Will Trump’s order fix the TSA crisis at airports?

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▪ TSA agents to start getting paid

▪ Iran war passes one-month mark

▪ Graham takes flak from the right

▪ House Republicans set retirement record

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees may finally get some relief on Monday after President Trump signed an executive order to pay the 50,000-strong airport workforce despite the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.

Officials are hoping the restoration of TSA employees’ pay will be enough to lure those who have been calling out back to work, easing the long lines and wait times facing travelers. But it’s not clear how quickly that will happen.

Some major airports continued to advise passengers to show up four or more hours before flights over the weekend. TSA call-out rates topped 10 percent nationwide Saturday, a slight drop from the high reached on Friday. Several major airports had a quarter or more of their staff call out.

White House border czar Tom Homan said he was unsure whether federal immigration officers would leave airports once TSA agents start getting paid again.

“It depends [on] how many TSA agents come back to work, how many TSA agents have actually quit and have no plans [on] coming back to work,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Homan said he is working with TSA officials to determine what airports need, and TSA agents should expect to be paid Monday or Tuesday.

“They can’t feed their families or pay their rent. Your heart goes out to them because they’re sitting there right now, working very hard and not being paid, while members of the Congress are now on vacation, are getting paid,” he said.

Trump’s order will reportedly tap into funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that he signed last year.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said on Sunday the move is illegal.

“If there’s one power that Congress has, it is the power of the purse,” he told Margaret Brennan on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“So they shouldn’t be paid?” Brennan asked.

“No, they should be paid,” Himes said. “They should have never been held hostage. And we had a deal come out unanimously from the Senate that if it had passed right now, they would be getting paid, and we wouldn’t be talking about the constitutional power of the purse.”

Trump’s order came as it became clear that a Senate-passed bill to fund key DHS agencies including TSA, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would fail to advance in the House.

GOP lawmakers in the lower chamber took issue with funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol being left out of the legislation, instead passing a short-term bill to fund all of DHS for eight weeks.

But that bill is considered dead on arrival in the Senate, with Democrats opposed to funding ICE without substantial reforms to the agency. And with both chambers of Congress out of town for the next two weeks for Easter recess, efforts to address TSA staffing issues will largely depend on the White House.

▪ The Hill: GOP divisions illustrated in shutdown fight.

▪ Business Insider: Airport chaos not going away.

3 Things to Know Today

Trump said he would allow a Russian oil tanker to deliver crude oil to Cuba, essentially relaxing a blockade that has sent the island into an energy crisis. Cuba has been facing blackouts affecting the entire country in recent weeks as it struggles to gain access to oil and natural gas.

North Korea has tested a missile that it claims can reach the U.S. mainland, state media reported Sunday. Experts said they believe Pyongyang could be bluffing, though North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has been openly pushing to acquire missiles with greater capabilities that can reach the U.S.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee criticized Israeli police for blocking the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem from entering a church where Christians believe Jesus rose back to life. The Israeli prime minister’s office later said the patriarch would be allowed to enter.

A MONTH OF WAR: The war in Iran has now passed the 30-day mark as the conflict escalates and pressure rises for Washington and Tehran to reach a ceasefire deal.

Trump said days after the initial U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that the operation would last at least four to five weeks but could be shorter or longer. Proposals traded between the U.S. and Iran haven’t made any progress toward dialing down the conflict, and the war has shown signs of expanding in recent days.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen waded into the conflict Saturday as the group took credit for a missile attack on Israel, which said the projectile was intercepted without any casualties caused. It came a day after the Houthis set out three red lines that if crossed would cause them to get involved.

Russia is also allegedly upping its assistance of Iran. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told NBC News that Russian forces took photos of a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia three times in the days before Iran attacked the site.

A missile attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, on Friday injured a dozen U.S. service members.

“And I don’t believe — I know — that they share information. Do they help Iranians? Of course. How many percent? One hundred percent,” Zelensky said.

Trump has delayed a threatened U.S. strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure to next week, claiming talks between the two sides are “going very well.” But additional U.S. forces are continuing to be sent to the Middle East, raising speculation that the administration may be buying time for a ground invasion to take Kharg Island, located inside the Persian Gulf and an island key to Iran’s oil exports.

Trump suggested to The Financial Times in an interview that his priority is gaining control of Iran’s oil industry, comparing his focus to the U.S. operation in Venezuela in which Trump has sought to improve U.S. access to the country’s oil after removing Nicolás Maduro.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said.

Trump said if U.S. forces took the island, they would likely have to stay for a “while.” He also said a deal with Iran could be made “fairly quickly.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Trump is also considering a possible military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran to help accomplish his goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Officials told the outlet Trump hasn’t made a decision and is reviewing the danger to U.S. troops. Such an operation would likely require U.S. forces to be inside Iran for days, if not longer.

Trump has also told his advisers to press Iran to give up its material as a condition for ending the war.

Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey met in Islamabad on Sunday to discuss efforts to de-escalate the conflict. Pakistani officials have served as mediators in negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

▪ The Hill: MAGA divides on Iran on display.

▪ The Hill: How Iran could strike back if the U.S. invades Kharg Island.

TPS VOTE COMING: A vote calling on the Trump administration to extend temporary legal protections for migrants from Haiti will be coming once the House returns to Washington after a discharge petition received enough signatures.

The petition garnered the requisite 218 signatures on Friday as more than a half-dozen Democrats signed on, joining their Democratic colleagues and four House Republicans who have pushed for a vote.

The Trump administration has pushed to end temporary protected status (TPS) for roughly 350,000 Haitians, asking the Supreme Court earlier this month to end it. TPS protects foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home countries because of armed conflict, natural disasters or other temporary conditions, preventing deportation and giving them a pathway to work authorization.

The administration has also targeted TPS for more than a dozen other countries.

The resolution would direct DHS to keep Haiti designated for TPS until Jan. 20, 2029.

▪ NBC 6 South Florida: TPS benefits for Haitians extended to July 1.

PUBLIC DISCLOSURE? FBI Director Kash Patel is reportedly pushing to release investigative files on Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and his interactions with a suspected Chinese spy.

The New York Times reported Trump administration officials have ordered FBI agents to gather documents from the decade-old investigation into Swalwell’s interactions with a Chinese woman named Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, who helped Swalwell with fundraising during his 2014 congressional campaign.

Fang also reportedly courted other California politicians from 2011 to 2015.

Swalwell wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing and cut ties with Fang in 2015 after being briefed by U.S. intelligence officials about their suspicions of her. The House Ethics Committee concluded a two-year investigation into Swalwell in 2023, taking no further action.

But The Washington Post reported Patel is pushing for the files’ release and directed agents in the FBI’s San Francisco office to redact the files before they are released publicly. Releasing documents from a case that didn’t result in criminal charges would be highly unusual.

Swalwell, who is running for governor of California, has accused the Trump administration of trying to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against him. The administration’s top housing official sent a criminal referral for Swalwell to the DOJ last year, though no charges have been filed.

▪ The Hill: Defense secretary injects Christianity into U.S. military.

CPAC MOMENTUM: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is hoping to seize momentum from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week as he continues to push for Trump’s endorsement in his Senate primary runoff.

Paxton took to the CPAC stage as a featured speaker on Friday, throwing jabs at Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for not attending. Cornyn had cited scheduling issues for skipping the event.

Paxton and Cornyn are locked in a heated primary runoff for Cornyn’s Senate seat. Neither candidate received a majority of the vote in the first round of voting earlier this month, and both have been vying for the president’s support to put themselves over the finish line in the May runoff.

National Republicans have been pushing for Trump to endorse Cornyn, expressing more confidence that he can hold off a challenge from the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, than they have for Paxton, a firebrand who has faced multiple scandals during his political career.

After the first round of the primary, Trump was reportedly preparing to endorse Cornyn, with a statement drafted to announce his backing. But Trump has backed off in recent weeks, apparently saying last week he believes his base is with Paxton, The Washington Post reported.

CPAC served to reinforce that point. In a straw poll of the loyal MAGA crowd, he won two-thirds of the vote to Cornyn’s 21 percent.

“Let’s get rid of the guy that represents Washington, and let’s put somebody in that represents Texas,” Paxton told CPAC attendees after receiving their backing.

▪ The Hill: Vice President Vance wins CPAC presidential straw poll.

▪ The Associated Press: Paxton embraced at CPAC as MAGA’s choice.

The president will participate in executive time at 8 a.m. He will participate in a White House Internship Program class photo at 10:15 a.m. He will participate in a policy meeting at 1:30 p.m. and signing time at 4 p.m.

The Senate will meet at 10:30 a.m. for a pro forma session.

The House will convene at noon for a pro forma session.

GRAHAM UNDER FIRE: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been a key ally to the president and one of the biggest cheerleaders to his foreign policy moves, but he’s increasingly facing attacks from the right over the escalation of the Iran war.

Graham has long been known as one of the most hawkish members of Congress, taking on greater prominence during Trump’s second term with his moves on Venezuela and Iran. But The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky reports Graham has taken sharp criticism recently from fellow Republicans for urging the president to step up military pressure in the Middle East.

“Washington’s war machine is hard at work. They are try to drag us into Iran to make it another Iraq. We can’t let them,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said in a post on the social platform X last week.

“And yes, when we say Washington’s war machine, we mean Lindsey Graham,” she said in a follow-up post.

Graham stirred backlash among the noninterventionist wing of the GOP earlier this month when he called on U.S. Marines to seize Kharg Island, referencing the U.S.’s ability to win the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.

“NO BOOTS on the ground. If Senator Graham wants to go fight in a foreign conflict, let him be the first to volunteer,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said on X this month.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) told a reporter she believes Graham “should have his Oval Office credentials revoked” and pushed back against his apparent influence in the war.

Graham pushed back on Luna’s comments about him earlier this month.

“I got a bronze star. I’m not a combat soldier, and I’ve served my time, and I’m proud of what I do,” he said.

▪ The Hill: Libertarian Senate candidate would introduce bill to draft Graham if elected.

▪ The Guardian: Graham goes from Trump foe to biggest Iran booster.

BATTALION SUSPENDED: The Israeli military has suspended the activities of a reserve battalion that detained and allegedly assaulted a CNN team inside the West Bank last week.

The incident happened Thursday in the Palestinian village of Tayasir, as CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond and his team were covering the aftermath of an assault by settlers in the area. The soldiers in the battalion detained the team, and one soldier reportedly placed photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold, bringing him to the ground.

A military official told CNN that Israeli military police will investigate the incident involving Theophilos. The decision to suspend the battalion came from Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff and seems to be unprecedented in speed and scope, CNN reported.

TO THE EXITS: A record number of House Republicans are choosing to either retire or run for other offices this cycle, adding to the complications facing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as he tries to hold on to a narrow Republican majority.

Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) became the latest to announce his decision to retire Friday, expressing a desire to “pass the torch” to a new generation of conservative leaders. He’s the 36th House Republican to announce plans to leave their seat at the end of the current term, surpassing the previous record of 34 set during the 2018 midterm cycle.

There are 21 House Democrats currently not running for their House seats this year.

The Hill’s Sudiksha Kochi reports the number of Republicans retiring is likely only to grow in the coming weeks as the GOP contends with the historical trend that the president’s party typically loses seats in Congress during the midterms.

The House Republicans retiring have run the ideological gamut, from moderates such as Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.) to high-profile conservatives such as Reps. Chip Roy (Texas) and Jodey Arrington (Texas).

Many aren’t ending their political careers entirely, as 10 are running for governor, nine chose to run for Senate and Roy is running for state attorney general.

But Kochi reports the departures pose a serious challenge for Johnson, who has already been struggling with attendance issues among members who are seeking to spend more time campaigning or are less motivated to show up at the Capitol.

▪ The Hill: Which lawmakers aren’t seeking reelection?

▪ The New York Times: Exodus rivaled only by Trump’s first term.

How the return to the moon is different this time, Mark R. Whittington writes in The Hill.

Is it 1914 in America? Yonatan Touval writes in The New York Times.

And finally … Comedian Bill Maher roasted Trump on his show after organizers confirmed he will receive this year’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The talk show host and the president have gone back and forth with attacks on each other in recent months, most recently when the White House denied an initial report that Maher would receive the prize. But officials later said he would receive the award in what organizers say will be the final event at the Kennedy Center before it closes for two years for renovations.

“You know, this has been going on a long time,” Maher said about his disputes with Trump on Friday. “So [Trump] trying to block me from getting it –– I respect the move. Keep it going, baby. I just want things to work out, and also I want to say thank you, OK?”

Maher said he isn’t looking for a “fight” with Trump and hopes the president will attend the event.

“I will be there, Don, and I hope you will be too. I mean, the place is named after you now, you really should show up,” he said, referring to the center being renamed after the current president in addition to former President John F. Kennedy.

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