Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was spotted flying first class on a 2:49 p.m. flight out of Reagan National Airport late Friday, while lawmakers from both sides of the aisle continue to go back and forth on a tense government funding showdown directly involving the pay of TSA agents at airports across the country.
.@TMZ making sure you saw Democrat socialist Bernie Sanders living large on his first class flight out of DC while he forces Americans to go without pay. pic.twitter.com/Nq2KxTtMC1
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 27, 2026
The timing of Sanders skipping town is raising eyebrows as his flight out of D.C. departed 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 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.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the wealthiest people in the world are racing to “make human labor obsolete.” pic.twitter.com/dwfbqJlnuI
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 27, 2026
The senator is often criticized for railing against the wealthy, despite himself being a millionaire who owns three homes.
However, it’s Sanders’s first class jaunt that’s causing people to call him a hypocrite amid the shutdown after it was reported that Sanders left D.C. to attend a “No Kings” rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, over the weekend.
As travelers across America 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.
However, Delta Air Lines suspended its special “congressional desk,” but according to a Daily Wire report, lawmakers were still able to skip the security lines.
About an hour after Sanders’s flight took off, President Donald Trump swooped in to Johnson’s side, saying the Senate bill — which carved ICE and Border Patrol out of DHS funding — “wasn’t appropriate.”
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.
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.