WASHINGTON—If you’re looking for Bernie Sanders, you won’t find him here.
Vermont’s socialist senator was spotted in first class on a 2:49 p.m. flight out of Reagan National Airport Friday afternoon — minutes after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) vowed to reject the partial Department of Homeland Security funding bill Sanders and his colleagues in the upper chamber had passed around 2:00 a.m.
About an hour after Sanders’s flight took off, President Donald Trump entered the fray on Johnson’s side, saying the Senate bill — which carved ICE and Border Patrol out of DHS funding — “wasn’t appropriate.” Emboldened by the president, the House late Friday night rejected the Senate’s bill, instead passing a separate measure that would fund the entire Department of Homeland Security for 60 days.
What happens next is unclear, as Sanders wasn’t the only senator to skip town after the final vote. The Senate adjourned Friday for a two-week recess, and has no plans to reconvene before its planned April 13 return. As of Saturday morning, the partial shutdown of DHS has become the longest funding lapse in American history, surpassing 2025’s record-breaking government shutdown.
Sanders’s first-class escape makes him the latest lawmaker to be dinged for aerial hypocrisy amid the ongoing shutdown. As Americans waited up to four hours in TSA lines, members of Congress were often able to skip the lines entirely, making use of a perk exclusive to lawmakers. Delta Air Lines earned praise for suspending its special “congressional desk,” but as The Daily Wire reported, lawmakers were still able to skip the security lines.
About 20 minutes before his flight departed, Sanders took to X to slam Elon Musk and “the wealthiest people in the world” for their views on AI. The senator is often criticized for railing against the wealthy, considering he himself is a millionaire who owns three homes.
On Saturday, Sanders will attend a “No Kings” rally in St. Paul, Minnesota — an event organized to protest Trump, an elected official.
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