The Department of Homeland Security will suspend TSA PreCheck and Global Entry starting Sunday as a partial government shutdown drags on, forcing leaders to prioritize core security work and emergency response while critics trade blame over who caused the mess.
The suspension affects programs that let vetted travelers move through airport security faster, with the change set to begin Sunday at 6 a.m. Eastern. That means more people will rejoin general lines and the operational burden will shift back onto frontline staff already working without pay. For regular flyers and business travelers the convenience will vanish overnight, and airports will feel the strain during peak travel periods.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem placed responsibility squarely on Democrats and issued a blunt warning. “This is the third time that Democrat politicians have shut down this department during the 119th Congress,” Noem said in a statement. “Shutdowns have serious real world consequences, not just for the men and women of DHS and their families who go without a paycheck, but it endangers our national security.”
Noem added that the department is making difficult choices to protect essential functions while funding is cut off. She described the moves as necessary workforce and resource decisions meant to blunt the immediate fallout. Agency leaders say the goal is to keep core missions intact even as support programs are paused.
The practical changes are explicit: TSA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will prioritize the general traveling public and will suspend courtesy and special privilege escorts. FEMA will stop non-disaster-related responses so it can concentrate entirely on true emergencies and disaster relief. Those shifts aim to preserve life-saving capabilities but reduce day-to-day services travelers have come to expect.
The timing is especially problematic because a major storm is forecast to hit the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast just as these cuts take effect. When a weather emergency collides with scaled-back resources, response windows tighten and recovery operations become harder to manage. State and local partners will likely shoulder more of the load while federal teams triage what they can handle.
Not everyone accepts the administration’s framing and some Democrats blasted the move as political brinksmanship. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., criticized the Trump administration for “idiotically” shutting down the programs “to punish the American people.” He went further, saying, “This is Trump and Kristi Noem purposely punishing the American people and using them as pawns for their sadistic political games,” he said in a statement. “TSA PreCheck and Global Entry REDUCE airport lines and ease the burden on DHS staff who are working without pay because of Trump’s abuse of the Department and killing of American citizens.”
The current shutdown marks the third lapse in federal funding for DHS in less than six months, and it began on Feb. 14 after talks failed over immigration enforcement policies. Lawmakers reached an impasse tied to a broader dispute over an immigration crackdown proposed by the White House, leaving DHS without the stopgap funding other departments secured. That political stalemate forced local leaders and agency heads to make stark choices about what services to keep running.
DHS ended up the lone Cabinet department left without funding after Democratic negotiators stepped away from a bipartisan plan released the prior month, legislation that had been crafted following protests and the death of two U.S. citizens during unrest in Minneapolis tied to anti-ICE demonstrations. With no agreement in place, department officials moved quickly to identify which programs could be paused to protect core missions.
As the third-largest Cabinet agency, DHS employs nearly 272,000 people and touches countless daily operations across the country. Internal planning suggested roughly 90 percent of the workforce would continue reporting to duty, often without pay, because their roles support national security and public safety. The agency spans Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, FEMA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service, which means the suspension of select services has ripple effects across travel, border enforcement, and emergency response.
