The short airport security line in Kansas City means more than you think

People wait in long security lines at LaGuardia Airport on March 25, 2026, in the Queens borough of New York City. Travel disruptions continue as hundreds of TSA agents have quit or are working without pay during a partial government shutdown. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

This week, as wait times at American airports stretched beyond four hours in some cases, I got a text message from a fellow Kansan who was worried about flying this week.

OK. It was my mom.

She clipped and texted a bit of a New York Times article that explained why wait times were so short at the first airport on her trip: Kansas City International. 

Even during a negotiating impasse in Washington — one that froze the pay for Transportation Security Administration employees — passengers flying out of Kansas City experienced “wait times below 10 minutes, with peaks of no more than 30 minutes,” according to an airport spokesman interviewed by the Times.  

The TSA lines at airports in Houston, LaGuardia and Atlanta, meanwhile, have been the lead stories on the network TV morning news shows. Lines snaked through lobbies and hallways.

So, how did Kansas City get so lucky as to have both a new airport and short wait times?

Turns out that it’s not luck, but privatization of airport security. 

The Times article explained that Kansas City is one of 20 airports nationwide participating in the Screening Partnership Program. If you have flown into Orlando, San Francisco or Sarasota recently, your security was handled by a private company — not TSA.

According to the TSA’s website, the program “contracts security screening services at commercial airports to qualified private companies. These companies run screening operations under federal oversight and must comply with all TSA security screening procedures.” Airports submit a two-page application posted on the TSA website followed by a 60-day review period. 

I wonder how many applications from restless airports are awaiting review after this delay in TSA funding.

After I read the excerpt of the article that my mom sent along, I noticed her text message. Her words were more newsworthy than any article I have read this week.

“They should privatize all TSAs at airports,” my mom wrote.

That comment shook me — especially because it came from my mom, a liberal voice in my life who is a reliable Democratic voter. This must be Bizarro-America if my mom is calling for privatization.

Of course, we live in Double-Bizarro-America. One where thousands of federal workers charged with sensitive security jobs come to work without pay. One where the federal government periodically lurches to a stop after government funding bills fail. One where the president rallied U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports where they couldn’t do much to help.

The Super-Double-Bizarro-America of 2026 might be giving us political vertigo. A topsy-turvy gravity is sending liberals tripping into unfamiliar corners of the room, urging the privatization of what we all considered a fundamental federal government job: the person behind the X-ray machine inspecting your toiletry bag in neon relief.

During the past 50 years (and particularly during the past 10 years), conservative politicians have aimed to convince America of a grand idea: Defenestrate the federal government. It’s a backlash to FDR’s New Deal that continues as we approach its 100th anniversary.

Chant the slogans along with me. “Drain the swamp!” “Starve the beast!” “Smaller government, more freedom!”

Conservatives carry this aversion into nearly every realm of governing, save for defense.

It’s like giving palace keys to a graffiti artist. Like giving a Rolls Royce to a demolition derby driver. Like giving a cupcake to a 2-year-old in a high chair. This is going to get messy.

A response from conservatives might blame Democrats for not negotiating more urgently. Or, they might point to airport security privatization as the long-term solution, like my mom suggested.

By bringing her, an ardent foe of conservative ideology, around to a point of view that erodes the federal government even a little bit, their strategy gains ground.

Maybe it’s not a winning strategy at the November midterm ballot box, if voters remember the discomfort of the airport lines and associate them with Republicans.

However, it’s certainly a recipe for other conservative objectives: whittling down the impact of the federal government, nudging Americans toward greater privatization, and ensuring that Americans keep considering the supposedly dark specter of illegal immigration.

The thinking goes: “Sure, we might lose the battle. Voters might blame us as airports descend into gridlock. But if we can make everyday Americans become 10% more skeptical of the government, we win the ideological war.”

With my phone in my hand and my mom’s text message waiting for an answer, I stood in my kitchen wondering what to write back. (If only I would have had this column at my fingertips.)

Instead, I typed out a few words that I hoped would sum up that I understood her frustration and the political tactics that landed us here.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I typed and hit send.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.