White House pulled plug on Kristi Noem's plot to suspend TSA PreCheck: report

A plot to suspend the popular TSA PreCheck that angered travelers was hatched by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her top adviser Corey Lewandowski, and had to be stopped with a White House intervention, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

The Saturday announcement that PreCheck would halt at 6 a.m. Sunday sparked immediate outrage from Democrats and air travel groups. By Sunday morning, passengers discovered the program was running normally anyway, leaving everyone scrambling to figure out what was actually happening.

The botched rollout raised eyebrows among security experts, including former DHS official Juliette Kayyem, who blasted the move, saying it "made no sense, given the explanation they gave." She claimed the agency was trying to score "political points" against Democrats. "If your goal is to process many people as efficiently as possible to limit the number of staff you need, you would actually enhance or quickly clear the TSA lines," Kayyem said, adding that "the division that we see between the secretary's office and the operational experts continue."

Lewandowski dodged questions about his role in the fiasco, telling The Post that the department's policy is to "prioritize the general traveling public to make sure they travel through the line as quickly as possible" on a "case-by-case basis."

The chaos underscores broader management troubles at DHS. Noem faces mounting scrutiny following her handling of the killing of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by immigration agents in Minneapolis, and the agency is hemorrhaging staffers as key deputies abandon ship.