October 2, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed a promised executive action to pay Transportation Security Administration employees after a bid to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security abruptly fell apart in Congress.
Trump signed the action intending to ease long security lines at many of the nation’s top airports.
“America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” Trump said in the memo authorizing the payments. He added, "I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”
Trump said his administration would use “funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations” for the payments. In a statement on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said TSA workers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday.”
While Trump's action could help ease the plight of air travelers, it does little to resolve the DHS shutdown that has jammed airports and imposed financial hardship on thousands of federal workers. The House and Senate ended the week by passing vastly different bills, creating a new impasse as lawmakers leave Washington for a two-week recess.
The shutdown of Homeland Security will reach 44 days on Sunday, eclipsing the record 43-day shutdown last fall that affected all of the federal government.
The Senate passed a funding deal early Friday, but blowback from House Republicans came quickly. House Speaker Mike Johnson, upon opening the chamber for business, accused Democrats of playing a dangerous game and said he needed to talk with fellow Republicans about how to proceed.
After a lengthy conference call, Johnson blasted the Senate's action and announced that the House would be going down a different route. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Johnson said.
Instead, the House on Friday night passed a bill to fund the entire department through May 22. The vote was 213-203. Johnson said he had spoken with Trump about the House plan, and the president supported it.
House Republicans were livid that the bill passed by the Senate does not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Democrats refused to fund those departments without changes to immigration enforcement practices.
"We're going to do something different,” Johnson said. He challenged the Senate to take up the House's short-term fix to fund Homeland Security into May.
But senators left town after voting to fund most of DHS, so it would take time for them to return once the House passes a different measure. And even if they were to return, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer made clear the House GOP plan would be “dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it.”
The DHS shutdown has resulted in travel delays and even warnings of airport closures as more TSA workers missing paychecks stopped going to work. Those workers had already endured the nation's longest government shutdown last fall.
Multiple airports have been experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers, and nearly 500 of the agency's nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Thursday, more than 11.8% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,450 callouts.
Share with others
