I’ll explain why a recent call to abolish TSA PreCheck and nationalize airlines is a bad idea, show how PreCheck improves lines and safety, outline the economic and constitutional problems with government seizure, quote the candidate’s statements exactly, and describe real-world airport frustrations that make this proposal dangerous for travelers.
Air travel is unpleasant enough without political grandstanding that would make it worse for everyone. After years of frequent flying for work, I can say the difference between a bad trip and a nightmarish one often comes down to how security and operations are managed. Programs like TSA PreCheck reduce friction for vetted travelers and ease pressure on the rest of the throughput; that practical effect is easy to measure in minutes saved and lines shortened.
When a politician proposes to abolish PreCheck, the rhetoric sounds like fairness until you think about the consequences. Eliminating a program that intentionally diverts low-risk passengers into a faster lane simply increases congestion where it hurts most: the slow line. That does not equal justice or efficiency, it equals more wasted time, missed connections, and more dissatisfied customers across the board.
Someone who will likely be a U.S. representative for the party of John F. Kennedy for the city where the hellscape known as John F. Kennedy International Airport is based wants you to know that she wants to make your experience at JFK even worse than it is now — because, socialism!
Meet Claire Valdez, the newly minted Democratic nominee for New York’s 7th Congressional District. She’s one of three Democratic socialists endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who managed to score upsets in Tuesday’s primary.
Then there is the follow-up idea: nationalize the airline industry. That is a radical leap from tweaking security policy to putting the federal government in charge of a huge sector of the economy. There are immediate financial barriers, vast operational complexities, and constitutional questions about takings and due process. Those are not hypothetical objections—they are real, measurable problems that affect taxpayers and travelers alike.
…mentioning the mere act of trying to board a flight in NYC’s major airports is possibly the most triggering thing you can tell someone who lives in the area, at least that doesn’t involve a relative or pet dying.
Therefore, it’s a bit curious that Valdez’s plan to improve air transport is … abolishing TSA PreCheck and nationalizing the airline industry. The only reason she won, I can surmise, is that too few people in the 7th Congressional District saw the clip from a podcast named (sigh) “The B****uation Room” in May.
“My hot take is that we need to abolish PreCheck,” she said, referring to the TSA program that allows low-risk, pre-vetted travelers to speed through the security process. This makes it easier not only for them, but for everyone else in line.
Economics matter here. The market capitalization of major carriers is enormous and represents both private capital and ongoing operational revenue. Buying out airlines would be astronomically expensive, and seizing them would trigger legal and political battles the government does not need. Private airlines also absorb business risk and innovate on routing, schedules, and customer service in ways a monolithic government operator seldom matches.
The market capitalization of just the two biggest American-based carriers — Delta and United — is well over $100 billion, first off. And that’s just if the government buys these airlines out, which would probably end up being more expensive unless they were seized at gunpoint. (This is unconstitutional, naturally, but I don’t think Valdez has thought that — or any of this — through.)
And of course, market cap is hardly the only problem with the government running an airline. There are the associated costs, for one thing. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, is famous for saying that “if you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.”
Practical experience in airports supports skepticism about adding centralized control without solving core staffing and management problems. I have passed through some of the most chaotic terminals in the country and seen chronic understaffing, broken infrastructure, and inefficient processes. Those failings get worse when changes are made for ideology rather than logistics, because the people who fix lines are the ones who run operations day to day.
Policy choices should aim at reducing friction, improving safety, and keeping costs under control, not at imposing false equality by dragging everyone down to the slowest standard. Abolishing an established program that demonstrably helps flow without addressing why some people need faster processing is a crude tool that breaks more than it mends. Likewise, taking on the airline industry as a government project is a recipe for wasted capital and degraded service.
The rhetoric of fairness and nationalization sounds bold and compassionate until you picture longer waits, more missed flights, and a federal bureaucracy juggling fleets and terminals. Voters should ask whether a candidate proposing such sweeping changes has thought through the practical, economic, and constitutional consequences. Airport misery is real, but the cure being proposed promises to spread that misery wider and make traveling worse for everyone.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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