TSA Killed Its Secret Airport Security Privatization Plan — Then Launched a Bigger One
The Transportation Security Administration has killed the airport-screening privatization plan that got it sued by its own workforce — and replaced it, within days, with a version that could reach roughly ten times as many airports.
TSA Administrator David P. Cummins, confirmed by the Senate on August 7, 2026, announced this week that the agency is retiring "TSA Gold+," a checkpoint-privatization initiative it had developed largely out of public view since at least August 2025. In its place, Cummins unveiled what TSA is calling the "Horizon 25 Strategy," which folds the same underlying goal — moving passenger screening from federal Transportation Security Officers to private contractors — into an expanded version of an existing, congressionally authorized program: the Screening Partnership Program (SPP).
The reversal came days after Tampa International Airport, one of the first airports to sign on to Gold+, pulled out of the program, and roughly two weeks after the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union representing TSA's screening workforce, sued the agency to force it to hand over records about how Gold+ was built and marketed.
How Gold+ came apart
Gold+ surfaced publicly almost by accident. A TSA-branded briefing flyer describing the initiative as a "new public-private partnership aimed at modernizing aviation security at select airports across the country" was found by a traveler at Orlando International Airport and shared with a reporter at Federal News Network, who published the first account of the program in April 2026. Until then, neither Congress, the union representing TSA's roughly 47,000 Transportation Security Officers, nor the traveling public had been told the program existed.
TSA had told AFGE in late July that it intended to launch Gold+ next year at three specific airports: Tampa International in Florida, Charleston International in South Carolina, and Des Moines International in Iowa. For the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 TSOs working checkpoints at those three airports, the agency never publicly detailed whether they would be absorbed by a private contractor, transferred to federal jobs elsewhere, or let go.
AFGE had filed a Freedom of Information Act request on May 11 seeking Gold+ planning documents. When TSA gave no estimated timeline for releasing them, the union sued on August 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — a FOIA enforcement action rather than a direct legal challenge to the program itself, but one that forced Gold+'s internal paper trail into the open at the same moment Tampa was walking away from it.
The bigger program taking its place
Cummins framed the shift away from Gold+ as part of Horizon 25, a broader modernization strategy centered on checkpoint technology rather than a full handover of the workforce. But the practical effect, according to TSA's own program materials, is an expansion of the Screening Partnership Program — the agency's original privatized-screening authority, which has existed in some form since the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 and today covers roughly 20 mostly small and mid-sized airports, including San Francisco International and Kansas City International.
The Trump administration's proposal would push participation from about 20 airports to roughly 220, effectively requiring all small and non-hub airports to move to contracted screening. The administration's proposed fiscal year 2027 budget calls for cutting 8,400 TSA officer positions and replacing only about half of them with contracted workers, while redirecting an estimated $477 million toward the Screening Partnership Program.
AFGE and the Association of Flight Attendants have both said the expansion endangers workers and, they argue, passengers, warning that contracted screeners answer to a corporate employer rather than directly to TSA even though they still operate under the agency's security standards. TSA counters that SPP airports must meet the same federal screening requirements as agency-run checkpoints and that private contractors have run some U.S. checkpoints without incident for two decades.
"Airports across the country will bear the brunt of an untested plan that TSA tried to keep hidden from Congress, from workers, and from the flying public," an AFGE statement said, referring to the union's ongoing fight over both Gold+ and its successor.
Why this keeps happening
The pattern — a security-privatization push disclosed only after a leak, followed by a retreat that reappears in a different wrapper — has defined TSA's approach to contracted screening for most of 2026. Gold+ was reportedly in development and being marketed to airport executives and screening vendors as early as August 2025, a full eight months before its existence became public. Its retirement this week does not close that chapter so much as fold it into SPP, a program Congress already authorized and that has survived multiple administrations without the same secrecy complaints.
For airports, the distinction matters operationally. SPP is opt-in: an airport authority applies, and TSA evaluates whether a private contractor can meet federal security standards at that facility. Gold+, by contrast, was TSA-initiated and had been slated to start at three airports that had not sought it out — a structural difference that fed much of the workforce and transparency backlash. Cummins' Horizon 25 framing keeps the expansion nominally voluntary, but the scale of the ambition — 220 airports versus 20 — means the administration is pursuing largely the same outcome Gold+ was designed to deliver, through a channel with fewer legal landmines.
The AFGE lawsuit over Gold+ records has not been withdrawn, and it is unclear whether the union will now seek similar disclosure for the expanded SPP push. TSA has not published a public list of which of the roughly 200 additional airports would be approached first, nor has it detailed transition terms for officers at airports that move to contracted screening.
Sources
- Union Sues TSA Over Secret Plan to Privatize Security — The American Prospect
- AFGE Sues TSA for Hiding Records on Secret Airport Screening Privatization Program — AFGE
- How A Flyer At Orlando Airport Exposed The TSA's $12.9 Billion Privatization Program — Simple Flying
- Tampa International Airport backs out of TSA Gold+ as agency scraps program nationwide — Yahoo Creators
- TSA Scraps Its Secretive Gold+ Program, But Airport Security Is Going Private Anyway — Simple Flying
- TSA to replace 'Gold+' in privatization push — Federal News Network
- New TSA Administrator Abandons Controversial Gold+ Program But Widespread Privatization is Still Coming to Airport Security — Paddle Your Own Kanoo
- TSA budget cuts jobs in privatization push — Federal News Network