The wait for US passports is creating travel purgatory and snarling summer plans

Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. Her quest for three passports stretched from January to June, days before travel. Finally, she showed up in person at the federal building in downtown Houston, 30 minutes before the passport office opened. She ended up showing up at the passport office in Dallas with her daughter-in-law at 6:30 a.m. and being sorted into groups and lined up against walls. More than seven hours later, the two left the office with directions to pick up their passports the next day.