WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday night he would immediately begin paying Transportation Security Administration workers through an emergency executive order.

The order promised to end long delays at the nation’s airports and allow TSA workers to get paychecks they have been denied during a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that has persisted for more than 40 days.

It also offered a partial reprieve for Congress, which has been locked in a bitter partisan standoff over immigration enforcement policies that has kept the department unfunded for weeks. Long lines at airport checkpoints and complaints from TSA workers had become critical pressure points in a search for an end to the shutdown.

“Because the Democrats have recklessly created a true National Crisis, I am using my authorities under the Law to protect our Great Country, as I always will do!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Therefore, I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports.”

But the decision could also mean that a final deal on Homeland Security funding could drag on even longer, now that a key pressure valve has been released. Other agencies under Homeland Security that still await funding for the current fiscal year include the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Before Trump’s announcement, senators were working into the evening Thursday to salvage a last-minute deal that could end the partial shutdown.

But with no sign of imminent progress, it wasn’t clear how much longer lawmakers were prepared to keep negotiating as the lure of a two-week recess slated to begin Friday set in.

And the two parties spent much of the day sniping at each other using increasingly heated rhetoric as frustrations grew to a boil.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., compared the funding talks with Democrats to U.S. negotiations with Iran.

“Just keep bombing the s--- out of them while you’re negotiating with them, because you’re never gonna be able to believe them when they say they’re going to do something anyway,” Cramer said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has angrily denied Republican charges that his party was moving the goalposts as negotiations flailed, saying such an accusation was “poppycock.”

Plans in flux

But for all the heated words, senators continued to negotiate behind the scenes over immigration enforcement policy in hopes of ending a partial shutdown that neither side claims to want. It wasn’t clear whether Trump’s decision would alter plans to continue negotiations or simply head home for the recess.

Some senators had been expecting to stay in town through the weekend to continue talks, as leadership had threatened to cut into the coming recess, absent a deal.

House leaders, meanwhile, put their members on notice that additional votes Friday or over the weekend were possible if a Senate deal emerges.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., characterized the latest counteroffer from Republicans Thursday as their “last and final.”

The Republican leader didn’t provide much further detail about the plan but said the proposal reflects language requested by Democrats “that we did everything we could to accommodate.”

Thune said Trump’s decision to pay TSA agents “takes the immediate pressure off” of the DHS funding negotiations. “But, you know, it’s a short-term solution,” he said.

The offers were among a handful of counters that both sides have traded for more than a month, as DHS prepares to enter its seventh week of being partially shut down, with tens of thousands of workers going without pay.

Republicans’ counter on Thursday came after they criticized an offer made by Democrats earlier in the week, which Thune knocked for “asking for things that have already been turned down.” That includes requirements for immigration agents to remove their masks and obtain judicial warrants to enter private properties — two longstanding priorities for Democrats.

Republicans have sought to tie further policy changes for immigration enforcement to funding, however. Since Democrats have been unwilling to back most Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding without significant policy changes, Thune said earlier this week that “Democrats have basically given up on the reforms.”

Some Senate Republicans have warmed to the idea of withholding some ICE funding in a potential full-year funding deal with Democrats, instead seeking to fund enforcement operations through another filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill. That’s the same maneuver that the party used last year to clear trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts without Democratic buy-in.

But not all Republicans appeared ready to endorse splitting up the DHS funding bill.

“We’ll have to see,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Thursday when asked if he would bring a Senate deal to the floor that cuts some ICE funding. He said Republicans could “have to fund it through reconciliation and find some other means,” while reiterating that the party does not favor splitting up the bill.

Doomed votes

At the same time, both chambers have continued to hold a series of doomed votes over legislation funding the entirety or parts of DHS, as both sides point fingers while long wait times at major airports across the country dominate headlines.

For the seventh time, Thune brought a House-passed Homeland Security appropriations bill back up for another procedural vote, knowing Democrats would object absent a new deal. A vote on the motion to invoke cloture, limiting debate on proceeding to the bill, was 53-46, falling shy of the 60 votes needed.

And in another replay, the House passed a slightly modified full-year funding bill for the department along mostly party lines, knowing it stood no chance of winning support in the Senate.

Four centrist House Democrats supported the measure: Maine’s Jared Golden, Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, North Carolina’s Don Davis and Texas’ Henry Cuellar.

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(Aidan Quigley, Savannah Behrmann and Valerie Yurk contributed to this report.)

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