Trump Plans National Emergency Declaration to Fund TSA Workers Amid Ongoing Shutdown
President Donald Trump revealed on Thursday his intention to declare a national emergency, aiming to direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compensate TSA agents as the government shutdown stretches into its sixth week, leading to significant delays at airport security checkpoints.
“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!” Trump stated in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial. He expressed gratitude towards TSA agents and ICE for their efforts at airports, asserting, “I will not allow the Radical Left Democrats to hold our Country hostage any longer.”
Negotiations in the Senate had been ongoing throughout the week, focusing on funding for DHS, which has been inactive since February 14. The discussions also included proposed reforms to ICE, a response to the deaths of two Americans involving federal immigration agents earlier this year. However, these talks hit a standstill on Thursday, prompting Trump’s intervention following requests from Senate Republicans.
For weeks, Democrats have pushed for measures to ensure TSA agents are paid while broader funding negotiations continued. Yet, these proposals faced repeated opposition from GOP senators.
As airport conditions deteriorated earlier on Thursday, Senator John Kennedy (R-Ky.) announced he was drafting legislation aimed at compensating TSA workers, diverging from his Republican peers who had consistently blocked similar Democratic initiatives. “It’s not fair to the TSA folks,” Kennedy remarked, addressing the impact of the shutdown. “It’s not fair to the American people. So I’m going to offer a bill that just opens up TSA. I think my Republican colleagues will support it. I don’t know about my Democrat colleagues.”
However, Kennedy's proposal never reached the Senate floor; GOP leaders delayed a vote on a broader funding measure for five hours, effectively preventing Kennedy from seeking unanimous consent for his bill. The response from Republicans regarding Kennedy’s request remained uncertain after their previous objections to Democratic efforts to fund TSA agents.
Before Trump’s announcement, Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) expressed to media that lawmakers should focus on comprehensive funding for all of DHS rather than singling out TSA. “Because look, if we do it for TSA, then we’re going to jump right to FEMA, or we’re going to jump to Coast Guard,” Tillis explained.
The legal authority behind Trump’s ability to bypass Congress, which holds control over federal spending, remains ambiguous. During the last government shutdown, Trump similarly instructed the Pentagon to utilize previously allocated funds for research and development to pay servicemembers. It is conceivable that Trump may tap into funds approved by Republicans last year in his One Big Beautiful Bill, which has already been used to compensate active duty Coast Guard and some other DHS employees during this shutdown.
Trump’s decision to invoke emergency powers for paying TSA workers has raised eyebrows among Democrats, who questioned why such measures were not taken sooner to avert the chaos at airports. “So you agree that it was an option the whole time?” Representative Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) queried in an online post.
