TSA announced a strategy today called Horizon 25. Most of it is what you would expect from a new Administrator seventeen days into the job. Modernize checkpoints. Improve the passenger experience. Counter drones. Streamline technology acquisition.
One sentence is not routine.
What Happened Today
Officers at Tampa International Airport received a message today informing them that as of today, TPA will no longer be part of the TSA Gold+ program, and that official messaging from TSA and the airport would follow.
Tampa was the largest of the three airports that had opted in. More than 700 officers work there.
Reading the two together, the sequence is not difficult to follow. The program those airports opted into is being replaced, and at least one of them is out.
The Week Before
This did not come without warning, though the warnings were only visible in the documents.
On August 6, Tampa's Chief Operating Officer told the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority board that TSA had not issued a solicitation for that airport, that no operator had been selected, and that no contract existed. The airport's Chief Executive Officer said no final decision had been made.
Within the past week, Tampa rewrote its public question and answer page on Gold+. Statements written as "is" and "will" became "would." The September 2026 operator selection date was removed. The May 2027 implementation date was removed. A new section was added stating that opting in was not a final decision. The word "No" was deleted from the beginning of the answer to whether the airport was eliminating jobs.
We captured both versions and published the comparison on August 21. See Tampa Rewrote Its Gold+ Question and Answer Page.
Separately, an official at Charleston told us on August 19 that the Authority had made no commitment, had not seen a contract, and remained in an exploratory posture.
At the time, each of those looked like an airport being careful. Read against today's announcement, they look like airports responding to something they knew and the workforce did not.
What Is Not Known
The release says Gold+ will be replaced by an evolved Screening Partnership Program. It does not say what that means.
It does not say what happens to solicitation 70T05026R5900N005, the $12.9 billion contract vehicle published June 24. Phase 1 proposals closed July 31. The solicitation went inactive on SAM.gov on August 15. Awards had been anticipated before the fiscal year ends September 30.
It does not say what happens to the proposals companies submitted, or to the draft performance work statement TSA sent Tampa on July 31.
It does not say whether Des Moines and Charleston remain in the program, in a successor program, or in neither.
It does not say what an evolved Screening Partnership Program is, or how it differs from the one that has operated for 24 years.
We are not going to guess at any of that. When TSA and the airports publish the official messaging they have promised, we will read it.
What This Is Not
This is not privatization being abandoned.
The same release states that the strategy "will accelerate public-private partnerships with industry leaders across sectors to expand modernization across TSA." The replacement is described as harnessing the role of the private sector, not reducing it.
What appears to have changed is the vehicle and the name, not the direction. The Screening Partnership Program already exists, already operates at roughly twenty airports, and already rests on the same statute, 49 U.S.C. 44920, that governed Gold+.
Everything we have published about what that statute requires applies equally to a successor program. The compensation floor is the same floor. The right of first refusal is the same regulation. What an officer loses on leaving federal employment does not change with the branding.
What This Means for an Officer
If you are at Tampa, you have been told your airport is out. The uncertainty of the past thirty days ends, and a different uncertainty replaces it. Nobody has yet said what comes next.
If you are at Des Moines or Charleston, you have not been told anything today, and you should not assume your situation matches Tampa's until someone says so.
If you are anywhere else, the underlying direction has not reversed. An evolved Screening Partnership Program is still a private screening program, and the FY2027 budget proposal that would require category III and IV airports to enroll in SPP is unaffected by a name change.
The decisions that were in front of officers three days ago are the same decisions, under a different label, on a timeline nobody has published.
We will keep reading the documents.
If you want to understand how any of this applies to your own situation, that is a conversation worth having. It costs you nothing. againstgiantsllc.com/get-help.html or info@againstgiantsllc.com