The Trump administration is ending a shadowy watchlist that was used to surveil travelers on domestic flights, citing evidence the program was abused to target critics of the Biden administration including Tulsi Gabbard.
Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Quiet Skies program was "weaponized" to harass political foes and reward friends like Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen (Nh.), who reportedly lobbied the Biden administration to take her husband off the list.
CBS News reported that Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, removed her husband from the list, which flags travelers for random checks by federal Air Marshals.
William Shaheen, a Lebanese American attorney, had been flagged in 2023 for traveling with a "known or suspected terrorist." Senator Shaheen reached out to the former head of TSA, David Pekoske, about the incident, and two days later her husband was placed on a special "VIP" list exempting him from surveillance.
The DHS blasted Shaheen for allegedly seeking, and receiving, favored treatment.
"Despite William Shaheen traveling with a known or suspected terrorist three times, then TSA Administrator Pekoske gave explicit direction to exclude Shaheen from the Silent Partner Quiet Skies list," the DHS said in its press release.
"After Senator Shaheen directly lobbied then former Administrator Pekoske, on her husband’s behalf, Pekoske granted Billy Shaheen a blanket Quiet Skies exemption."
The government's travel watchlists have long been criticized as opaque and arbitrary, including by Gabbard - a former Democrat and longtime civil liberties advocate who now serves as Trump's top intelligence official. She was added to Quiet Skies list in 2024, reportedly by a computer algorithm, without explanation.
At the time, Gabbard decried the move as an attempt by the Biden "regime" to intimidate a critic.
“The TSA placed me on the Quiet Skies domestic terror watchlist in what I can only describe as the ultimate betrayal,” she said in a post on X in September. “The Harris-Biden regime has now labeled me a domestic terror threat. Why? They see me as a threat to their power.”
Senator Shaheen claims she was not aware her husband was on a watchlist when she contacted TSA about his "degrading" treatment.
"Senator Shaheen sought to understand the nature and cause of these searches," the senator said. "Any suggestion that the Senator’s husband was supposedly included on a Quiet Skies list is news to her and had never been raised before this week. Nor was she aware of any action taken following her call to remove him from such a list."
In a press release, the DHS called the Quiet Skies program a political tool and a waste of taxpayer money that did not prevent terrorism attacks.
“It is clear that the Quiet Skies program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration—weaponized against its political foes and exploited to benefit their well-heeled friends. I am calling for a Congressional investigation to unearth further corruption at the expense of the American people and the undermining of US national security,” Noem said.
