House Republicans reject Senate deal to fund DHS as officials say airport security staff to get paid next week – live

Earlier this afternoon, Donald Trump addressed farmers from the White House and was distracted by the presence of a gold tractor on the White House south lawn.

“I assume it’s a gift to me,” said Trump, who has decorated much of the interior of the White House with ostentatious gold fittings.

Yet even Trump seemed to find the gesture excessive, exclaiming: “That’s crazy. That’s really something. Thank you very much for the gift. I really appreciate it. Can you imagine if I accepted that gift, what they would do? A Democrat would accept.”

A homeland security spokesperson says Donald Trump directed DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin to begin process of paying TSA workers immediately to address the turmoil at US airports that has caused hours-long lines for travelers.

On the pay resumption, the spokesperson said: “President Trump has made the decision that echoes what TSA’s frontline employees and the millions of Americans enduring terrible wait times at our airports are saying: the Democrat DHS shutdown has become an emergency.

”TSA officers are now losing their homes and cars, struggling to put food on the table, and are experiencing all-around financial catastrophe because of this extended shutdown, the third they’ve experienced in just six months. Travelers are facing record-breaking wait times stretching hours and hours long, causing missed flights, unnecessary delays, and booking headaches. This crisis is a direct result of chaos unleashed on the American people by Democrats in Congress.

”Today, at the direction of President Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, TSA has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce. TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30. TSA is grateful to the President and Secretary for their leadership to put money back into the pockets of TSA employees who worked without pay during the ongoing Democrat DHS shutdown.”

Amid the tumult on Capitol Hill and airports nationwide, the Homeland Security department says TSA workers will start seeing paychecks as early as Monday.

The department said that workers who have not been paid since February would receive their salaries after Donald Trump signed a memo directing that their pay should resume, Reuters reported.

Johnson announced that House Republicans are going to put forward a stopgap spending bill to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at current levels for two months.

“We’re going to send that over to the Senate, and we hope that they’ll accept,” Johnson said. “They could do that as early as Monday.”

The House speaker said he spoke to Donald Trump moments before. “He understands what we’re doing and why, and he supports it” Johnson said.

On Capitol Hill, House speaker Mike Johnson kicked off a postponed press conference noting that he just wrapped a two-hour conference call with his Republican colleagues in the lower chamber.

“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” he said of the Senate-passed bill that made its way to the House in the predawn hours. “It is unconscionable to me that the Democrats would force some sort of negotiation at three o’clock in the morning and try to hoist this upon the American people.”

What I’m about to explain is a little wonky, but it’s key to understanding why it is so hard for House speaker Mike Johnson to get the Senate‑passed DHS bill to the floor.

Right now the Louisiana Republican is trying desperately to keep his fractured party in line.

Under a rule, the most typical route, Johnson first needs the rules committee to sign off, and then he needs a simple majority of the House to pass that rule. With many conservative hardliners calling the bill a non‑starter, that path looks very shaky.

His next option is suspension, which can only be used Monday through Wednesday and requires two‑thirds support. That would let him lean on Democrats, but it would set off the Maga wing.

The only other route is unanimous consent, which is practically impossible since any single member can block it.

To erase any doubt, Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate has said the House Republicans’ “unserious” proposal was “dead on arrival” in the upper chamber.

“Senate Democrats worked with Senate Republicans to reach a unanimous agreements to fund vital functions at DHS including TSA, Fema, CISA, and secure our ports of entry.

“We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical homeland security functions – but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms.

“A 60-day CR [continuing resolution] that locks in the status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know.”

At the Conservative Political Action Conference being held near Dallas, Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott just attacked James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the state’s US Senate election.

Left unsaid: how he was feeling about the ongoing contest for the Republican Senate nomination between the incumbent, John Cornyn, and attorney general Ken Paxton.

“He’s crazy, and we are not going to allow Talarico takeover of the state of Texas,” Abbott said.

Talarico, a state representative, won the Democratic primary in March, and is seen as a strong contender in a state where his party has not won a Senate election since 1988.

Neither Cornyn or Paxton won majorities in the March primaries, and will face off in a runoff set for 26 May. Polls have shown that Paxton, an adherent of Donald Trump’s Maga philosophy, may be a weaker candidate in the general election than Cornyn. But the president has not yet made good on his promise to issue his pivotal endorsement in the race, and neither has Paxton.

CNN reports that GOP leaders in the House of Representatives will reject the Senate version of the deal that would have fund large segments of the Homeland Security department, including the Transportation Security Administration, which have been effectively shuttered for the past several weeks.

It means the DHS shutdown – which has resulted in delays for travelers at airports in the absence of unpaid security staff – will continue for at least several more days.

The Associated Press has some more details on the backdrop to the DHS funding deal:

Senators worked through the night on the deal that would fund much of the rest of the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and TSA, but without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Border Patrol.

The result was that the Democrats failed to win new limits on immigration enforcement, which has been all but unaffected by the department’s partial shutdown. That was because last year’s “big beautiful bill” that Donald Trump signed into law shoveled billions of dollars of extra funds to the DHS, including $75bn for ICE operations. As a result, immigration officers have been paid while staff at other subsidiary agencies like the TSA and Fema have not.

Bipartisan support is thought to be essential if the bill is to advance in the House, where conservative Republicans have criticized their own party’s proposals and are demanding full funding for ICE functions.

“We will fully fund ICE. That is what this fight is about,” said Eric Schmitt, a Republican senator for Missouri. “The border is closing. The next task is deportation.”

Iranian-linked hackers are claiming to have accessed the personal emails of FBI director Kash Patel.

The hacker group, which calls itself Handala Hack Team, posted pictures of the director and his purported résumé online, according to Reuters.

The group said on its website that Patel “will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims”.

Reuters says a sample of the emails appears to show a mix of personal and work correspondence from between 2010 and 2019. A justice department spokesperson confirmed that Patel’s emails had been compromised and later said the sample appeared to be authentic. There was no immediate response from the FBI or the hackers.

With the House of Representatives set to consider the bill, speaker Mike Johnson has given his response, saying that Republican representatives will gather this morning to decide a way forward.

“We’re going to get all our members together and decide next steps this morning but I’ll tell you it’s infuriating that Democrats are willing to inflict pain on the American people simple so they can defund the agency responsible for removing criminal illegal aliens,” he said. “That’s what this is about. They just put it on display again that that’s what they’re for.”

Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of two Black and two female officers in the US army, according to the New York Times.

The paper reports that the defense secretary, who has frequently railed against “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion”) policies and supposed “wokeness” in the armed forces has struck the four, all said to be one-star generals, from a list of prospective promotions in what is described as a highly unusual move.

Several senior military officers are said to have questioned whether the four are being singled out because of their color or gender.

Hegseth reportedly struck their names from the promotions list after unsuccessfully pressing the army secretary, Dan Driscoll, to do so. Driscoll had resisted, citing the officers’ decades-long records of exemplary service. It is unclear if Hegseth has the legal authority to excise the promotions.

The list is currently with the White House, which is expected to send it to the Senate for final approval. Most of the names on the list are white, although some Black and female officers remain.

Axios reports that the vice-president is taking on what it calls “the most important assignment of his career” – crafting an end to a war that he had long warned against waging.

He is expected to be the lead negotiator in peace talks, the report says, having held multiple conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met Gulf allies and participated in indirect communications with the Iranians.

Vance’s gradual re-emergence comes after he adopted an almost subterranean profile in the early stages of the conflict, fueling conclusions in some quarters that he had been humiliated. He has since come out publicly in support of Trump’s mantra that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

The president gave an official imprimatur to Vance’s new role in Thursday’s cabinet meeting, calling on him to give an update on Iran, and noting that he was working with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s usual lead negotiator, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. It is Witkoff that suggested the vice-president spearhead the current process.

One interesting nugget in the Axios peace is the belief among Vance’s advisers that some figures in the Israeli leadership are trying to undermine him, believing him to be “insufficiently hawkish”.

The House will now consider the funding agreement and could vote on it as soon as Friday. It would then go to Donald Trump to sign it.

Senate majority leader John Thune on Friday said the outcome was “unfortunate”. “The Dems wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up getting no reforms but, you know, we’re going to have to fight some of those battles another day,” he said, according to Politico.

Thune said he had spoken to the president and that the House was “aware” of the Senate’s plan but he did not know how it would react.

If passed, the agreement would fund DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration and US Coast Guard.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer welcomed the DHS funding agreement passed on a voice vote on Thursday night, but added a deal could have been “accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn’t stood in the way”.

The agreement secured a deal to pay TSA workers, the Coast Guard and fund Fema, among others, after nearly six weeks of a partial shutdown – but crucially without agreeing further funding for ICE.

In a statement, Schumer said: “Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.”

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m (£225m) a day, America is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way America demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, the US is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow (with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq).

Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor. Read his analysis here:

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

The Senate has ended a budget standoff that has forced thousands of airport security staff to work without pay and caused long delays at airports.

A lapse in government funding has left Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff – who screen passengers, baggage and cargo – working without pay since mid-February. Airports in several cities have warned travelers to arrive hours earlier than usual because of long security lines.

The agreement would fund DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration and US Coast Guard, the statement said. CNN reported that the House of Representatives will still need to act before funded agencies within the department can reopen.

The Senate approved the funding package by a voice vote in a rare overnight session.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the outcome could have been reached weeks ago, and vowed that his party would continue fighting to ensure Trump’s “rogue” immigration operation “does not get more funding without serious reform.”

He added:

Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms.

However, Republican senator Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the Democrats had damaged Congress’ annual funding process, weakened national security, and set “a precedent that they may one day come to regret”.

“Democrats remained intransigent and unreasonable with their list of demands,” she said in a statement.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• US markets saw their biggest slump since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran on Thursday as Donald Trump said the conflict’s impact on oil prices had not been as bad as he expected. The Dow closed 450 points down, while the S&P 500 dipped 1.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.3%, plunging into correction territory, which happens when an index falls at least 10% below its most recent peak. More here.

• The department of treasury announced that US paper currency will soon feature President Donald Trump’s signature to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary. The move marks the first time a sitting US president’s signature will appear on legal tender. To accommodate this change, the treasurer’s signature will be removed for the first time since 1861. More here.

• The Senate failed to achieve 60 votes needed to pass an amendment to the Save America act that would require voters to present photo ID to cast a ballot. The chamber voted 52-47, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass. No Democrats voted for it. Earlier today, Trump urged Republicans to terminate the Senate filibuster.

• During a cabinet meeting today, Donald Trump said that Iran was letting 10 oil tankers through the strait of Hormuz as an apparent goodwill gesture in the supposed negotiations. He also repeated his earlier remarks that Iran is “begging to make a deal”.

• Donald Trump wants to renovate the White House’s treaty room, traditionally a meeting space for diplomats and statesman, into a guest bedroom with an en suite bathroom, according to the New York Times.