Last Thursday, Congress ended the longest Department of Homeland Security shutdown in American history. For 75 days, tens of thousands of TSA officers worked unpaid. More than 1,100 of them quit. A…
The immediate fight is over. The next one is already on the calendar: this appropriation expires Sept. 30. And the battle will keep going, every funding cycle, until we change what we’re funding.
The standoff that produced this shutdown was a fight over Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not airport security. But since ICE and DHS sit inside TSA, airport security became collateral damage in a dispute that had nothing to do with it. That structural problem won’t fix itself. Congressional dysfunction is a problem, but it’s not the only one made plain by this standoff.
Another is what Congress is being asked to fund: a screening regime whose post-9/11 layers cost billions but have never demonstrated their worth. , more than the entire Coast Guard budget. Most of that cost comes from security measures added after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A question worth asking, in a moment of recurring crisis, is whether those measures are achieving anything useful.
After the shoe bomber in 2001, we started removing shoes. After the liquid explosives plot in 2006, we banned large bottles. After the underwear bomber in 2009, we deployed full-body scanners. Each measure responded to a specific plot.
None has ever been removed. That’s because the political logic is simple. No official will ever be blamed for keeping these measures in place, but anyone who removes them owns any subsequent attack they conceivably could have prevented. Security measures accumulate but never recede.
That’s a problem, because often they protect against threats that no longer exist. The original danger, using an aircraft as a guided missile, was neutralized years ago. The 9/11 attackers exploited two vulnerabilities: Once aboard, they could get from the cabin to the cockpit, and they knew that passengers and flight attendants would stay passive in the event of a hijacking. Both vulnerabilities are now closed.
Cockpit doors were hardened in 2003, isolating the flight deck from whatever happens in the cabin. And knowing what happened on 9/11, those on board are now are likely to fight back. That’s what the shoe and underwear bombers both discovered: Security screening didn’t catch their weapons, but other passengers took them down, so their attacks failed. We have direct evidence of this.
During the October 2025 shutdown, and again during the 75-day shutdown that just ended, TSA officers worked unpaid and were less thorough. Lines got longer, and people missed flights, but there was no security breach. The hours of waiting that travelers endured were for nothing — because the job those officers weren’t fully doing didn’t need doing in the first place. There’s more.
In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security secretly tested its own screeners and found they missed prohibited items inalready skip parts of screening courtesy of TSA PreCheck. If removing shoes and restricting liquids were essential to safety, we wouldn’t waive them for anyone. We do — because they aren’t. airport screening. Keep the metal detectors and X-ray machines that were used before 9/11; checking passengers for weapons is settled work.
But it’s time to admit that the post-9/11 additions aren’t worth the cost, especially since that cost is what makes the TSA a perennial political hostage. Even a trimmed-down agency needs stable funding, however, which is why the government collects a dedicated security fee from every airline ticket — theWe are paying for the screening, but Congress is spending it on other things.
The World Cup begins on June 11, bringing 6 to 10 million additional travelers to 11 American cities. The TSA will enter that surge with more than 1,000 fewer officers than it had in February, and replacement training takes four to six months. In March, the TSA’s acting chiefHere’s a better solution: Sunset the post-9/11 additions that have never demonstrated their value, and stop diverting the fee that was meant to pay for what remains.
TSA officers deserve to get paid. But let’s make sure that we pay them to do things that actually matter. The two possible causes for the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak — one is disgusting, the other terrifyingDelta customers in uproar as airline cuts major perk on hundreds of flights dailyStream It Or Skip It: 'Lord Of The Flies' On Netflix, A New Adaptation Of The Novel About How Anarchy Develops After Schoolkids Are Stranded On A Tropical Island
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Doomsday for California as last barrel of oil from the Middle East arrives in Long BeachToday's Video Headlines: 5/3/2026
Read more »
Nearly 4.3 million Americans lost SNAP benefits last yearNearly 4.3 million Americans stopped receiving SNAP benefits from January 2025 through January 2026. Experts say it's because of changes that make the program harder to access.
Read more »
10 Worst Movies of the Last 6 Years, RankedRobert Lee is a senior author at Collider who focuses on modern movie releases and animation, as well as both the best and worst films in a genre.
Read more »
Heinrich Steals GTP Win at Laguna Seca in Dramatic Last-Lap PassLaurin Heinrich secured his first GTP class win at Laguna Seca with a last-lap pass, while Ford Racing took victory in GTD Pro. Porsche Penske experienced a challenging race, finishing outside the top five in both entries.
Read more »
Dry through Tuesday, Rain/storms Wednesday night into ThursdayMontgomery, Alabama
Read more »
Rain returns Thursday with more drought relief in sightBrief dry stretch ends as more beneficial rain approaches.
Read more »