What happened
White House border czar Tom Homan said yesterday that TSA agents may receive overdue paychecks today or tomorrow, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to redirect other Department of Homeland Security funds to pay airport security workers. House Republicans on Friday rejected a bipartisan Senate bill to fund DHS except for the agencies responsible for Trump’s mass deportation push, then approved their own stopgap funding bill and adjourned for a two-week Easter-Passover break. Some airports remained clogged by hourslong security lines over the weekend.

Who said what
The Senate “appeared to have finally figured out” how to fund DHS, The Associated Press said, only for the deal to collapse “spectacularly” in an acrimonious split with House Republicans. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called the compromise worked out by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) a “joke,” then pushed through legislation that would fund all of DHS for eight weeks. House Democrats said they would have backed the Senate compromise if Johnson had allowed a vote. “This shutdown should have ended,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) told CNN yesterday.

Homan told CBS’s “Face the Nation” he “hopes” Trump will force lawmakers to return early from their break to pass a DHS funding bill. It’s “good news” the “struggling” TSA officers will be paid, he told CNN. But “it’s ridiculous” that they are “sitting there right now, working very hard, not being paid by members of Congress out on vacation getting paid.”

What next?
Homan said the ICE agents deployed to aid TSA workers will stay on “as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations.” In the DHS funding fight, it’s “not clear what the Senate will do next,” the AP said, but “nothing ahead is likely to be easy.”

What happened
The U.S. is allowing a sanctioned Russian “shadow fleet” tanker to deliver oil to Cuba, President Donald Trump said yesterday, effectively breaking his de facto blockade. “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with that, whether it’s Russia or not,” he told reporters on Air Force One. 

Who said what
Trump’s administration has gone after Cuba “more aggressively than any U.S. government in recent history,” The Associated Press said. The oil blockade was “an effort to force regime change,” but it’s had “devastating effects” on civilians, “leaving many desperate.” The delivery of the roughly 730,000 barrels of oil on the Anatoly Kolodkin tanker will “reduce pressure” on Havana as it faces “a looming economic collapse,” The New York Times said. It was “unclear why the White House” is allowing the tanker to reach the island, but the decision “avoids a potential thorny confrontation with Russia just off the coast of Florida.” 

Trump’s Cabinet was “limited in what it could legally do to stop the tanker,” The Washington Post said. “Seizing or boarding a Russian vessel while simultaneously managing an active military conflict in Iran” would also “pour fuel on already volatile energy markets,” said Brett Erickson at Obsidian Risk Advisors.

What next?
The Anatoly Kolodkin was expected to dock in Cuba tonight or tomorrow morning. Erickson told Reuters that the “two and a half weeks of oil” on the Kolodkin “can be extended to about a month in total.” The 730,000 barrels “buys them time” in Havana, University of Texas oil expert Jorge Piñón told the Times. “But this is not a magic wand.”