'Near-empty chamber' appalls onlookers as only 5 senators attend midnight TSA crisis vote

Onlookers were left baffled early Friday after a “near-empty chamber” in the Senate managed to advance a major spending bill that would direct tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

At around 3 a.m. Friday, the Senate adopted a bill to fund most of DHS, excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, bringing lawmakers one step closer to ending the growing airport disruptions caused by the funding lapse. As noted by Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio, however, only five senators were present for the vote.

“I don’t understand. Five people is a quorum in the Senate?” asked X user “The Nashvillian,” a fierce critic of the Trump administration who’s amassed more than 4,500 followers.

While Senate rules require a majority of its 100 members be present to conduct legislative business – referred to as a quorum – a loophole exists by which less than a majority can conduct business and pass bills – so long as no member objects.

Under the Senate’s rules, a quorum is assumed to exist by default, regardless of how many members are in the chamber, and is only verified at the request of a senator through what’s called a quorum call. None of the five senators in the chamber Friday morning issued a quorum call and, thereby, allowed just a handful of lawmakers to advance a bill related to tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

“And they call us a democracy,” wrote Solomon Ni, a progressive advocate and student leader at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Dave Peterson, a Canadian climate change advocate, wrote to his nearly 3,000 followers on X that the ability of a paltry five senators to approve the allocation of tens of billions of dollars had solidified Congress becoming “a not-funny joke.”