Joel Rose

And of course, none of this helps other DHS staff who are still not getting paid as the shutdown continues, including staffers at FEMA and at the Coast Guard.

Well, the initial signs are good.

Security lines were generally much shorter on Monday, closer to normal.

But the fallout from this episode is likely not totally over yet.

I talked to Caleb Harmon Marshall.

He is a former TSA security officer who now writes a newsletter called Gate Access.

You know, more than 500 TSA officers have quit during this shutdown, according to DHS.

I've wondered that too.

I mean, we tended to see the longest lines at airports where there was a high volume of travel that day combined with a high percentage of call-outs at TSA, which sometimes hit 40% or more.

I talked yesterday to a former high-ranking TSA officer at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, which had four-hour security lines at times over the past month.

He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

He told me Houston has always been a tough labor market for TSA and that when the oil and gas industry was doing well, his workforce would often quit and take jobs there.

So maybe that was a factor this time in Houston.

But why did we see such high call outs at other airports in places like Atlanta, in New York, in New Orleans, in Baltimore?

I don't know if we're ever going to know.

You're welcome.

The union that represents TSA security officers says they've started to receive some of the back pay they're owed.

Aaron Barker is a president of the local union that represents TSA officers in Georgia, speaking with NPR's Here and Now.

DHS says most TSA workers have received the two full paychecks they missed, but are still owed a partial paycheck.

The Trump administration says it's using funds from within the DHS budget to pay TSA workers after Congress failed to reach a deal to fund the department.