<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0said Thursday he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as Congress struggled to reach a deal to\u00a0end a budget impasse\u00a0that has\u00a0jammed airports\u00a0and left workers without paychecks.<\/p>\n
Trump announced his decision in a social media post saying he wanted to quickly stop the \u201cChaos at the Airports.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!\u201d the president posted.<\/p>\n
With pressure mounting, the White House had floated the extraordinary move of invoking a national emergency to pay TSA agents, while senators were reviewing a \u201clast and final\u201d offer from Republicans to Democrats to end the\u00a0funding impasse\u00a0at the\u00a0Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n
Details of the president\u2019s plan were not immediately available, but a national emergency declaration would be politically fraught and almost certain to face legal challenges. Instead, the president may simply be shifting money from other sources.<\/p>\n
Democrats have been refusing to fund the Homeland Security as they demand changes to rein in Trump\u2019s\u00a0immigration enforcement operations. The Senate came to a standstill and senators, ready to leave town for their own spring break, had prepared to stay all night to reach a deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president is doing absolutely the right thing,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the GOP whip. \u201cThe TSA agents are going to be paid.”<\/p>\n
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, has said there was funding elsewhere that can be legally used to pay TSA as well as the Coast Guard, without declaring a national emergency.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0funding shutdown,\u00a0now in its 41st day, has resulted in\u00a0travel delays,\u00a0missed paychecks and even\u00a0warnings of airport closures. TSA workers are coming up on their second missed payday Friday, with thousands refusing to show up for work.<\/p>\n
Multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers and nearly 500 of its nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have now quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Wednesday, more than 11% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,120 callouts.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has largely left the issue to Congress to resolve, had warned he was ready to take action, even threatening to send the National Guard to airports, in addition to his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers’ IDs \u2014 a development drawing concerns. The White House has been considering a menu of options.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to end this shutdown immediately or we’ll have to take drastic measures,\u201d Trump said during a morning Cabinet meeting at the White House.<\/p>\n
At\u00a0George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston,\u00a0Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting more than 2\u00bd hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have just driven, right?\u201d Gates said. \u201cFive hours would have been hilarious next to this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier Thursday,\u00a0Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., announced he had given the final offer to the Democrats.<\/p>\n
Thune did not disclose details of the new framework, but he said that it picked up on what had been the Republican offer over the weekend, before talks with the White House and Democrats had broken off.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough is enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But as senators retreated to privately discuss the new plan, the action stalled out.<\/p>\n
Democrats argue the GOP proposals have not gone far enough at putting guardrails on officers from ICE, Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies who are engaged in the immigration sweeps, particularly after the\u00a0deaths of two Americans\u00a0protesting the actions in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
They want federal agents to wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places. Democrats have also pushed for an end of administrative warrants, insisting that judges sign off before agents search people’s homes or private spaces.<\/p>\n
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said they needed to see real changes. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about ICE reforms from day one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Any deal will almost certainly need to involve a compromise as lawmakers on the left and right flanks revolt. Conservative Republicans have panned their own GOP proposals, demanding full funding for immigration operations and skeptical of the promise from leaders that they would address Trump\u2019s proof-of-citizenship\u00a0voting bill\u00a0in a subsequent legislative package.<\/p>\n
Republicans said after a private lunch meeting that there were other options to shift money than invoking the national emergency.<\/p>\n
The GOP\u2019s\u00a0big tax cuts bill\u00a0that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the money is flowing for his immigration and deportation agenda even with the funding shutdown. ICE and other immigration officers are still being paid.<\/p>\n
Republicans say the Trump administration has already made strides to meet Democrats\u2019 demands, particularly after swearing in former\u00a0Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin\u00a0as the new homeland security secretary to replace Kristi Noem. He has given a nod to the need for the judicial warrants for searches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a dire situation,\u201d the acting TSA administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, testified at a House hearing Wednesday.<\/p>\n
She described the\u00a0multiple hardships\u00a0facing unpaid TSA workers \u2014 piling up bills and eviction notices, even plasma donations to make ends meet \u2014 and warned of potential airport closures if more employees refuse to come to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, we have to look at all options on the table,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
McNeil also said TSA officers working at the nation\u2019s airports have experienced a more than 500% increase in the frequency of assaults since the shutdown began.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is unacceptable,\u201d McNeill said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0said Thursday he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as Congress struggled to reach a deal to\u00a0end a budget impasse\u00a0that has\u00a0jammed airports\u00a0and left workers without paychecks. Trump announced his decision in a social media post saying he wanted to quickly stop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1976,1587,1997,1782,2678,1658,2060,612,690,1058,174,2196],"class_list":["post-23906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-agents","tag-congress","tag-deal","tag-funding","tag-hell","tag-order","tag-pay","tag-reach","tag-sign","tag-struggles","tag-trump","tag-tsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}