On US politics - if you were secretary of transportation would you eliminate the TSA
Excerpt from NYTimes article on TSA elimination-
A daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy denounced an “absurdly invasive pat-down” at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint Thursday on social media, suggesting that if her father were in charge of the agency, he would try to abolish it.
In a series of posts on X, Evita Duffy-Alfonso claimed that she had nearly missed her flight after declining to go through the body scanner. Ms. Duffy-Alfonso, who said she is pregnant, said she waited 15 minutes for a pat-down. She said the T.S.A. agents, whom she described as “passive-aggressive,” tried to pressure her to pass through the scanner, insisting it was safe for pregnant passengers.
“All this for an unconstitutional agency that isn’t even good at its job,” Ms. Duffy-Alfonso wrote on X. “The ‘golden age of transportation’ cannot begin until the T.S.A. is gone.”
Ms. Duffy-Alfonso’s posts on Thursday build on past views she’s aired about the T.S.A. In June, she said in a post that the agency’s existence violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, adding that the T.S.A. “needs to be abolished.”
“I should not be treated like a terrorist for traveling within my own country by an agency that’s trash at its job anyway,” she wrote.
As transportation secretary, Mr. Duffy leads the agency that oversees federal transportation projects and sets safety regulations for air travel, among other modes of transportation. He does not control the T.S.A., which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, led by Secretary Kristi Noem. Mr. Duffy often talks about creating a “golden age of travel,” which he recently said included dressing better while flying.
But if her father were responsible for the T.S.A., Ms. Duffy-Alfonso said in one of the posts on Thursday, he would “radically limit it and lobby Congress to abolish it.”
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/travel/sean-duffy-daughter-tsa-unconstitutional.html
Replies to: On US politics - if you were secretary of transportation would you eliminate the TSA
Funny but true TSA story that Iggle will appreciate:
Within a year of September 11th, we were flying out of Philadelphia airport. Travelers were still adjusting to airport security with the newly created TSA.
Straight out of central casting, there was a lady in her early 70s, a bit disheveled, very “Philly” in tone and attiTUDE. She had her ticket, but she couldn’t locate any identification in her purse that appeared to be a deep sea of chaos.
The lady pulls out a doctor appointment card, hands it to the TSA officer, and says, “Call Doctor Horowitz …. he’ll tell you I”m not a terrorist!” as she then laughs in that unique Philadelphia rat a tat machine gun laughter.
The long line all looked at the TSA officer, with unanimous agreement that we felt safe this lady was not a flight risk. She was waved through as everyone applauded.
Consent Management