TSA Policies Become Slightly Less Stupid

The TSA ends its stupidest rule ever after 20 years of pointlessness: The Transportation Security Administration has started to phase out its rule requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through security after, oh, just 20 years of forcing everyone to show off their ugly toenails in public. Per The New York Times, “the agency has not officially announced this change and did not confirm the new policy, which appears to be taking effect at airports across the country.” The report relies on an anonymous source but is apparently corroborated by the recent accounts of travelers. Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, first reported the soft launch of this policy via his travel newsletter.

“Why now?” Harmon-Marshall asks. “I think it’s politics, not security. A handful of lawmakers have recently ramped up criticism of the TSA, with some even floating the idea of dismantling the agency altogether. From complaints about long lines to inconsistent screening experiences, the pressure has been mounting. And this shoe change? It feels like a direct response to that pressure.” It appears to be happening first at major airports, then trickling down to all of them.

The policy was put in place because of Richard Reid, a British-born criminal who had been radicalized and trained by Al Qaeda, who boarded American Airlines Flight 63 between Paris and Miami in December 2001 wearing shoes full of explosives. The bombs did not go off; keen flight attendants noticed his suspicious behavior—including lighting matches on the plane—and tackled him, sustaining bite wounds; passengers and crew members helped to prevent Reid from detonating the bombs, with an off-duty doctor even tranquilizing him for the duration of the flight. The plane emergency-landed in Boston, where Reid was apprehended by law enforcement. He was later sentenced to three life terms plus 110 years in prison without parole. And so, because of this true psycho, the rule was born five years later, in 2006, which itself defies logic. The TSA has, to date, never caught anyone with bombs hidden in their shoes. (And many people accept it as a foregone conclusion that the Reid shoe bombs would have downed the plane, when that’s not necessarily true.)

I wonder if one unintended consequence of this policy change will be fewer people signing up and paying for PreCheck, which allows preapproved people to keep their shoes on (and their laptops in their bags, and a few other tweaks to the process).

But the shoe-removal policy is far from universal, as international travelers routinely notice. “You don’t take your shoes off anywhere but in the U.S.—not in Israel, in Amsterdam, in London,” aviation security expert Yossi Sheffi told The Washington Post back in 2011. “We all know why we do it here, but this seems to be a make-everybody-feel-good thing rather than a necessity.” Still, it’s a good thing for the TSA to begin to roll back some of its pointless, ineffective security theater, especially if the policies haven’t been proven useful at actually catching would-be bombers over the years.

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Fixing what went wrong in Texas: “The number of people killed in devastating Central Texas floods surpassed 100 on Monday as emergency officials spent another day searching through snapped trees and wrecked homes for those who remain missing—and as clouds threatened to bring more rain and flooding to the region,” reports The Texas Tribune. It looks like 25 people are still reported missing, with 28 children and 56 adults dead in Kerr County. So far, seven people are reported dead in Travis County, six in Kendall, three in Burnet, two in Williamson, and one in Tom Green County. President Donald Trump will visit Hill Country later this week.

“People aren’t ignoring warnings on purpose,” wrote Republican state Sen. Paul Bettencourt on X. “There are simply too many in a day, and they are turning off their phones at night. In times of natural disaster, we must have a safeguard to ensure this kind of emergency is not ignored. So we are going to combine ‘Old-Tech’ sirens (emergency alert overrides that can’t be turned off) with ‘New-Tech’ to alert Texans to get to higher ground. This will help day or night, and ‘New-Tech’ needs a Natural Disaster alert level on cellphones that can NOT be user-suppressed. That way, even if the cell tower’s down, old tech still works.”

There’s an interesting strain of critique that’s emerged in the aftermath of this disaster that’s basically: People are so inundated by bullshit flood warnings that they don’t actually respond when there’s real ones; the government has overused its comms to the point that people can’t distinguish real threats from minor ones. I think it’s possible that this is true—and the item below provides an example of a small way another government far away engages in this same thing—but there’s another very obvious reason why these floods were so devastating: The rains escalated drastically overnight, while people were sleeping. They just weren’t awake to assess what was happening and take action. Or, as my colleague Christian Britschgi wrote, “the real culprit was bad weather, not bad public policy.”

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Scenes from New York: In Rockaway Beach, where I live, drones operated by the New York City Fire Department, the New York Police Department, and the emergency management office for the city spotted eight sharks over the last few days. But it’s hard to tell whether this is because they deployed more shark-surveillance drones than usual—so the sharks were always there, they’re just catching footage of more of them—or if there’s been a spike in shark activity this summer. There’s also no information given about what type or size of sharks, which actually really matters when you’re trying to assess risk. Either way, city policy dictates that they close the beach (even to the surfers) for one hour following shark sightings, which I think is WRONG! Give people the information and then let them decide their risk appetite!

It’s possible that there’s been a real uptick in shark activity because of a dead whale that washed up on shore a few weeks ago; there’s also theories out there that sharks remain attracted to beaches where dead whales have been buried (like ours, after the carcass washed up on shore), but Australian scientists have been hard at work trying to get to the bottom of that.

For what it’s worth, most surfers don’t really mind being in sharky water; it’s sort of an assumption that there’s weird stuff in the ocean that poses some threat to us. We take sea urchin spikes in the feet and jellyfish stings. Cone snails can kill you! (The real threat? Missing a truly great wave.)

???? Another shark sighting at Rockaway Beach.

Around 6:00 PM, our drone team spotted a shark just 100 feet from swimmers near Beach 113. The sighting spanned Beach 113 to Beach 115. Thanks to our innovative and multifaceted public safety team—leveraging drone technology—we were… pic.twitter.com/xJM2FDjDOf

— Kaz Daughtry (@kazdaughtry) July 5, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• “The global supply of heavy rare earths hinges in part on the outcome of a months-long battle between a rebel army and the Chinese-backed military junta in the hills of northern Myanmar,” reports Reuters.
• You might notice that Amazon Prime Day discounts are worse this year—and tariffs are to blame. “Economic indicators have so far portrayed a resilient US consumer, but the long-term outlook could be muddied by short-term shopper savviness—such as buying automobiles before tariffs take effect,” reports Bloomberg. “Consumption declined slightly in May. Consumer sentiment increased in June. Prime Day could help clarify the signals for the rest of the summer.”
• Yes:

Democrats should stop looking for little new ways to make life more annoying pic.twitter.com/GO4HG5gcXC

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) July 7, 2025

(“Gotta say, very funny to be the party in favor of anti-lid nudges but opposed to ultrasounds before abortions,” comments writer Leah Libresco Sargeant. “Which of these is higher stakes/offers new information?”)

• Really interesting debate that gets at the heart of very fundamental disagreements about how to teach children and what school is for:

If I were actively trying to extinguish my children’s sense of altruism, compassion and responsibility I can’t think of a better plan than forcing them to spend all of their time doing random ‘altruistic’ chores they didn’t choose, and aren’t equipped to succeed at. https://t.co/1XB4U1feKc

— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) July 8, 2025

• Inez Stepman on how socialism warps the soul:

More here:

The worst damage of socialism is not even economic, which is why libertarians always fail. Socialism dredges up the worst in our souls. https://t.co/AtYePO0DNM

— Inez Stepman ???? (@InezFeltscher) June 25, 2025

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