President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will soon sign an order to pay all employees of the Department of Homeland Security, even as congressional Republicans struggled to bring an end to a record-setting partial government shutdown that is now headed through the Easter weekend.
"I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security," Trump wrote on his social media site. "Their families have suffered far too long." The step would widen an earlier order that covered airport security screeners to reach other workers at the department.
The announcement came as House Republican leaders gave ground on a Senate plan to end the shutdown. That measure, passed with bipartisan support last week, would fund DHS agencies except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, leaving Trump's immigration crackdown out of the package.
The House did not act on it. In a very brief ceremonial session, it adjourned until Monday, after Senate Majority Leader John Thune sent the Senate's own measure back to the chamber.
A contentious conference call among House Republicans showed the strain. Lawmakers pushed back hard against Speaker Mike Johnson over his sharp reversal on the Senate bill, which he had called "a joke" only days earlier. Some members proposed holding the Senate bill until a second, party-line measure funding ICE and Border Patrol passes, a process that could take months or might never finish.
The most visible effects of the shutdown eased this week after Trump directed DHS to pay airport security screeners. That ended the hourslong lines at some airport checkpoints, which had been growing longer each day. Trump now appears set to use a similar workaround to pay other staff, including the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Most of those employees have gone without paychecks since the shutdown began in mid-February.
Democrats claimed victory, saying the divided GOP effectively yielded to pressure and agreed to reopen the rest of DHS after nearly 50 days while pursuing a Republican-only effort to fund the immigration crackdown. "House Republicans own the longest government shutdown in history," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. "Their division and dysfunction is needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers."
Thune countered that Republicans prevailed because they did not agree to any of the changes to the immigration crackdown that Democrats had sought. "We didn't cave," he said. "They got zero of the reforms they were advocating." He acknowledged he did not know when the House would act. "I don't know the particulars around what the House will do with it," he told reporters. "My assumption is, at some point, hopefully, they'll move it."
Republicans say they will try to fund ICE and Border Patrol through reconciliation, a party-line spending process that could take months. Neither outcome is guaranteed, and the approach could still meet resistance from some GOP factions, particularly far right-wing hard-liners who may demand that unrelated measures, such as Trump's proposed voting restrictions, be included.
