White House Warns DHS Funding Will 'Soon Run Out' Amid Congressional Deadlock

The Trump administration has issued a stark warning to Congress: funding to pay Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel, including TSA officers, will "soon run out," raising the specter of airport chaos and compromised national security. This crisis unfolds as the House of Representatives remains deadlocked, dragging its feet on legislation to end the longest funding lapse in DHS history.

According to a memo from the Office of Management and Budget sent to lawmakers late Tuesday, critical operating funds for DHS employees will be exhausted by May. The memo urges the House to swiftly approve the budget resolution that the Senate passed after an all-night session last week—a resolution designed to unlock the process for fully funding the department.

The administration’s warning comes amid internal Republican disputes that have paralyzed the House. Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow GOP majority is caught in a standoff over Homeland Security funding and other issues, leaving the chamber at a virtual standstill. Although the House was expected to vote on the Senate’s budget resolution this week, no action has yet materialized.

The memo explicitly cautions against any changes that could delay passage further, emphasizing the urgency in light of recent security incidents. It references a weekend event where a man armed with guns and knives attempted to storm the White House correspondents’ dinner attended by Trump, the vice president, and top Cabinet officials.

While immigration enforcement workers have largely been funded through a $170 billion cash injection tied to Trump’s tax cuts bill, other DHS employees like TSA agents have depended on Trump’s executive actions to receive paychecks. But with salaries exceeding $1.6 billion every two weeks, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently acknowledged that these funds are rapidly depleting.

The consequences are already visible. Airlines for America, the U.S. airlines trade group, reports that over 1,000 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began. The group has called on Congress to provide stable, predictable funding for TSA, condemning lawmakers for leaving aviation workers and travelers in limbo.

The House and Senate Republican leadership are pursuing a complicated strategy to fund immigration enforcement separately, aiming to allocate $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without Democratic support. This approach mirrors the process used for Trump’s tax cuts last year and is expected to take weeks to finalize.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan bill to fund the rest of Homeland Security—including TSA, the Coast Guard, and other agencies—passed the Senate a month ago but remains stalled in the House due to Republican disagreements over the Senate’s immigration carve-out.

This ongoing funding paralysis is not just a bureaucratic failure—it’s a direct threat to the safety and security of the American public. As the Trump administration leans on executive orders to keep essential workers paid, the risk of operational disruptions grows, exposing the dangerous consequences of congressional inaction amid partisan gridlock.