Travelers frustrated by long security lines may not see immediate relief, even as Transportation Security Administration officers begin receiving pay again on Monday after working without wages for more than a month during the partial government shutdown.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing federal officials to ensure that TSA workers are paid despite the shutdown, breaking a more than 40-day stretch in which officers went without salaries.

But the move is unlikely to bring instant relief at airport checkpoints, according to former TSA Administrator John S. Pistole.

“It’s a temporary fix,” he told NBC News.

The more pertinent question, he said, is how many workers actually return to their posts now that paychecks are set to resume Monday.

More than 500 officers have quit during the shutdown, according to the Department of Homeland Security, while thousands more have called out because they can’t afford basic expenses.

TSA callout rates reached a high of 12.35% of the workforce on Friday, accounting for more than 3,560 employees, a DHS spokesperson said Saturday. The department added that at Trump’s direction and under Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, TSA has “immediately begun the process of paying its workforce” and that officers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30.”

Those shortages have forced travelers to contend with missed and canceled flights, long security lines and growing uncertainty around air travel.

If most officers report back beginning Monday and airports are able to restore staffing, wait times could start to ease within several days to a couple of weeks, Pistole said.

“It really depends on that asterisk of how many people show up,” he said.

Some workers who left may already have other jobs lined up, raising questions about whether some will return at all.

“How many of them come back after they get this paycheck? Or maybe they already have another full-time job lined up, they’re just waiting to inform TSA after they get their check on Monday,” Pistole said. “So there are a number of variables there.”

Pistole said the uncertainty, coupled with TSA’s typical annual attrition rate of about 7%, could mean delays will continue even after pay resumes.

Until then, some travelers may want to consider alternatives such as driving, rail or bus.

“I think many will and are looking at those options to say, ‘Is that more reliable? Because the last thing I want to do is get to Bush International Airport in Houston and have a four-hour wait,’” Pistole said.

President Donald Trump is used to bending financial markets to his will.

But with the war in Iran, he may have reached the limit of his ability to do so.

On Friday, the S&P 500 closed down 1.7% and notched its fifth-straight weekly decline, its worst stretch since 2022 and a sign of rapidly faltering confidence in a swift resolution to the Iran war.

Since the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the S&P 500 has declined about 7%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7% Friday and has lost nearly 4,000 points since the start of the war. It is now down more than 10% from its most recent high, a correction in technical terms.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell further into correction territory Friday, closing down 2% and off 13% since its record close in October.

Oil prices also rose sharply, with U.S. crude topping $100 a barrel and global Brent crude at approximately $114 at around 4 p.m. ET. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note surged to 4.4%, the highest since last summer. Some energy stocks, like Exxon, traded near all-time highs.

Shortly after stock markets had closed Thursday, Trump announced he was pausing attacks on Iranian energy sites for 10 days. But stocks barely budged.

Just days earlier, they had rocketed higher Monday when the president announced there had been “productive” talks with Iranian representatives, so he would pause strikes on Iranian power facilities for five days.

“The market is looking beyond commentary from the administration,” said Adam Turnquist, chief strategist at LPL Financial investment group, which manages nearly $2 trillion in assets. “They actually want concrete details and a resolution. And actions speak louder than words, that’s really present in [current] price action.”

This new reality stands in contrast to Trump’s ability to move markets throughout his first term and into the outset of his second.

Trump spent the better part of 2025 whipsawing traders via frequent changes regarding tariff levels. Eventually, a pattern emerged: The president would announce a new import duty, markets would fall, and Trump would usually end up reversing himself in some way.

The trend even got a nickname, coined by a columnist for the Financial Times: “TACO” — for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” (Last month, the Supreme Court struck down many of the tariffs.)

This time, the chain of events unleashed by Trump’s decision to attack Iran are such that a return to prewar conditions — and market levels — is virtually impossible in the short or even medium term, experts say.

The disruption to flows of oil and gas has been so substantial that transport costs, and ultimately the price paid per barrel, are likely to stay elevated indefinitely. Even when the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has used as a chokepoint to drive concessions from the West, eventually reopens, the cost of transiting through it has likely gone up for the foreseeable future.

And the broader fallout on the economy and consumer purchases is already being felt.

That, in turn, has made interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve less likely, because the higher oil costs are set to contribute to already sticky inflation. The odds of a rate hike before the end of the year have now outpaced the odds of a cut.

“Let’s say hostilities end tomorrow — the market will rally, but it’s not necessarily ripping back to where it was before because of the disruptions that have occurred,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers financial group. “You’re not going to see oil go back to where it was immediately. You’re not going to see markets price in rate cuts the way they were before.”

White House spokesman Kush Desai said Friday that Trump “continues to be a powerful force driving the market’s confidence in the United States as the most dynamic, pro-business economy in the world.”

“Once the military objectives of Operation Epic Fury have been achieved and the market’s short-term disruptions are behind us, everyday investors are set to reap a windfall in a booming American economy,” Desai said.

A day earlier, the president said he was not concerned about the market’s recent performance.

Oil prices “have not gone up as much as I thought, Scott, to be honest with you,” he said during a Cabinet meeting, addressing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “It’s all going to come back down to where it was and probably lower.”

Markets have not fallen further because the outlook for earnings growth remains bullish, Turnquist said — though that could change the longer the conflict drags on and further impinges on consumer spending and business investment.

And compared to prior oil shocks, the U.S. economy is less oil-intensive, as it has transitioned to one that is largely service-oriented. Global oil markets have also been supported by America’s oil production boom over the past decade — with more supplies online, overall prices are less likely to rise as much.

Yet by some metrics, stocks were already considered expensive prior to the hostilities. Having already contended with stretched valuations, traders may find it much harder to power stock prices back to the record levels seen just prior to the start of the latest conflict.

“The risk-reward is still very heavily weighted toward [the] risk” of further stock-price declines,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak financial group.

Should hostilities persist, Trump’s ability to influence markets will only further erode, Sosnick predicted.

“He now realizes he’d like to jawbone his way out of it, but it’s not that easy at this point because the situation encompasses so many moving parts and difficult variables,” Sosnick said. “It doesn’t lend itself to a quick set of comments mollifying investors.”

WASHINGTON — The Senate agreed unanimously early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but without funding for immigration enforcement and deportation operations.

Senators approved the package at 2:20 a.m. by voice vote following a marathon session.

The 42-day funding lapse has seen them go without pay, leading many to call out of work and causing long lines at airports. While the measure still needs to pass the House, the Senate vote paves the way to allow airports to fully function again.

The legislation would fund all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which Democrats have refused to vote for without significant reforms to immigration raids and deportation practices.

The deal followed arduous bipartisan negotiations that occurred in fits and starts over the last six weeks, succumbing to the impasse around policy changes to immigration enforcement. Under the new plan, Democrats get their weeks-long demand to fund the department with the exceptions of ICE or CBP, but also without the restrictions they sought on how immigration officers may conduct operations.

“This could have been done three weeks ago,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “This is exactly what we wanted.”

The bill faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled House. It is expected to have President Donald Trump’s support, which could help corral conservatives who have been skeptical about splitting off ICE funding from the underlying bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said of the House and a potential vote on Friday. He said he texted with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Thursday night.

The Senate adjourned for a two-week recess, leaving the House with few options other than to accept their bill as written.

Thune separately blamed Democrats. “President Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and U.S. air travel. We are here because, thanks to Democrats’ determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year.”

Speaking after the vote, Schumer said: “In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats were clear. No blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol.”

He added that the “long overdue agreement” funds TSA, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and “strengthens security at the border and the ports of entry, and keeps Americans safe.”

He added that the deal “could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn’t stood in the way.”

The White House and Republicans declined to grant Democrats’ demands to restrict Trump’s immigration practices. They now plan to pursue the remainder for funding for ICE and CBP in a separate party-line bill, which they could also use to pass Iran war funding and elements of the Trump-backed SAVE America Act.

Senate Republicans held a vote open for hours Thursday as the two sides continued to negotiate, having traded offers for days.

Trump, meanwhile, announced earlier Thursday that he would instruct newly sworn-in Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation.”

That move may not be needed if the House passes the Senate legislation, according to a senior administration official, who said the White House is waiting to see what will happen.

This official also said the funds to pay TSA agents would come from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, the tax-cut and spending legislation Trump signed into law in July. It’s not clear exactly how that would work, but the administration has dipped into those unspent funds before to cover pay gaps during funding lapses.

The House can either debate and vote out the Senate-passed measures in the Rules Committee before bringing them to the floor under a simple majority vote, or Johnson can seek to fast-track it to the floor.

The House was set to hold an unrelated vote at 10 a.m. before leaving for recess.

We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the partial government shutdown, whether you’re a TSA agent who can’t work right now or a federal employee who is feeling the effects at your agency. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.

TSA officers missed their first full paychecks in mid-March, leading many to call out of work. Call-out rates for TSA officers have exceeded 11% nationally, with rates at some airports passing 40%.

Trump sent ICE agents to airports to help TSA earlier this week. Unlike TSA officers, ICE agents continue to receive paychecks during the partial shutdown as a result of funding from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping GOP domestic policy package, that Trump signed into law last year.