Republicans still have yet to offer Democrats anything in exchange for their vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, so DHS remains shut down, and non-ICE employees are currently working unpaid. That includes the Transportation Security Administration, which has become a bit of a problem for air travelers recently, since it’s hard to stop workers from calling in sick when they already aren’t getting a paycheck. And when workers don’t show up, the security lines get long. Plenty of people would love to fix that, but Trump? CBS News reports he just rejected another offer to get TSA agents paid, this time from Elon Musk himself.
Last Saturday, Musk tweeted that he’d be willing to pay the TSA agents while DHS is shut down, and according to CBS News, it was a legitimate enough offer that the White House seriously considered it before finally saying no. Without more information, you could be forgiven for assuming Trump rejected Elon’s offer because he thought it would help the Democrats, and he’d rather screw over TSA agents than help the opposition. Except, in a move almost no one saw coming, CBS News cited an anonymous source in the administration who claimed they actually rejected Musk’s offer because “there could be legal challenges for Musk to cover the pay, even indirectly, because of Musk’s various government contracts.”
Yes, believe it or not, the suggestion here is that the Trump administration decided not to take Elon’s money over legal concerns. Seriously. I guess broken clocks and all, but it still feels weird. We also can’t discount the possibility that some of these unnamed sources may be lying.
It was already illegal
To be clear, it would have been illegal due to the fact that 18 U.S.C. § 209 specifically bars private citizens from paying the salaries of executive branch employees, and I don’t think you have to be a legal scholar to understand why that’s not allowed. I mean, just imagine how much pull a billionaire would have if they were effectively signing a federal agency’s paychecks, as well as the things those in charge would do to keep the money flowing. It would all probably be pretty bad!
So, while Musk’s status as a government contractor shouldn’t actually have anything to do with whether or not the White House rejected his offer, they at least made the legally correct decision. That said, they did reportedly consider having Musk donate about $250 million to the general fund and then pretending that was a legitimate way to skirt the law, but they ultimately decided against borrowing inspiration from network political television. Apparently, they’re also saying they expect Schumer and Jeffries to cave and end the shutdown soon, which both sounds made up and also would be the least surprising thing to happen since starting a war with Iran caused gas prices to skyrocket.
That said, this isn’t the first time Trump has rejected an offer to fund TSA and get those workers paid. The first time around, Senate Republicans approached Trump with a deal that the Democrats had reportedly agreed to support that would have funded the rest of DHS, gotten those TSA agents paid, and kicked the can that is ICE funding a little further down the road. We aren’t talking about a rogue group of vulnerable senators who defied leadership here, either. Senate Majority Leader John Thune supported the deal and tried to get Trump to agree to it without success.
As much as this shutdown sucks for the TSA agents who aren’t getting paid, the White House was still correct to reject Musk’s offer. If you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at Trump, the guy who had an offer on the table, could have ended the shutdown with bipartisan support, and chose not to.
