TSA Violates Republican Royalty. Will Heads Roll?

Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the pregnant daughter of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, tore into TSA last week after a recent flight.  Writing on X, she called for abolishing TSA: “I nearly missed my flight this morning after the TSA made me wait 15 minutes for a pat-down because I’m pregnant and didn’t feel like getting radiation exposure from their body scanner. The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman into just walking through the scanner because it’s ‘safe.’ After finally getting the absurdly invasive pat-down, I barely made my flight.”

Some people responded to her broadside by urging her to tell her complaint to her father. But as she repeatedly patiently explained, TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Transportation Department.

Many women responded to Duffy-Alfonso’s tweet with their own experience of TSA abuse:

Ellen Streiff  @EllenStreiff As a bilateral cochlear implant recipient, I have to opt for a pat-down screening. Even after informing TSA officers about my devices before screening and my limitations to understanding speech in noisy environment— they have been rude, impatient, and have deliberately swiped their magnetometers directly over my implants!

@Dragonflynda Dragonflynda Agree, I have had multiple bad experiences including bleeding from rough handling.

Sour Patch Lyds ن  @sourpatchlyds They never swabbed my palms until I was carrying a baby

TheSaltyMom @SaltyMommaC Oh Momma, Thousands (maybe 100s or millions) of Momma’s feel this! Wait ’til your child is 8 and “tests positive” for “residual explosive sediment” on her hands (allegedly).

Hannahighpoint  @hannahighpoint Wait until you try and bring your breast milk and pump. LAX tested everything in my bag and threw out my milk. 45 minutes

Sandy Wright  @SandyGl88167783 Nope, you can have Real ID, TSA Pre-Check, and American passport and they will force you to take off your chemo wig and roughly pat down your chest port-a-cath.

Many commenters slammed Duffy-Alfonso for failing to arrive at the airport a full two hours before her flight.  Since when did an inept federal agency become entitled to blight much of the day for innocent travelers?   Other commenters sneered that she should have taken the bus.

@AuntieFah420 responded: “Entitled little bitch. STFU”

Many of the people who scoffed at her complaint sounded like Trump supporters. Some commenters blamed Muslims for all of TSA’s abuses – since if not for the “Religion of Peace,” there would presumably never be any threat to air travel safety.

The backlash produced by the Duffy-Alfonson reminded me of the outrage proved by a  2017 piece I wrote for USA Today piece headlined, “Thanksgiving travel: Trump’s holiday gift is more invasive airport security.” TSA became abusive and intrusive after Trump first became president. My article discussed the case of Jenna McFarlane, a 56-year old teacher. A TSA agent told her “to spread my legs wider” and proceeded to “touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand,” as she formally complained to TSA afterwards.  One Twitter user sneered: “Jenna McFarlane is just upset that it was only four times.”

I had been bashing TSA ever since it was created in 2002 by President George W. Bush. But “due diligence” was no impediment to readers enraged by any criticism of Trump policies.  I was tagged as a pussy snowflake, libtard, moron,  brain dead, clown, left-wing bigot, dopey liberal, leftist loon, “leader of the idiots,” and stinkin’ libertarian.

 I was surprised to see so many people’s devotion to the president lead them to absolve an agency that had long abused Americans.

In her tweet slapdown of TSA, Duffy-Alfonso declared, “Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country.” That resonated with my TSA experiences in the last couple years. When I was flying out of Dallas International Airport in 2023,

I saw two women loitering behind a roped-off section for CLEAR, a new biometric surveillance program that works with 35 airports and coordinates with TSA. CLEAR involves travelers standing in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. The Washington Post warned that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.”

Though the CLEAR program is purportedly voluntary, TSA agents at Washington National Airport recently threatened long delays for any passenger who refused to be photographed by CLEAR, including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Merkley said that TSA falsely claimed there were signs notifying people that the facial scans are optional. But the clock is ticking down on seeking voluntary cooperation. TSA chief David Pekoske announced in early 2023 that “eventually… we will require biometrics across the board.”

I raised my phone camera, snapped a few shots of the women, and the howling commenced.

“What are you doing?” screamed a young woman wearing a CLEAR jacket. “You can’t take my photo!”

“But you’re scanning people’s eyeballs,” I replied. What could be more intrusive?

“That doesn’t matter because you can’t take our photo – it’s not allowed!” She sounded as if I had desecrated a federal temple.

With her three-inch artificial fingernails, I wondered if she planned to audition for a Dracula movie. Her colleague speedily exited, perhaps to summon police to end my assault. But if airport officials had sought to seize those photos, they would have faced a legal ruckus.

When I was flying out of Palm Beach Airport in Florida in October, the TSA checkpoint was structured so that the default was for every traveler to get their photo taken for CLEAR. A middle-aged TSA agent got perturbed when I wouldn’t stand in the right spot by  his desk for the photo.  I said I didn’t want my photo taken. “You don’t want your picture taken?!” he responded testily.  “Then I need to see your identification.”

I handed him my driver’s license  and he held it up a couple different times as he looked past it to see if I falsely claiming to be someone TSA agents ritually hated.   He took my boarding pass and looked at it intently – almost like he hadn’t done so well on  his “Hooked on Phonics” refresher course.

He finally deigned that I could proceed to the frickin’ Whole Body Scanner but I was supposed to have a sense of shame for failing to trust Leviathan.

Duffy-Alfonso’s condemnation of TSA is refreshing regardless of whether it spurs the Trump administration to repent.  But the outrage that her comment evoked on Twitter does raise the question: How many Trump voters abandoned their opposition to unleashing federal agencies after Trump was back in the Oval Office?  Since Trump is in the Oval Office, are private citizens presumptively the villains whenever they clash with federal agencies?

TSA abuses will generate a new torrent of online complaints between now and New Year’s Day. Will we learn if the Trump White House gives a damn about to any abuse of government power that doesn’t specifically target Trump supporters or donors?   Unfortunately, Trump and all his billionaire buddies fly on official or private jets that are exempt from TSA abuses.

The post TSA Violates Republican Royalty. Will Heads Roll? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.