In a move that feels way overdue, the TSA has officially dropped one of its most hated post-9/11 rules: travelers no longer have to remove their shoes at airport security.
Rejoice, for you no longer have to expose your stank feet nestled in your ratty socks to fellow passengers. For such a big change that I am willing to bet millions of Americans will love, the Trump administration, specifically Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, known for her propagandistic theatrical displays, didn’t announce the change in procedures in even so much as a press release at first.
The change was soft-launched and only spotted by observant passengers at New York’s LaGuardia and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. It wasn’t officially announced until days later when Noem confirmed it during a press conference.
The reason for the shift isn’t so much because Washington has finally wised up to how obnoxious it is to take off your shoes to fight terrorism, but because of modern technology. According to Noem, an upgraded “layered” security approach featuring better scanners, more agents, enforced Real ID, and a lot of invasive biometric wizardry has made it safe to let traveling Americans put away their slip-ons and go back to a pre-2006 world when you could show up to the airport wearing complicated shoes that require a Navy-like understanding of knots to put on and take off.
This pivot comes at a time when air travel is surging. TSA screened over 900 million passengers last year, up 5 percent from 2023. The TSA just set a record by screening 3 million travelers in a single day. That’s a lot of shoes that will remain on, thus removing some congestion from the process.
Noem says that other obnoxious rules, like the limits on liquids, could be ending soon, too.
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