Adam Schiff is used to taking softball questions from legacy media journalists.
But there was one Democrat failure he couldn't hide from.
Now he's squirming after a liberal journalist cornered him on live TV with one question he had no answer for.
Democrats Kept the DHS Shutdown Going While Terror Attacks Hit America
NBC's Kristen Welker confronted Senator Adam Schiff on Meet the Press about the attack in Norfolk, Virginia, and the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan – two terror strikes in a single afternoon, with Americans dead and children cowering in smoke-filled hallways.
"Is it responsible for Democrats to hold up DHS funding with the threat of terror attacks looming during this conflict?" Welker asked.
Schiff's answer was everything you needed to know about the Democrat Party in 2026.
He blamed Republicans – this from a man who voted four times to keep the Department of Homeland Security unfunded while TSA agents missed paychecks, more than 300 quit, FEMA reserves dropped to $4 billion, and the Coast Guard runs on fumes.
What Democrats Actually Demanded to Shut Down the DHS
Democrats attached a set of demands that would kneecap ICE operations nationwide.
No more "roving patrols." Judicial warrants required before ICE could enter a home – even chasing a violent criminal. Agents had to unmask and wear body cameras. And any investigation into ICE conduct had to be signed off by the same sanctuary city police departments that have spent years refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement..
DHS has now been partially shut down for a month.
The ISIS-trained gunman who walked into an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University on March 12 shouted "Allahu Akbar" before opening fire. He killed Lt. Col. Brandon Shah – a retired Army officer who had devoted his life to training the next generation of soldiers.
He had been released early from a federal prison sentence through a program the Bureau of Prisons is now reviewing. The ROTC students in that room did what their government wouldn't – they subdued and killed him with their bare hands.
Hours later in Michigan, Ayman Ghazali waited outside Temple Israel for two hours with a truck loaded with fireworks and jugs of gasoline before driving it into the building. More than 140 children were inside. Armed security guards exchanged fire with him and stopped the attack before it reached the classrooms.
That same week: a gunman in Austin killed three people in an entertainment district while wearing a shirt bearing an Iranian flag. Two men in New York City hurled homemade bombs at a protest outside the mayor's home in what the FBI called an ISIS-inspired attack.
The FBI had been warning for weeks that Islamic-terror retaliation tied to the war in Iran was the threat keeping every law enforcement official up at night.
Democrats kept the shutdown running through all of it.
The Shutdown Democrats Want You to Forget They Started
Democrats have a playbook here and it isn't subtle. Offer a "unanimous consent" vote to fund FEMA while leaving the rest of Homeland Security unfunded. Republicans vote it down. Schiff walks to a microphone and tells America it's their fault FEMA isn't funded.
Schiff ran that play on Sunday. "We offered vote after vote, resolution after resolution – even as recently as this week – to reopen those agencies, to fund them, and the Republicans voted it down," he told Welker.
Every single one of those votes was designed to defund ICE while rebranding the shutdown as a Republican problem.
House Appropriations Chairman Mark Amodei exposed the con during committee testimony: if Democrats shut down DHS over ICE, deportation flights keep flying. ICE keeps operating on its $75 billion appropriation from the Big Beautiful Bill.
The agencies that go dark are TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. Democrats chose to black out those agencies because gutting ICE directly wasn't possible. So they held everything else hostage instead.
Jake Tapper asked Cory Booker the same question Welker asked Schiff. Booker's answer was nearly word for word identical.
Schiff spent years calling himself a guardian of the American people. Two terror attacks in one afternoon, a month-long shutdown of the agency built to stop them, and he spent his Sunday morning on NBC blaming the other party.
The American people are watching and they know who did this.
Sources:
- Leo Briceno, "Dem senators in the hot seat as Republicans rip their DHS vote amid terror threats," Fox News, March 13, 2026.
- Haley Chi-Sing, "Schiff, Booker deflect on shutdown blame amid terror concerns, thousands of DHS workers without pay," Fox News, March 15, 2026.
- "Facing Reality: Democrats Ignore the Facts Heading into a DHS Shutdown," House Committee on Appropriations – Republicans, March 2026.
- Bob Hoge, "Unconscionable: Democrats Vote to Continue Schumer Shutdown Amidst Terror Attacks, Chaos at Airports," RedState, March 12, 2026.
- CBS News Staff, "Old Dominion gunman previously convicted for ISIS support, was released early from federal prison," CBS News, March 13, 2026.
- "Terror attacks at Michigan synagogue and Virginia university rattle sense of safety," CNN, March 13, 2026.
- Joseph Chalfant, "Despite Terror Attacks, Dems Vow to Continue DHS Shut Down to Block ICE From Polling Sites," Townhall, March 9, 2026.