Virtual Ministry Archive

October 27, 2025 (Monday) This morning, around 2 million federal workers checked their bank accounts. Nothing. Day 27 of the shutdown. The first full pay period gone. Air traffic controllers showed up anyway. TSA agents. Border Patrol. FBI. Coast Guard. All classified as "essential"—which means you work, but we don't pay you. Congress got paid Friday. Every one of them. Yesterday, the USDA posted a message on its official website: "Bottom line, the well has run dry.” Forty-two million Americans use SNAP. One in eight Americans. Children. Seniors. Veterans. People with disabilities. Working people. "If the SNAP program shuts down," Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, told NPR, "we will have the most mass hunger suffering we've had in America since the Great Depression." The well has run dry, the USDA says. The USDA has a $6 billion contingency fund. Congress allocated it specifically for emergencies like this. Food policy experts say the administration is legally obligated to use it. Trump won't. Over the last 17 weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson's House of Representatives worked on Capitol Hill for 20 days. Johnson canceled next week too. The House won't be back before November 1st, when the food stamps stop. Congress got paid for all 17 weeks. A TSA agent at JFK checked his bank account this morning. Day 27. Nothing. Daycare costs $1,200 a month. He has $91. He showed up for his shift anyway. Searched 1,200 bags today. One for every dollar he doesn't have. Here's what else keeps running: Tax collection—the IRS is still taking money out of paychecks while federal workers get nothing. ICE—fully operational, conducting Trump's raids. Prisons—fully staffed. Military operations—wars don't pause. Debt collection—the Treasury still garnishes wages. America has had 11 shutdowns since 1976. No other developed democracy does this. Canada doesn't. Germany doesn't. Japan doesn't. They keep operating at last year's funding until deals are reached. But here, a shutdown stops child nutrition services and furloughs food inspectors, while Congress never misses their $174,000 salaries with complimentary gym memberships. They don't close the whole government. They close the parts that help you and keep the parts that serve power. April 15, 1912. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Over 1,500 people died. First-class passengers: 62% survived. Second-class: 42%. Third-class: 25%. Everyone knows "women and children first." What's left out: first-class men survived at 33%. Third-class children survived at 34%. Being a wealthy man gave you nearly the same odds as being a poor child. Here's what kept running perfectly as the ship went down: The crew maintaining order. Stewards at gates between classes. Officers loading lifeboats according to protocol—even when it meant launching them half-empty. Lifeboat 1 had capacity for 40. It launched with 12. Radio operators sent distress signals until water took them. Musicians played to prevent panic. All died at their posts. The enforcement of order never failed. Here's what "shut down": The routes that would have saved third-class passengers. They were housed five decks below the lifeboats. The direct path went through first-class areas where they normally weren't allowed. During evacuation, those restrictions stayed in place. Gates remained. Daniel Buckley, third-class passenger, testified to the U.S. Senate: There was one passenger getting up the steps, just as he was going through a gate, a crewman came along and threw him back down. Threw him down into the steerage place. The crewman locked the gate. Another passenger broke it down. Buckley's group got through. Saturday, October 26, 2025. Portland ICE building. Video shows a federal agent speaking with a protester standing on the public sidewalk. The agent reaches across the blue line painted on the ground—the boundary between public property and federal jurisdiction. He pulls the protester over the line. The moment the person crosses, other officers move forward. Arrest. The line didn't enforce itself. Someone decided where to paint it. Someone decided who could cross it, and in which direction. The protester didn't step over. They were pulled over. Then arrested for being on the wrong side. No general alarm for third-class. No evacuation plan. Many weren't told what was happening until water reached their decks. The ship had lifeboats. They launched half-empty. The systems of rescue were "overwhelmed." The systems of order kept running until the water took them under. The same pattern is running now. Every shutdown since 1976. The pattern repeats. The systems that control you never have resource problems. The systems that serve you are always overwhelmed. Air traffic control is breaking down. 196 shortages since the shutdown began, four times higher than last year. Essential workers showing up without pay, trying to keep planes safe. The system is breaking down. Overwhelmed. Meanwhile, ICE operates at full capacity. Prisons fully staffed. Military operations continue. Debt collection never stopped. These systems are never overwhelmed. They always have the resources they need. The USDA says the well has run dry for food stamps. But ICE has the resources to conduct raids. The government can't figure out how to use a $6 billion contingency fund specifically allocated for emergencies like this. But it can figure out how to keep garnishing wages during a shutdown. The House worked 20 days out of 17 weeks. Congress got paid for all of them. Two million workers missed their paychecks this morning. Congress's 17-week salary for 20 days of work: $57 million. They could have fed 400,000 families for a month. What keeps running? The apparatus that makes sure you comply, you pay, you stay in line. Enforcement. Control. Collection. Order. ICE raids at full capacity. Federal prisons fully staffed. Congressional paychecks delivered on time—$174,000, all 17 weeks. Debt collection never pauses. Military operations continue. What shuts down? The parts that serve you. Food stamps for 42 million Americans. Air traffic control breaking down, controllers sleeping in cars. Paychecks for 2 million workers, day 27, nothing. Food inspectors furloughed. Child nutrition programs closed. Safety systems at breaking point. Like the Titanic, it's not about actual scarcity. The ship had lifeboats. They launched half-empty. The government has money—a $6 billion contingency fund sitting unused while the USDA claims the well has run dry. The question is never "do we have resources?" The question is always "who gets access to them?" First-class passengers didn't need to break down gates to reach lifeboats. The routes for them stayed open. The crew made sure of it. Third-class passengers had to climb cargo cranes, break through locked gates, navigate five decks through a maze while the ship tilted and water rose. Many drowned in corridors, trying to find a way up. The ship didn't treat everyone equally. By design. The government classifies ICE agents and food stamp recipients differently. One is essential—the apparatus to enforce must keep running. The other is a benefit that can be paused. When you classify food as "non-essential" during a crisis, you're making a statement about who matters. The 2 million workers showing up without pay? Essential enough to work. Not essential enough to pay. The 42 million losing food stamps? Not classified as essential at all. This is the Titanic's logic. First-class men survived at the same rate as third-class children because the system classified first-class men as more essential. The ICE arrests are public. The unpaid workers are public. The food stamp cuts are public. The $6 billion contingency fund is public. All visible. All documented. The Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink after hitting the iceberg. Lifeboats launched half-empty while third-class passengers drowned behind locked gates. The treasury is not empty. The well has never run dry. The air traffic controllers are at breaking point. The TSA agents are calling in sick. The agent at JFK will show up tomorrow. Day 27. His daughter still needs daycare.. The government still has $6 billion it won't spend. The systems of rescue are "overwhelmed." The systems of order keep running.


she is fucken busted!!!