Markwayne Mullin sat in a Washington office this Tuesday and admitted the money is gone. The Homeland Security Secretary told Politico that the department will run out of funds to pay employee salaries by the first week of May. The admission comes as the federal government enters its second month of a shutdown that has paralyzed the domestic administrative state. Mullin's payroll is currently bleeding $1.6 billion every two weeks, and there are "no more emergency funds" left to tap.

While the brass in D.C. bicker over a funding package, the frontline workers are being hung out to dry. Republicans are currently pushing a package that funds some agencies while punting money for Border Protection into a future budget battle. Mullin was blunt about the math: "the money is going extremely fast and once that happens, there is no emergency funds after that."

This is the predictable outcome of administrative arbitrage. While the elites in the 'Project Glasswing' circle secure their own private perimeters with autonomous AI, the actual physical infrastructure of the state is being liquidated. The department's financial straits are a direct result of a system that prioritizes corporate subsidies over the basic paychecks of its own auditors and officers.