Just how ignorant are Americans about what goes on in Washington? The Democrats’ latest messaging barrage is certainly testing those limits. In a strategy that would be comical if it weren’t so pathetic, both minority leaders are suggesting that it’s the Republicans’ fault that Homeland Security isn’t funded. Republicans! The same party that’s held six straight votes since Valentine’s Day to reopen the agency and protect the nation’s homeland, unsuccessfully. “That’s what they do, right?” Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said of the finger-pointing. “And they’re good at it. … The big difference is, they have 90% of the legacy media backing them up.”

Of course, you can’t blame Democrats for getting creative with the facts when the folly of their idea — closing the government department responsible for preventing the terrorism we’ve witnessed at a Michigan synagogue, Old Dominion, and an Austin bar — becomes more outrageous by the day. Desperately looking for an off-ramp from the corner they’ve backed themselves into, Minority Leaders Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have suddenly decided to play ball on an issue that’s made DHS employees, travelers, and Americans’ sense of safety suffer.

In a letter to his party on Monday, Jeffries announced that Democrats were ready to vote on funding most of DHS after hundreds of TSA agents quit. And who can blame them, former Homeland Security leader Ken Cuccinelli asked? “They’re not getting rich doing these jobs. They live paycheck to paycheck.” Now, a full month into working without pay, some employees just can’t survive the financial pressure. This is, Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis pointed out, the third time in six months that these workers have been held hostage by a Democratic shutdown.

“These political stunts are causing unneeded financial hardship for our TSA officers and their families. Now, 366 TSA officers have left the force. Because of this DHS shutdown, Americans are facing HOURS long waits at airports across the country. Democrats must reopen DHS now,” Bis insisted.

As recently as last Thursday, Senate Democrats stubbornly blocked a DHS funding bill — with the exception of John Fetterman (Pa.), who is openly frustrated with the dishonest nature of his party’s crusade. “We all have to acknowledge that this shutdown had no impact, zero impact on ICE, all of the funding was already in place there from the Big Beautiful Bill that I did not vote for,” he argued. “Why would you want to punish all of these workers under DHS? [The] only thing it can do is just make us less safe.”

Adding to the GOP’s frustrations, Republicans have already made some of the concessions on ICE that Schumer’s party demanded. They’ve agreed to “bodycams for everybody, training on de-escalation, inspections, and dollars to oversee the detention facilities,” Senator Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) stressed on Fox News Monday. “Those reforms are things President Trump supported.”

Since the controversial deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota after confrontations with ICE, he added, “President Trump has removed his Department of Homeland Security secretary, changed a lot of the more controversial tactics for ICE. Republicans in the Senate have agreed to provide training and body cameras for ICE agents. At some point, do you get the idea that, maybe, Democrats are not negotiating in good faith?” Because at this point, he shook his head, “they’re not taking yes for an answer.” And that’s tragic, McCormick added, because “this is pure politics. This is political theater. This is to be able to go against President Trump at a time when Americans are increasingly at risk.”

It took a violent attack on innocent people in her own state for Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin to even come around to the idea that leaving the country’s anti-terrorism agency unfunded might be a bad idea. During a press conference about the man who drove into a Michigan synagogue last week, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali (who, oh by the way, has a brother who served as a commander of Hezbollah), Slotkin admitted, “We need to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and we need, in my view, to cut away all the conversation on ICE, which is its own conversation, from all the core missions of the Department of Homeland Security,” she said.

That didn’t sit well with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who wondered how many Americans have to “get hurt or killed before [Democrats] make YOUR security a top priority? Slotkin voted EVERY TIME against funding DHS,” he fumed, “and now that an attacker tried to kill Jews at a synagogue in her home state of Michigan, she’s ready to fund Homeland Security!”

And yet Jeffries tries to gaslight us all with the claim that DHS has been shut down because of Donald Trump and “Republican extremists.” No, DHS has been shut down so that Democrats could pretend to take a hard line against the president, hoping no one would notice that the agency they despise — ICE — is already funded.

Their farce hasn’t gone over well in corporate America, where airline CEOs are blasting Washington for using their industry as a “political football.” “This problem is solvable,” they argue, “and there are solutions on the table. Now it’s up to you, Congress, to move forward on bipartisan proposals that will get federal aviation workers — including TSA officers, U.S. Customs clearance officers at airports and air traffic controllers — paid during shutdowns,” wrote executives from American Airlines, United, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and Alaska Air Group, as well as Atlas Air Worldwide, UPS and FedEx. “It’s difficult,” they underscore, “if not impossible, to put food on the table, put gas in the car and pay rent when you are not getting paid.”

These are arguments the GOP has made over and over, Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) reiterated on “Washington Watch” Monday. “The 270,000 employees of DHS need to be paid,” he agreed. But what’s happening instead? “Democrats are standing up for the interests of illegal aliens. The Schumer shutdown [from the] fall began with the Democrats wanting to make sure that illegal aliens got government-subsidized health care,” he reminded everyone. “This Schumer shutdown is about the Democrats wanting to rewrite immigration law. It’s not about funding levels.” It’s not even about all of the reforms to ICE. The other side wants to grind all deportations and immigration enforcement to a complete stop, and the administration refuses.

“We’ve already negotiated a bipartisan Appropriation bill for DHS,” Onder explained, “but the Democrats decided to move the goalposts [and] basically use the pain they’re inflicting on the American people to give, essentially, amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. We’re not going to do that.”

The irony, of course, is that the open border Schumer’s party is anxious to return to is what led us to the heightened threats conservatives are concerned about now. “This comes after four years of having the borders be an open sieve,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) told guest host Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” last week, “where you had these dangerous individuals coming across our border with no checks.” His Texas colleague, Randy Weber (R) agreed. “When Biden got in office, of course, it was ‘Come one, come all.’ And Americans are paying the price. We have no idea who’s in this country.” It “boggles the mind what [Democrats] are trying to accomplish,” Cloud underscored.

As far as optics go, the strategy is starting to lose its luster. “We had two terrorist episodes just last week,” Onder highlighted, “and that following the bar shooting in Austin, Texas, where three lost their lives and 13 were injured — all of which appeared to be inspired by Islamic radicalism precipitated by the conflict in Iran.” He paused, adding, “I would like to think my Democrat colleagues would also care about national security here.”

For whatever reason, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) shrugged, Democrats think the shutdown is a “political winner for them.” Depending on what happens between now and the next attack, they may just find out how wrong they are.