Trump says he’ll order all DHS workers be paid as Senate bill to fund department sits with House

By Ellis Kim, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested he will order that all Department of Homeland Security employees be paid, as Congress again took steps toward ending the longest-ever partial government shutdown.

The move would expand Trump’s earlier directive for DHS to unilaterally pay Transportation and Security Administration workers in a bid to alleviate travel backlogs at understaffed airports. It was not immediately clear how the president would fund pay for the tens of thousands of other DHS staffers — including Federal Emergency Management Agency workers, civilians in the US Coast Guard, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency employees — who have been reporting for work without compensation.

“Thank you to all of our Great Congressional Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Leader John Thune, for their work this week. Republicans are UNIFIED, and moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He added later: “I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security. Their families have suffered far too long at the hands of the Extreme Liberal ‘Leaders,’ Cryin’ Chuck Schumer and Hakeem ‘High Tax’ Jeffries.”

Hours earlier, the Senate unanimously approved a bill to partially reopen the department, a step toward ending the shutdown that has roiled Congress. The measure, which does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol, is now with the House, where GOP members snubbed it last week and approved an entirely different plan that fully funded DHS.

The House is expected to consider the partial-funding measure this time, after Speaker Mike Johnson announced a two-track plan with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday. Under the ambitious agreement, GOP leaders said they would move to end the partial shutdown by partially reopening DHS and then pursue a second, larger bill this spring that will include spending for the president’s immigration and border agenda.

It’s not clear when the House will vote to pass the DHS funding bill that they had initially rejected, and approving any broader agenda bill will be a significant test for GOP leaders who are facing Congress’ tight margins just months out from the midterm elections.

Both chambers are away from Washington on their two-week recess Easter and Passover recess but have been convening brief “pro forma” sessions. The House did not take up the Senate-approved funding bill during its session on Thursday, ultimately adjourning until Monday.

House GOP sources previously told CNN that it is highly unlikely the chamber will make its moves in the next few days, with many Republicans still eager for clear assurances that the immigration funding will be delivered and still wary of the precedent of letting Democrats successfully defund parts of an agency they dislike.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have been under intense pressure to return from recess to fund DHS and pay TSA employees among other key federal workers, with TMZ publishing pictures of members leaving Washington for their home states, on vacation, at family events and on congressional trips abroad.

Thune told reporters Thursday that he assumes the House will move the legislation to reopen the department “at some point,” with “the understanding that we’re going to come behind it with the (reconciliation) bill.”

GOP leaders in both chambers know that a “reconciliation 2.0” will be extremely difficult. Members will inevitably try to load up the bill with all of their election-year priorities, including policy wishlists like voter ID that are not technically allowed in a budget-focused bill. And Republicans have also seriously talked about using the maneuver to fund Trump’s Iran war since Democrats have no interest in supporting it.

But perhaps critically, Trump publicly issued a directive to the GOP leaders to figure out full funding for DHS by June 1.

Thune on Thursday made the case for as narrow of a reconciliation bill as possible, saying, “Our theory of the case behind all this was to keep that thing as narrow and focused as possible, and that maximizes, I think, the speed at which we can do it and the support for it.”

When asked for a back story on how he came to a deal with the House, Thune said he wasn’t sure there was one but that there were a number of conversations.

“The thing that some people want to do, we can’t do,” he said. “And so, you have to figure out what’s in the realm of the possible and you got to have to just continue to define reality for people, what’s achievable in the Senate.”

But Thune projected Republican unity after an arduous several days of negotiations with the White House and House speaker.

“We’re all aligned. We all are headed in the same direction,” Thune told reporters later Thursday morning. “Obviously, we have different procedures in the Senate than they have to deal with in the House.”

Thune defended his initial plan to reopen the DHS partially and leave out funding for immigration and border enforcement — with the promise that Republicans will try to pass a bill later this spring.

“I think that plan is the one that makes sense. And I think that’s back, why we’re back where we are,” he said.

The president in recent days has again called for changing long-held Senate rules to make it easier to pass his agenda through the narrowly divided Senate chamber.

Asked specifically about how he has repeatedly staved off calls from Trump and House conservatives to kill the filibuster, Thune argued he’s persistently laid out the math.

“My job, obviously, is to define reality, and reality is that it’s nowhere even — it’s not even a close call,” he said.

“It’s not a handful of three or four Republicans in the Senate — it is a large number of Senate Republicans who feel very strongly about the filibuster, its role in our democracy and the role that it plays in giving a voice to the minority in our democracy.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Lauren Fox, Aileen Graef, Sarah Ferris, Tami Luhby and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.