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Against Giants Labor Advocates is a nonpartisan advocacy organization serving the DHS workforce through independent policy analysis, legislative engagement, and public awareness grounded in primary sources and decades of frontline experience.

Gold+ getting cancelled is a big deal. We spent a year documenting that program from procurement records, we were the fi...
08/31/2026

Gold+ getting cancelled is a big deal. We spent a year documenting that program from procurement records, we were the first to report it existed, and last week TSA killed it outright. No award, solicitation cancelled in its entirety.

What we're telling you now is what comes next, and we already know, because we've been tracking that contract since March 2025.

TSA says an evolved Screening Partnership Program replaces Gold+. That vehicle was awarded on May 29, to twenty-one companies, fifteen days after Gold+ was announced. TSA never publicized it. It sat in federal award records until one of the winners put out its own press release on August 26, two days after Horizon 25.

The company list changed, with longtime screening operators off it and technology firms on. One company running an airport today didn't make the cut, and another is already recruiting its officers. And in March, TSA removed the clause requiring a new contractor to offer jobs to the previous contractor's employees before hiring anyone new.

Gold+ is dead. The contract that replaces it has been sitting there since May.

Full analysis in the comments.

TSA Supervisors: What Protects You?The collective bargaining agreement doesn't cover you. You already know that. What yo...
08/29/2026

TSA Supervisors: What Protects You?

The collective bargaining agreement doesn't cover you. You already know that. What you may not know is that we do.

Against Giants advocates for supervisors the same way we advocate for other employees. Proposed removals and suspensions. Medical certification and fitness for duty. OWCP claims. EEO. What a SPP conversion does to your retirement and benefits.

When the time comes to respond to an agency action, most STSOs respond to it alone.

You don't have to.

When you need us, you reach experienced advocates who know your situation. No queue, no bureaucracy.

If you're in a difficult situation today, we’re here for you.

More information in the comments.



You win your appeal. Then what?TSA’s Officer Appellate Board handbook says a decision “shall be promptly implemented by ...
08/28/2026

You win your appeal. Then what?

TSA’s Officer Appellate Board handbook says a decision “shall be promptly implemented by management.” If management does not, what the handbook gives you is that the Assistant Administrator for Human Capital may report the facts to the Administrator.

*May*. No deadline. No remedy.

And the TSA Administrator can overrule the Board at his or her discretion, with no standard written anywhere. TSA’s FAQ never mentions that provision exists.

Part Five closes the series on what a win is actually worth.

TSOs and STSOs: if you won, would you know what to do when nothing happened?

Link in comments.

“Solicitation No. 70T05026R5900N005, TSA Gold+, is hereby cancelled in its entirety. The Government has determined that ...
08/27/2026

“Solicitation No. 70T05026R5900N005, TSA Gold+, is hereby cancelled in its entirety. The Government has determined that cancellation is in the best interest of the Government. No award will be made under this solicitation.”

Posted 11:15 this morning. Three days after Horizon 25 was announced.

No award will be made. The $12.9 billion vehicle is dead. Every Phase 1 proposal submitted by July 31 is moot. Whatever bidders spent preparing them is gone.

However: “The Government may issue a revised or new solicitation if the need for the requirement were to arise in the future.”

That is standard cancellation language, and it also leaves the door open in writing.

One giant down.

TSA needs less proof to fire you for sleeping on duty than to suspend you for three days.Not a typo. In TSA’s one-step p...
08/27/2026

TSA needs less proof to fire you for sleeping on duty than to suspend you for three days.

Not a typo. In TSA’s one-step process, a three-day suspension has to meet the preponderance of the evidence standard, while removals for sleeping on duty, a failed drug test, or a security breach only have to meet substantial evidence, which is the lower standard.

Part Four covers all three questions the Officer Appellate Board answers, including the line in TSA’s handbook saying the penalty factors do not apply at all to certain removals.

TSOs and STSOs: did anyone ever tell you which standard of proof applied to your case?

Link in comments.

DSM has now confirmed that TSA Gold+ is no longer moving forward at Des Moines International Airport.Senior airport lead...
08/26/2026

DSM has now confirmed that TSA Gold+ is no longer moving forward at Des Moines International Airport.

Senior airport leadership provided that confirmation directly to Against Giants, and DSM has since issued its public press release.

For the officers at DSM who have spent months waiting for an answer, this is good news: screening will not transition under the Gold+ program.

TSA announced Monday that it is scrapping Gold+, the program that would have put private contractors in charge of airpor...
08/26/2026

TSA announced Monday that it is scrapping Gold+, the program that would have put private contractors in charge of airport checkpoints at Tampa, Charleston, and Des Moines. A lot of people are reading that as privatization losing.

It isn't, and the new Administrator said so before he was confirmed.

At his Senate hearing in July, five weeks before taking office, David Cummins was asked about privatization. He answered in terms of the Screening Partnership Program, the older model that has run at about twenty airports since 2002. "We are aggressively pushing the expansion of the SPP program," he said. "As we expand the SPP program, which we fully intend to do." A senator raised Gold+ by name. Cummins answered about SPP. The administration's budget request did the same thing.

So Gold+ getting replaced by an evolved SPP seventeen days into his tenure is not a change of direction. Gold+ belonged to his predecessor, who leaves September 3.

Here is what nobody is asking. The SPP contract vehicle already exists, already has twenty-one companies on it, and runs through August 2035. TSA also already has a way to get privately funded equipment into a checkpoint, called the Capability Acceptance Process, which lets third parties donate or bail technology to the agency.

Private screeners under a contract that already exists. Privately funded equipment through a process that already exists. No new solicitation required, and no public procurement event anyone would know to watch for.

TSA has not said what evolved means. That is the thing to watch.

Full analysis in the comments.

Two press releases went out today. They do not match.TSA said Gold+ is being replaced. Agency-wide. “An evolved Screenin...
08/24/2026

Two press releases went out today. They do not match.

TSA said Gold+ is being replaced. Agency-wide. “An evolved Screening Partnership Program will replace TSA Gold+.”

Tampa said it conducted a months-long review and chose to keep federal officers.

One describes a program going away. The other describes a decision an airport made.

Neither mentions the other.

Which came first? Nobody has said.

What officers at Tampa got: screening continues with federal TSA officers. That is the answer 700 people waited a month for.

What officers at Des Moines and Charleston got: one sentence, fourth of five, in a memo about drones and PreCheck.

We have been reading these documents since August 2025, nine months before TSA said the word Gold+ in public.

Full analysis in the comments.

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