White House floats national emergency to pay TSA workers as Senate action stalls

WASHINGTON (AP) — With pressure mounting, the White House floated the extraordinary move Thursday of invoking a national emergency to pay Transportation Security Administration workers while senators reviewed a “last and final” offer to end the funding impasse that has jammed airports and disrupted travel.

Democrats have been refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security as they demand changes to rein in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement operations. Trump during an event at the White House warned he would step in if Congress failed to act.

The Senate came to a standstill and senators, ready to leave town for their own spring break, prepared to stay all night to reach a deal.

“Enough is enough,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., as he announced he had given the final offer to the Democrats.

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.

“Hopefully … there will be some finality in this real soon,” Thune said.

The shutdown of funding for DHS, now in its 41st day, has resulted in travel disruptions, missed paychecks and even warnings of airport closures. TSA workers are coming up on their second missed paycheck Friday, with thousands refusing to show up for work.

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.

Trump, who has largely left the issue to Congress to resolve, threatened to send the National Guard to airports, in addition his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers IDs — a development drawing concerns.

The White House is considering a menu of options, including declaring a national emergency to pay the TSA workers, a move that would be a politically fraught and almost certain to face legal challenges.

“They need to end this shutdown immediately or we’ll have to take drastic measures,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting than 2½ hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.

“I should have just driven, right?” Gates said. “Five hours would have been hilarious next to this.”

A ‘last and final’ offer on the table

Senators retreated to privately discuss the latest offer as a core group of more than 10 senators, Democrats and Republicans, worked to hammer out the details.

“I think we all realize we’re not going anywhere until this is done,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.

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 deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis. They want federal agents to wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places.

Republicans said after a private lunch meeting that there were other options than invoking the national emergency.

“The president may well decide that, but I don’t know,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, who said there was funding elsewhere that can be legally used to pay TSA as well as the Coast Guard.

Over the weekend, talks with the White House, including with border czar Tom Homan, appeared to be making progress toward a deal, including on several items Democrats had been demanding, such as the IDs and limits on raids at sensitive places.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said they needed to see real changes. “We’ve been talking about ICE reforms from day one,” he said.

Any deal will almost certainly need to involved 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’s proof-of-citizenship voting bill in a subsequent legislative package.

Trump stays out of the fray

Trump did not directly address the status of negotiations late Wednesday evening during an annual fundraising dinner for the House Republicans’ campaign committee. On Thursday, the president revived his campaign for senators to end the filibuster as a way to overpower opposition to GOP policies, something most Republican senators do not want to do.

The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that 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.

Republicans say the Trump administration has already made strides to meet Democrats’ demands, particularly after swearing in Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the new homeland security secretary to replace Kristi Noem.

Airport lines grow as TSA workers endure hardships

“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, testified at a House hearing Wednesday.

She described the multiple hardships facing unpaid TSA workers — piling up bills and eviction notices, even plasma donations to make ends meet — and warned of potential airport closures if more employees refuse to come to work.

“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table,” she said.

McNeil also said TSA officers working at the nation’s airports have experienced a more than 500% increase in the frequency of assaults since the shutdown began.

“This is unacceptable,” McNeill said.

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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Mary Clare Jalonick, Rebecca Santana and Ben Finley in Washington, Lekan Oyekanmi in Houston, Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego contributed to this report.

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