End the TSA

A newsletter from Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) recently came across my inbox (if you contact a congressperson through an online form, they’ll usually add you to their email distribution list, even if they never actually respond to your message). With the recent ICE and DHS funding debates, I decided to scroll through and see if she had commented on the DHS at all. While she expressed support for the immigrant community and a desire to increase congressional oversight of ICE, her final paragraph was a plea to support that perennial intruder of civil liberties, the TSA. Unfortunately, Dingell did not cite any statistics to support her thesis that the TSA is a vital component in keeping travelers safe and the economy running smoothly, so I took it upon myself to check a few of her claims (quotations in italics below are taken from her February 18, 2026 “Dingell Update”).

“Lastly, I want to talk about TSA. I love these men and women. They have become a political “ping pong ball” in budget fights because aviation security is not optional — it is foundational to our economy, national security, and public safety.”

There is no evidence that the TSA has increased public safety or prevented any national security incidents. The TSA itself has admitted that there is “literally zero evidence that anyone is plotting to blow up an airline leaving from a domestic airport”. If anyone were, it’s unlikely that the TSA would catch them – the most recent publicly available data (from 2015), found that the TSA was 95% ineffective at catching smuggled weapons. More recent studies have been classified, although the organization claims it has been improving.

“Every day, millions of Americans rely on TSA officers to keep air travel safe and running smoothly. When funding uncertainty disrupts staffing, training, and modernization, it leads to longer lines, lower morale, and increased security risks.”

First, the TSA has demonstrated that it can keep operations running without its full workforce. In January 2019, “one in 10 TSA employees (who are not being paid through the government shutdown) took [MLK] day off, crediting financial strain caused by the shutdown. Despite this 10% reduction in TSA officers, security screening wait times did not exceeded normal lengths at most airports.” (This statistic comes from a Forbes article, which links to a TSA checkpoint operations statement from January 21st – a dead link. As per usual, actual data on TSA operations is difficult to find.)

During the 43-day shutdown in fall of 2025, acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill stated that “TSA personnel kept operations running and average wait times within agency standards”.

“If you are flying, thank them, they keep us safe. Don’t take the officers for granted and show them that you know the value of their job and that they are appreciated.”

While it is cruel to force TSA employees to work without pay, the solution is not to keep paying them – it’s to abolish the inefficient, ineffective, and unaccountable organization which employs them to hassle millions of travelers a day for no appreciable security improvement. Transitioning to a private security solution for air travel, analogous to private air traffic control used in other parts of the world, would better insulate the workers against partisan brinksmanship than legislation, which could be changed or repealed by Congress in the future.