Marni Larsen and her son, Damon Rasmussen of Holladay, Utah, wait their turn in line hoping to snag her son’s passport outside the Los Angeles Passport Agency at the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Larsen applied for her son’s passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A much-feared backup of U.S. passport applications has snarled summer plans for would-be travelers around the world. Somewhere around March, people who thought they were renewing or applying for new passports in plenty of time for their summer trips flooded what the State Department says is a system still short-staffed from cuts during the pandemic. Some 500,000 applications are submitted a week, setting the process up to issue more than the 22 million passports issued last year. That’s created a mini-nation of people with family dreams and big money at stake holding the phone, refreshing the screen, queuing up, spending more money and fuming online — before any of them set foot near an airport.