida named Doris Flores, a local

law enforcement incident led to the discovery that she and her fiance had deportation orders.

The Honduran woman was detained and arrested, then separated from her two US citizen children,

a four month old and an eight year old.

And so in the middle of the night, these parents had to suddenly figure out what to do with

their kids, or though you were going to end up in foster care.

Ultimately, the parents were deported to Honduras and the family's pastor cared for the

children, eventually facilitating travel logistics so that both children could join their parents.

Current and former DHS officials told ProPublica that practices like these aren't necessarily

violating any policy, and that managing families with different rights is complicated.

Federal policy does say, however, that ICE officers should ask people they arrest if they

are parents or legal guardians. And if so, they should be allowed to make child care arrangements.

But ProPublica found that some of the wording of these guidelines has changed under the

Trump administration. They found, for example, that the word humane was stripped from a preamble

that instructed how agents should handle immigrant parents.

DHS responded to a reporting, basically emphasizing that they don't arrest US citizens. And they

more or less said that a family's want to avoid this, they should self-deport.

A DHS spokesperson also said that ICE does not separate families.

And finally, a few other stories were following.

Nicolas Maduro was back in a US court yesterday. A federal judge rejected an attempt to dismiss

drug trafficking charges for the ousted Venezuelan president and his wife, Celia Flores.

Maduro's lawyer had made the argument that the drug trafficking indictment against them

should be thrown out because the US government was restricting the former first couple's

ability to pay for their defense. The judge ruled that the highly anticipated trial would

continue, but didn't say if Maduro would be allowed to use funds from the Venezuelan government.

Maduro and his wife were captured in January by US forces during a nighttime raid. A federal

indictment alleges that the former president and other co-conspirators has spent decades

moving large quantities of cocaine to the US.

The International Olympic Committee has decided that only biological female athletes will

be allowed to compete in female category events at the Olympics, a change that bans

transgender athletes. On Thursday, the IOC introduced a gene screening test that will

determine eligibility for all athletes. Here's its president, Christy Coventry.

So it's absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in

the female category. In addition, in some sports, it would simply not be safe.

The new rule will apply for the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles and onwards.

According to Reuters, the policy is expected to be widely adopted by international sports

federations and become a universal rule for competitors in female elite sports. The

IOC called the test unintrusive and said it will only be done once in the athlete's

career. They added that exceptions would be made for rare sex development disorders. Shortly

before the announcement, a coalition of advocacy groups called on the IOC to abandon any plans

for genetic screen testing, arguing that it would undermine the commitment to dignity and

fairness the IOC claimed to uphold. In this weekend, a legendary train begins a special

cross-country tour. The largest steam locomotive in the world, known as the Union Pacific's

Big Boy No. 4014, will take off from Wyoming and make its way to the East Coast as a special

commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Union Pacific was first

formed when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which directed

the construction of the nation's first transcontinental railroad. 25 Big Boy locomotives were originally

built to haul heavy freight during World War II. Number 4014 is the only one still in operation

today. Trade enthusiasts can catch a glimpse of this Big Boy at its various stops including

in Salt Lake City, Utah, Trekkie, California, Chicago, Illinois, and Scranton, Pennsylvania,

among others. If you happen to catch a glimpse of this legend, Union Pacific reminds train

fans to stay at least 25 feet from the tracks. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple

News app, and if you're already listening in the news app right now, stick around for the latest

episode of Apple News in Conversation. This week, guest host Sam Sanders talked to health scholar

Samantha King and sociologist Gavin Whedon about how Americans became obsessed with protein,

and what we should know about our own intake. People can only eat so much, and so supplementing

foods with protein and making claims about the health benefits of that, and being able to

charge more for that is a way to get people to spend more on food than they otherwise would.

If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News in Conversation to find that

episode, or come back to the Apple News today, feed tomorrow. All new episodes of In Conversation

will be available there on Saturdays, too. Enjoy the weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.