Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the pregnant daughter of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, tore into TSA last week over the abuse she suffered prior to a recent flight. Writing on X on Thursday, she called for abolishing TSA:

Writing on X:

I nearly missed my flight this morning after the TSA made me wait 15 minutes for a pat-down because I’m pregnant and didn’t feel like getting radiation exposure from their body scanner. The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman…

— Evita Duffy-Alfonso (@evitaduffy_1) December 18, 2025

Some people responded to her broadside by urging her to tell her complaint to her father. But as she repeatedly patiently explained, TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Transportation Department. No wonder TSA seems to oppose transportation – or at letting people take a flight without running a boneheaded bureaucratic gauntlet.

Many women responded to Duffy-Alfonso’s tweet with their own experience of TSA abuse:

As a bilateral cochlear implant recipient, I have to opt for a pat-down screening. Even after informing TSA officers about my devices before screening and my limitations to understanding speech in noisy environment— they have been rude, impatient, and have deliberately swiped…

— Ellen Streiff (@EllenStreiff) December 18, 2025

Agree, I have had multiple bad experiences including bleeding from rough handling.

— Dragonflynda (@Dragonflynda) December 18, 2025

They never swabbed my palms until I was carrying a baby 😑

— Sour Patch Lyds ن (@sourpatchlyds) December 18, 2025

Oh Momma,
Thousands (maybe 100s or millions) of Momma’s feel this!

Wait ’til your child is 8 and “tests positive” for “residual explosive sediment” on her hands (allegedly).
Pro-tip: kids can’t be frisked. Their mother is.

TSA is an invasive joke.

— TheSaltyMom (@SaltyMommaC) December 18, 2025

Yes, I’m in a wheelchair and have to do this every….damn….TIME!!

— Katie Brooker (@lotusrosekat) December 21, 2025

Many commenters slammed Duffy-Alfonso for failing to arrive at the airport a full two hours before her flight.  Since when did an inept federal agency become entitled to blight much of the day for innocent travelers? Other commenters sneered that she should have taken the bus.

@AuntieFah420 responded: “Entitled little bitch. STFU”

And:

Cry harder you spoiled twat

— Randy‼️ (@RandyHeyyyy) December 21, 2025

Many of the people who scoffed at her complaint sounded like Trump supporters. Some commenters blamed Muslims for all of TSA’s abuses – since if not for the “Religion of Peace,” there would presumably never be any threat to air travel safety.

The backlash produced by the Duffy-Alfonson reminded me of the outrage proved by a  2017 piece I wrote for USA Today piece headlined, “Thanksgiving travel: Trump’s holiday gift is more invasive airport security.” TSA became abusive and intrusive after Trump first became president. My article discussed the case of Jenna McFarlane, a 56-year old teacher. A TSA agent told her “to spread my legs wider” and proceeded to “touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand,” as she formally complained to TSA afterwards.  One Twitter user sneered: “Jenna McFarlane is just upset that it was only four times.”

I had been bashing TSA ever since it was created in 2002 by President George W. Bush. But “due diligence” was no impediment to readers enraged by any criticism of Trump policies. I was tagged as a pussy snowflake, libtard, moron, brain dead, clown, left wing bigot, dopey liberal, leftist loon, “leader of the idiots,” and stinkin’ libertarian.

I was surprised to see so many people’s devotion to the president lead them to absolve an agency that has long abused Americans.

In her tweet slapdown, Duffy-Alfonso declared, “Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country.” That resonated with my TSA experiences in the last couple years. When I was flying out of Dallas International Airport in 2023,

I saw two women loitering behind a roped off section for CLEAR, a new biometric surveillance program that works with 35 airports and coordinates with TSA. CLEAR involves travelers standing in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. The Washington Post warned that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.”

Though the CLEAR program is purportedly voluntary, TSA agents at Washington National Airport recently threatened long delays for any passenger who refused to be photographed by CLEAR, including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Merkley said that TSA falsely claimed there were signs notifying people that the facial scans are optional. But the clock is ticking down on seeking voluntary cooperation. TSA chief David Pekoske announced in early 2023 that “eventually… we will require biometrics across the board.”

I raised my phone camera, snapped a few shots of the women, and the howling commenced.

“What are you doing?” screamed a young woman wearing a CLEAR jacket. “You can’t take my photo!”

“But you’re scanning people’s eyeballs,” I replied. What could be more intrusive?

“That doesn’t matter because you can’t take our photo – it’s not allowed!” She sounded as if I had desecrated a federal temple.

With her three-inch artificial fingernails, I wondered if she planned to audition for a Dracula movie. Her colleague speedily exited, perhaps to summon police to end my assault. But if airport officials had sought to seize those photos, they would have faced a legal ruckus.

When I was flying out of Palm Beach Airport in Florida in October, the TSA checkpoint was structured so that the default was for every traveler to get their photo taken for CLEAR. A middle-aged TSA agent got perturbed when I wouldn’t stand in the right spot by  his desk for the photo.  I said I didn’t want my photo taken. “You don’t want your picture taken?!” he responded testily.  “Then I need to see your identification.”

I handed him my driver’s license  and he held it up a couple different times as he looked past it to see if I falsely claiming to be someone TSA agents ritually hated. He took my boarding pass and looked at it intently – almost like he hadn’t done so well on his “Hooked on Phonics” refresher course.

He finally deigned that I could proceed to the frickin’ Whole Body Scanner but I was supposed to have a sense of shame for failing to trust Leviathan.

Duffy-Alfonso’s condemnation of TSA is refreshing regardless of whether it spurs the Trump administration to repent. But the outrage that her comment evoked on Twitter does raise the question: How many Trump voters abandoned their opposition to unleashing federal agencies after Trump was back in the Oval Office? Since Trump is in the Oval Office, are private citizens presumptively the villains whenever they clash with federal agencies?

TSA abuses will generate a new torrent of online complaints between now and New Year’s Day. Perhaps we will learn whether the Trump White House gives a damn about to any abuse of government power that doesn’t specifically target Trump supporters or donors. Unfortunately, Trump and all his billionaire buddies fly on official or private jets that are exempt from TSA abuses.

POTUS revealed the latest US naval ship catastrophe, the Mango Emperor-class battleship.

Apparently he and his staff did not get the memorandum from 8 December 1941.

The US Navy has not built a successful hull since the Arleigh Burke (early 90s) and has had huge problems with the Zumwalt, Little Crappy Ship and the Ford carrier.

Did I mention the latest mercifully euthanized USN Constellation frigate program that got cancelled after the Navy sunk nearly $2 billion into the program before cutting it in late 2025, with costs per ship rising from $1B to $1.4B? Those costs would not have been near accurate if recent history is any indication.

No one responsible for those massive shipbuilding fiascos has been disciplined, fired or cashiered.

No one has been held responsible.

Make the USN Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) and the Navy Inspector General great again with merciless transparency and revelation.

No one has informed the US naval intelligentsia and the cool kids in uniform and that the missile age at sea, salvo competition and a war of leakers put all 21st century surface warfare in the hazard without a radical reappraisal of how peer combat at sea in a contested environment will work out for exquisite platforms.

My forecast: if they proceed with this folly, they will adopt concurrent technology (not mature at hull construction), they will proceed with construction with a percentage of the design unresolved, it will be over-budget & very late in schedule delivery, the USN will accept incomplete hulls and once commissioned it will be rife with operational readiness delays and major flaws in construction.

Same as it ever was.

Shame.

PS: American shipyards are building three of the 5,448 large commercial vessels on order worldwide.

Three.

https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/4366856/president-trump-announces-new-battleship/

The weekend should have been quiet. Instead, a Hanukkah celebration on a Sydney beach turned into a massacre, a Muslim bystander tackled a shooter, and within hours the tragedy was weaponized. We dig into what happened, why the early “false flag” whispers took hold, and how Benjamin Netanyahu used the moment to argue that supporting a Palestinian state is the same as fueling antisemitism. That framing doesn’t just poison debate—it endangers Jewish communities by collapsing criticism of state policy into bigotry against a people.

We also trace another deadly thread: three Americans killed near Palmyra, Syria, and the fog that followed. First it was ISIS. Then reports pointed to a member of Syria’s own security forces with a jihadist past. If the original mission in Syria was to destroy the Islamic State, why are U.S. troops still in harm’s way years later? We lay out the mission creep, the shifting justifications, and the growing talk of adding troops to “monitor” ceasefires that rarely hold. If the rationale has evaporated, the policy should too.

On the media front, we examine Barry Weiss’s interview framing around the Charlie Kirk case and why public trust erodes when legitimate questions are lumped with the most absurd conspiracies. Candace Owens scored early with receipts, then drifted into claims she hasn’t substantiated. That pattern fuels both cynicism and polarization. And on Capitol Hill, Chuck Schumer’s resolution condemning “platforming” Nick Fuentes tries to police conversations rather than win arguments. We break down why Tucker Carlson’s approach—separating people from governments, rejecting blood guilt, and aiming to persuade the audience—may be the smarter way to defuse extremist appeal.

If you care about free speech, accurate reporting, and a foreign policy that reduces risk instead of multiplying it, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who follows world news, and leave a review telling us where you think U.S. policy and media narratives go wrong.

Podcast (kyle): Play in new window | Download

I love it that the National Health Service (NHS) socialist medical horror show in the UK uses the handle NHSuk on the X.

The United Kingdom prides itself on this crown jewel of medical malpractice & incompetence that is a love child of Benny Hill, Trofim Lysenko and Nikolai Alexandrovich Semashko.

Yes, it does indeed SUCK.

The foreign purchase entanglement and moral hazard of overspending of the F35 is emblematic of making a two trillion dollar purchase over time where the money is simply wasted but driven to completion by the sheer momentum of the insane and imbecilic US military acquisition system.

If you have read my blog here at LI, you know I take the F35 to task all the time because it is a warning for today and far into the future on what NOT to do. The F35 fiasco has literally stripped the US military capability to fight in the 21st century peer combat theaters of this century.

The military value of a weapon program is the only valid justification for its expense. If someone does feel the need to defend a program, the argument should be based on the weapon’s demonstrated effectiveness and its centrality to the nation’s defense. If a weapon doesn’t work or can’t be purchased in the numbers the services need, then what is the point?

The American people today spend far more on defense than they did just a generation ago. Pentagon spending levels are nearly 50% higher than they were in the year 2000. That extra money has been sunk into numerous acquisition failures. The Littoral Combat Ship, the Army’s Future Combat System, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, the KC-46 aerial tanker, and the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle are just a few significant disappointments from the past 25 years.

The system is clearly broken. The incoming Trump administration will have to take drastic steps to rein in the excesses of the past 25 years. With influential people now at least unwittingly admitting the F-35’s failures, it could be a good starting point. Cancelling the program outright would be very difficult because of all the foreign entanglements that were baked into it from the beginning. But limiting production until engineers complete the F-35’s design may send the proper signal to the defense industry that the status quo is intolerable.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/f-35/