The short-lived decree that TSA PreCheck would be suspended during the government shutdown was never really about security or staffing, but a rogue move by a pair of incompetent government officials that even the Trump administration quickly overruled.

The Real Reason TSA PreCheck Was Nearly Shut Down

Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would temporarily suspend TSA PreCheck as part of the ongoing partial government shutdown, only to reverse course hours later after swift backlash and apparent intervention from the Trump administration.

According to The Washington Post, the idea originated with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her adviser, Corey Landowski, before being quickly shelved. By late Sunday morning, TSA PreCheck lanes were operating normally at most airports, despite the initial announcement that the program would be halted nationwide. At many airports, local leaders ignored the edict to close PreCheck lanes.

The whiplash left travelers understandably confused, but the episode reveals something beyond purely bureaucratic incompetence: it shows how TSA PreCheck became a political pressure point rather than a serious operational proposal.

Suspending PreCheck Never Made Operational Sense

From a purely operational standpoint, suspending TSA PreCheck during a staffing crunch is counterproductive. PreCheck exists to move low risk travelers through security more quickly and with fewer officers per passenger. If your goal is to process as many people as efficiently as possible while resources are strained, eliminating PreCheck does the opposite.

As I said yesterday, if anything, expanding expedited screening would reduce strain on the system, not increase it.

This is why the justification offered by DHS never quite added up. The explanation was about workforce strain, but the policy would have made that strain worse. That disconnect is apparent to anyone paying attention. So too is the statement from DHS addressing why there was a sudden “flip flop” on pausing PreCheck:

“We decided to handle TSA PreCheck on an airport-by-airport basis depending on workforce and resource strain instead of a blanket policy. If the government stays shutdown, we will be forced to implement these emergency measures nationwide to mitigate resource and workforce strain. This political game by the Democrats is putting strain on our TSA workers who are working without pay.”

That still makes no sense. TSA PreCheck speeds up security screenings and reduces the burden on workers at any and every airport it exists in…there is no viable “case-by-case” basis for determining whether it causes “resource strain” because by its very function it relieves strain.

PreCheck Was Simply A Political Pawn

The more plausible explanation is that TSA PreCheck was chosen because it is visible, popular, and immediately disruptive to travelers. Suspending it sends a message in a way that pausing less visible programs does not. It creates instant pain for frequent flyers and business travelers, a group more likely to notice and complain.

That pain could then be attributed to the shutdown and, by extension, to congressional Democrats. In fact, DHS statements framed the situation as a political game that was hurting TSA workers and the traveling public. The problem is that once the backlash arrived, including from the airline and travel industry, the White House appears to have decided the cost was not worth the message.

The result was a retreat to an airport by airport approach, with PreCheck preserved (yet Global Entry remaining paused).

Yesterday Noem appeared at Washington National Airport (DCA) to interview a TSA agent about how bad things were:

Yet does she not realize (of course she does…) that by ending PreCheck, she made the job of this agent and his colleagues even more difficult?

The cognitive dissonance here makes me so jaded.

CONCLUSION

The near suspension of TSA PreCheck was not a serious attempt to manage airport security during a shutdown. It was a political pressure tactic that collapsed as soon as it was examined through an operational lens.

PreCheck survives because it works. It moves people efficiently and reduces strain on the system. The fact that it was briefly placed on the chopping block tells nothing about aviation security and only how travel programs can be used as leverage in political disputes. Yet the rollout of this “punishment” was so poorly conceived that even the Trump administration said “no way” and quickly overruled Noem and Landowski.

It’s time for Noem to step down and go back to her dog in South Dakota.

image: Mikaela McGee/Department of Homeland Security