Trump signs memo directing DHS to pay all workers amid shutdown
Trump signs memo directing DHS to pay all workers amid shutdown
Ellis Kim, Lauren Fox, Sarah Ferris, Kit Maher, CNNSat, April 4, 2026 at 12:20 AM UTC
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks with reporters at the US Capitol on Thursday. - Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Friday officially signed a memorandum ordering all Department of Homeland Security employees be paid amid the ongoing partial government shutdown.
The move expands Trump’s earlier directive for DHS to unilaterally pay Transportation Security Administration workers in a bid to alleviate travel backlogs at understaffed airports. The money for the broader payments is also expected to come from last summer’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” according to an Office of Management and Budget official.
As the Capitol Hill stalemate has stretched on, 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 — have reported for work without compensation.
Writing that the “the circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security,” Trump directed DHS in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget to use funds that have “a reasonable and logical nexus to the functions of DHS” to pay the salaries of every DHS employee.
The move by the president comes as congressional Republican leaders have announced an ambitious plan to restore funding for DHS – but hurdles remain, leaving it unclear when the shutdown will end.
On Thursday, 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.
“Once regular funding for DHS has been restored, every effort should be made, as authorized by law, to adjust applicable funding accounts within DHS to ensure the continuation of DHS operations and activities consistent with planned expenditures prior to the lapse,” the memo signed by Trump adds.
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.
The split in the party over the shutdown strategy was showcased during a lengthy – and at times fiery – call later Thursday.
A vocal faction of House Republicans told GOP leadership on the call that they remain adamantly opposed to a push to partially reopen the department, according to multiple sources. And multiple lawmakers complained about the path forward that Johnson and Thune had announced just 24 hours earlier. It wasn’t just ultraconservative Freedom Caucus members who spoke up, the sources said, but a range of the conference.
House Republicans also heard from the White House’s budget chief Russ Vought, who took questions from members. Some of lawmakers’ questions focused on complex procedures, including how the funding would be structured as well as funding programming.
Johnson did not announce when the House would vote on that proposal, but told members there are no plans to return to Washington before April 13.
Both chambers are on their two-week 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 was highly unlikely the chamber would 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.
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Thune told reporters 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.”
Challenges of a second Trump agenda 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 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 headline and story have been with additional developments.
CNN’s Sarah Ferris, Casey Gannon, Aileen Graef, Tami Luhby and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
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Source: “AOL Breaking”
