New TSA program looks to increase private security
TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades. The agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became aFederal officers handle security screening at all but a small fraction of U.S. airports, but the Trump administration is hoping to change that. Under the Transportation Security Administration's new program called TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades.
The TSA is set to host officials from airports and security contractors to an"industry day" at its Springfield, Va. , headquartersThe agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
"TSA Gold+ marks a significant evolution in the agency's approach to aviation security," a TSA spokesperson told NPR via an emailed statement. The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became aIt also says the program would bring"the latest technology" such as AI tools to airport screening operations, to increase capacity and cut wait times, although the agency did not specify how those gains would be achieved.
From the details shared so far, the equipment would be the contractors' responsibility — a departure from the current SPP system, in which TSA controls the equipment and oversees the security contract. The TSA says it would perform the oversight role it currently does.range from San Francisco and Kansas City to Sarasota, Fla. , and Atlantic City, N.J. , along with smaller facilities in Montana, Wyoming and other states.
Calls for privatizing airport security screening have come from President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, echoing a recommendation in the conservatives'for a second Trump term. But there are also signs of bipartisan interest in some level of private control over airport security, as seen in Atlanta, whereRep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y. , chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, touted that bipartisan interest on Wednesday during a hearing on TSA Modernization.
But Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which represents TSA officers, said he opposes further privatization — including the TSA Gold+ program, warning that it would hamper accountability and transparency. Under the new program, Kelley said, contract workers would earn less than TSA officers.
He added that while many transportation security officers hold security clearances, under the new plan, the government"would be ceding direct operational control of the most sensitive technology in the aviation security enterprise to private vendors.
"But officials at the hearing urged lawmakers to preserve airports' ability to choose. Chris McLaughlin, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, noted that the SPP has been in place since aviation security underwent"We've had federalized screening for 25 years, almost," McLaughlin said.
"Large airports like San Francisco have had an SPP program for 25 years. ""The system has been safe for 25 years," he said. "It's important that airports have options. " The new"Gold+" program echoes the Trump administration's promise to bring a"golden age of travel" to the American public.
Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy touted those plans earlier this week, as heA marine layer will cover SoCal coasts today, bringing some cooling to the region. Elsewhere expect mostly sunny skies and highs around the mid 80s. A marine layer will cover mostly the coastal areas today, lowering temperatures a degree or two. Otherwise expect a sunny afternoon elsewhere across SoCal.
L.A. County beaches will see temperatures in the lower 70s today, whereas Orange County could reach up to 79 degrees along the coast. More inland, the valleys will see highs in the mid 80s. The Inland Empire will see highs from 83 to 91 degrees.
In Coachella Valley, temperatures are expected to reach up to 100 degrees.at A Noise Within, the UCLA JazzReggae Festival, MAINopoly in Santa Monica and more of the best things to do this Memorial Day weekend. Tour the U.S.S. Iowa and check out the three visiting battleships at San Pedro’s Pacific Battleship Center during L.A. ’s annual Memorial Day weekend Fleet Week on the waterfront.
Plus, there are exhibits to walk through, food stands to try, and music for the whole family. — should give you some sense of where the always-on-point folks at A Noise Within were going when they chose it at this moment. The political satire borders on the absurd, with the L.A. Times likening the vibrant characters to “those in a deck of wild cards designed by Salvador Dalí.
” The nouveau bard of Kansas City, Kevin Morby, returns to his once-adopted hometown of Los Angeles on the heels of his newest release,Eat your way down Main Street in Santa Monica at MAINopoly, the annual Monopoly-themed food festival, which will allow drinks while you walk and eat thanks to a new city permit. The popular food-and-bar stretch near the beach is experiencing a little revival with the reopening of dive bar favorite Circle Bar, plus newish hot spots like Triple Beam Pizza and June Shine.exhibit opens just in time for Memorial Day weekend, so watch this space for more on that..
On Friday, Yungblud and special guests Warning rock the Greek, and Dethklok plays the Palladium; jazz trumpeter Chris Botti begins his residency at the Blue Note.in their entirety at the Hollywood Bowl with openers the Moldy Peaches; American Football is at the Wiltern; Belgium’s Ultra Sunn plays the Belasco; Italy’s Mina is at the Echoplex; DJ KSHMR plays the Palladium; and then, for a different sort of “Kashmir,” Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening takes over the Greek. On Sunday, brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack for the millennial dance party of the week at the Forum with Kesha, Chromeo and Sizzy Rocket.
There’s also the big Day Trip afternoon concert at L.A. State Historic Park with Joseph Capriati, Toman and Cole Terrazas. For a more mellow Sunday, singer-songwriter Katelyn Tarver is at the Echoplex, R&B singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger plays the Novo, or classic crooner Paul Anka is doing it his way at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Tour the U.S.S.
Iowa and check out the three visiting battleships at San Pedro’s Pacific Battleship Center during L.A. ’s annual Memorial Day weekend Fleet Week on the waterfront. Plus, there are exhibits to walk through, food stands to try and music for the whole family. Not to mention those cute sailors in their whites.
Topanga Days is the easiest way to time-travel back to a simpler time when folk musicians roamed the hills, winning a yodeling contest was the biggest bragging right and you spent all year coming up with your parade costume. Those days are here once a year at Topanga Days, headlined on Saturday by New Orleans icon Cyril Neville and peppered with cherry-seed-spitting and bubble-gum-blowing contests, tons of other music, food, and, of course, the parade.
— should give you some sense of where the always-on-point folks at A Noise Within were going when they chose it at this moment. The political satire borders on the absurd, with the L.A. Times likening the vibrant characters to “those in a deck of wild cards designed by Salvador Dalí. ”K-Pop fans will flock to the K-Expo at L.A.
Live, where you can see free exhibitions and events featuring 100 Korean brands and companies across content, beauty, food and technology all weekend long. Stick around Saturday night andEat your way down Main Street in Santa Monica at the annual Monopoly-themed food festival, which this year will allow drinks while you walk and eat thanks to a new city permit.
The popular food-and-bar stretch near the beach is experiencing a little revival with the reopening of dive bar favorite Circle Bar, plus newish hot spots like Triple Beam Pizza and June Shine. I also heard a rumor that something new is finally coming into the old World Cafe space . As LAist's Robert Garrova reports, a new four-day music festival takes over Figueroa Street in Highland Park this weekend.
Thewill feature 65 bands, with acts hailing from Los Angeles, Mexico and as far as France and Holland. Highlights include Flamin' Groovies, Fear and Adolescents. Enjoy the healing sounds of Angel City Chorale as they perform a new show with the theme"The Red Thread" as “a tribute to the beloved age-old parable and celebration of the invisible threads that connect as humans, our hopes, joys, resilience in the face of adversity, connection to nature and a shared planet Earth.
”The nouveau bard of Kansas City returns to his once-adopted hometown of Los Angeles on the heels of his newest release,. Morby's latest effort might be his most realized, fully embracing the Technicolor sweep of his indie-Americana sound — striking the sonic equivalent between a Terrence Malick film and Robert Frank's roadside photographs, seen through a passenger car window of a cross-country train.
This time, Morby tapped Aaron Dessner of The National to serve as producer — who has most recently done the same for Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Sharon Van Etten — alongside a constellation of collaborators, including Justin Vernon, Lucinda Williams, Katie Gavin, Mat Davidson and Meg Duffy. Brooklyn-based Liam Kazar opens. –Gab ChabránThree little birds told me to get down to the UCLA JazzReggae Festival on Memorial Day.
The yearly music fest draws students and neighbors alike for a full day of sunshine, food, music and jammin’. The fest is fully organized and run by student volunteers, and has been since its founding 40 years ago. Honor veterans across Los Angeles as Forest Lawn hosts Memorial Day remembrances at each of its six Southern California locations: Cathedral City, Covina Hills, Cypress, Glendale, Hollywood Hills and Long Beach.
The parkwide events will celebrate the lives of those who served, with patriotic music, wreath layings, presentations and retirings of the flag, keynote addresses, presidential proclamations, invocations, giveaways, coffee and sweet treats. All events will include American Sign Language interpreters. If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report.
Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.is back in select theaters this weekend, in celebration of the movie’s 35th anniversary. Considered one of the best action films and best sequels of all time, it’s also celebrated among film experts for its groundbreaking use of CGI visual effects — most notably for the T-1000 character, a liquid metal cyborg masquerading as an LAPD officer.starting on May 22, but they’re already selling out.
Additional screenings are on May 29 at Los Feliz 3, May 30 at Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and June 6 and 7 at The Vista in Los Feliz. , the bigger budget, multi-award winning follow-up to that first film is coming back to theaters in Los Angeles starting this weekend, in celebration of the film’s 35th anniversary.
Considered one of the best action films and best sequels of all time, it’s also celebrated among film experts for its groundbreaking use of CGI visual effects — most notably for the T-1000 character, a liquid metal cyborg masquerading as an LAPD officer, played by Robert Patrick.are already sold out, as of this article’s publishing time, tickets to screenings on May 29 and May 30 are still available.on May 27 is sold out, we have you covered with some highlights from Muren’s interview with LAist below.
Ultimately, the film took home four Oscars — for visual effects , makeup, sound, and sound effects editing — and also earned nominations for cinematography and film editing. The visual effects studio responsible for the T-1000 character’s CGI effects was Industrial Light & Magic , founded in 1975 by— the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Pasadena City College, and would go on to work for ILM on visual effects for movies like“ILM has been so good at being able to really do the impossible,” Muren said.
“And we kind of joke about that, but we've got many different ways of doing things. ”came up, Muren had also just returned from a year-long sabbatical he spent studying computer graphics, and said he was confident ILM had the tools needed to make the T-1000 character a reality.
“We were ready to input the film digitally,” Muren explained. “ do all the manipulation in a computer instead of with optical film running through printers and going to labs for processing. ” And when ILM got that digital system for “compositing” — combining live-action images, practical and CGI effects — working seamlessly, Muren says, “That was an incredible tool. ” But that didn’t mean that pulling off a shiny, shape-shifting, liquid metal character successfully would be easy.
“It's just complicated,” Muren explained. “You've just got this reflective material how are we supposed to be able to see depth or shape when it's deforming? ” But at the same time, Muren said, “that's what was exciting about it. ” Muren says the trickiest scene for the team to figure out is when the T-1000 walks through a cell door made of metal bars.
While it happens in a matter of seconds on screen, it amounted to 14 to 16 weeks of work for the visual effects team.
“I always said that shot, even as we were doing it, and we got close to finishing, I said, ‘This is an absolutely impossible shot,’” Muren explained. So when they got it right, he said, “It was like a new world. ” is the film he’s now asked about most often, he always reminds people: “T2 was really the breakthrough film. ”The city is asking for an extension to complete mobility projects, including one in Wilmington.
The digital rendering shows how the project would change Anaheim Street and Banning Boulevard in the neighborhood. L.A. officials have requested a six-year time extension on state-mandated deadlines to complete the pre-construction phases for mobility projects in Boyle Heights,Jurisdictions that win funds through the state’s Active Transportation Program have to adhere to strict timelines to keep the money, which is allocated based on different phases of a capital project.
L.A. is looking for a six-year extension on the environmental review, design and right-of-way acquisition phases for the projects, according to Joella Valdez, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Street Services. L.A. officials have said the city has secured more grants than it has the capacity to implement. Jurisdictions face the threat of being penalized on future grant applications if they don’t deliver on projects that already received funding.
Los Angeles won more than $100 million from California in 2022 and 2023 to improve crosswalks, bike infrastructure and general mobility in historically underinvested communities. But it just doesn’t have enough people to implement the three projects in time, city officials have said.
To retain the entirety of the grant funding, the city has requested a six-year time extension on state-mandated deadlines to complete the pre-construction phases of the projects in Boyle Heights,LAist that they expected to have a decision on the extension request in May. The California Transportation Commission, which administers the grant program, did not have the time extension request on its agenda for its May meeting last week.
Even if the California Transportation Commission grants the time extension, L.A. officials have said it will need an immediate boost in staffing.
“We just don’t have enough bodies,” Shirley Lau, one of the leaders of the city’s Bureau of Street Services, said in an April meeting to representatives for the L.A. Mayor and other executive offices.initially moved to cancel the state funding altogether“Councilmember Jurado is fighting to have these positions funded in the next fiscal year budget,” Alejandra Alarcon said in a statement.
“Her plan remains to secure the extension, hire the necessary staff, and move these projects forward, not cancel them. ”The state’s Active Transportation Program funds capital projects that promote walking, cycling or other non-motorized ways to get around. The city has several projects that received funding through the program. The three in question would widen sidewalks, improve lighting and add tree shade, among other large-scale capital improvements, to major corridors currently hostile to non-vehicle traffic.
Jurisdictions that win the funds have to adhere to strict timelines to retain the money, which is allocated based on different phases of a capital project. L.A. is looking for a six-year extension on the environmental review, design and right-of-way clearance phases for the projects, according to Joella Valdez, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Street Services. That means the city is projecting that it could begin soliciting bids from contractors to actually construct the mobility improvements by 2032.
Requests for time extensions are first reviewed by staff in the state’s Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, according to Justin Behrens, a spokesperson for the California Transportation Commission. A spokesperson for Caltrans confirmed that it has “received requests for time extension packages for City of LA projects that are currently under review. ” Caltrans staff then provides a recommendation to the Commission, whose 11 voting members get the final say.
According to the report Lau presented in April, the city would need to immediately hire 25 people across the Bureau of Street Services, other public works bureaus and the city’s Department of Transportation. In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said “this issue is emblematic of the failed and broken systems that Mayor Bass inherited. ” Bass’ office said her proposed budget for the next fiscal year “restores funding for project delivery citywide.
”If the commission doesn’t take up L.A. ’s request for an extension or if the request is denied, the funding allocated for the initial, environmental review phase for the three projects would lapse and the city would have to find another source of funding to complete the work and progress to the next stage.
“ If we don't put ourselves on the agenda for June … we lose the money for that phase,” Carlos Rios with L.A. 's Department of Transportation said at the April meeting. “It's done. There's no coming back from it.
”Jurisdictions face the threat of being penalized on future grant applications if they don’t deliver on projects that already received funding, according to the April report.
“Failure to meet the deadlines … will have a significant impact on the city’s future ability to secure grant funding from the program,” the report says.
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