TSA Gold+: The Privatization Program Congress Was Not Told About

While Transportation Security Administration officers worked without pay for more than 100 days during the longest government shutdown in American history, TSA was quietly developing and marketing a new privatization program to airport operators across the country. The program is called TSA Gold+. Congress was not told it existed.

Against Giants Labor Advocates documented this program from publicly available federal records beginning in 2025. Federal News Network published our findings on April 21, 2026. This article presents what the record shows.

What TSA Gold+ Is

TSA Gold+ is a third airport screening privatization model, distinct from the existing Screening Partnership Program and the Remote/Hybrid Screening Services Program. A February 2026 program brief bearing the official TSA seal and a dedicated government email address, TSAGoldPlus@tsa.dhs.gov, describes Gold+ as enabling airports to opt into tailored screening services supported by private capital, with industry operators managing both the technology and the screening workforce.

Unlike SPP, where private contractors staff checkpoints under TSA operational authority, Gold+ removes TSA from operational authority entirely. Private capital, private technology, and a privately managed workforce run the checkpoint. TSA provides regulatory oversight only.

The program brief promises delivery of advanced security technology at little to no additional cost to airports or taxpayers through private capital investment, with a transition timeline of seven to eleven months per airport.

The Federal Procurement Record

Gold+ is not a concept paper. It appears in official federal procurement documents.

A Request for Information published on the federal contracting database SAM.gov on August 6, 2025 references GoldPlus public-private screening mode acquisitions as an active federal acquisition category. This document predates the program brief's appearance at airports by six months and predates TSA's first FY2026 congressional testimony by five months.

The July 2025 Checkpoint of the Future RFI asked private industry to design AI-driven, reduced-headcount checkpoints that could be contractor-owned and operated. When asked whether congressional authorization would be required for the full turnkey model, TSA declined to answer and asked industry to propose workarounds.

The FY2027 federal budget, submitted April 2026, contains a section explicitly headed "TSA Privatization" and proposes eliminating more than 8,000 TSO positions while simultaneously increasing private screening funding by $477 million. The same budget requests funding for remote screening technology, e-gates, and cloud-based checkpoint connectivity, the precise infrastructure the Gold+ model requires.

Four Hearings, No Disclosure

TSA's Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, testified before Congress four times in FY2026. TSA Gold+ was not disclosed in any of these appearances.

What This Means for TSA Officers

The deletion of the federal workforce non-displacement clause from the SPP follow-on contracting vehicle in March 2026 means that private contractors taking over screening operations are no longer contractually required to offer jobs to the federal officers they replace. A simultaneous proposal to transfer employment appeal adjudication from the independent Merit Systems Protection Board to the Office of Personnel Management would further reduce the legal recourse available to displaced officers.

The Larger Picture

The Gold+ program does not exist in isolation. It sits alongside a $5.3 billion private screening contracting vehicle and a federal budget that explicitly funds TSA privatization. The nominee for TSA Administrator spent his career helping a government contractor positioned in that exact market.

It also sits alongside a private sector supply chain that was assembled before the procurement began. In December 2024, The Chertoff Group, SureScan Corporation, and VMD Corp, an Xcelerate Solutions company and current TSA private screening contractor, formed a joint venture to commercialize Gigaplex, a technology that transmits airport baggage X-ray images in real time to remote review locations anywhere in the world. The technology was added to the federal purchasing schedule in July 2025, the same month TSA asked private industry to design reduced-headcount checkpoints with remote screening capability. VMD Corp's director presented TSA Gold+ at the March 2026 ACI-NA conference. The same corporate family is building the technology and marketing the program designed to deploy it.

Against Giants has published separate analyses of the Gigaplex network, the TSA administrator nomination, and the broader privatization architecture. All are available at againstgiantsllc.com.

The story of what is being built for the future of airport security in America is still being told. Against Giants Labor Advocates will continue to tell it.