Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem implied on Wednesday that she is supporting a move for the Transportation Security Administration to roll back its limit on the amount of liquids, aerosols, and gels passengers can bring with them onto airplanes.
Noem made the comments during the inaugural Hill Nation Summit while speaking with NewsNation.
“The day I walked in the door, I started questioning everything TSA does,” Noem said. “I will tell you, I mean, the liquids [rule] I am questioning. So that may be the next big announcement is what size your liquids need to be. “We’re looking at it.”
Beginning in 2006, the TSA began mandating that carry-on luggage could include containers of 3.4 ounces or fewer, though there are exemptions for medications and food for infants.
To bring anything over that amount, passengers have to pack it away in their checked bags.
The restriction was implemented to help prevent the smuggling of liquid explosives onto aircraft, but advances in airport scanning technology have made it possible for airport officials to screen for such materials during the security check-in.
The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it would also end another annoying security measure travelers experience at airports: the forced removal of shoes.
On Wednesday, Noem asked a crowd at the summit if they were forced to remove their shoes during their trips to the event.
“Did you all get to leave your shoes on?” Noem asked her audience on Wednesday. “I always feel like I have to follow up and say, ‘OK, are they doing it?’”
The forced removal of shoes during airport security checks was in place for two decades. It was implemented after Al Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid tried to sneak explosives onto an American Airlines flight traveling from Paris to Miami in his shoes just three months after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Noem said she is also considering other changes to airport screenings that would make the security check-in process faster — hopefully without sacrificing safety.
“TSA is working on the technology that we have available to us, if we deploy it correctly, so that … if you’ve got a carry-on bag, you should be able just to walk through their screeners, their scanners, and go right to your flight, “she said. “Fingers crossed. We’re working on it.”
Noem said she wants to get the airport security process to a point where it takes about a minute.
“We have put in place in TSA [a] multi-layered screening process that allows us to change some of how we do security screening so it’s still a safe … process that is protecting people who are traveling on our airlines,” she said.
She said her goal is ultimately to ensure that airports and airplanes remain safe, but to make sure it actually does “something to make you safer.”
“I don’t think that was questioned under the Biden administration. I kept wondering if we were doing things just to slow people down,” she said.
Noem apparently did not have the same question for her boss, President Donald Trump, who did nothing to change the very policies she’s criticizing during his first term in office.
