In late March 2025, a rumor circulated online that Project 2025, conservative nonprofit The Heritage Foundation's blueprint for reshaping the federal government, aimed to privatize the Transportation Security Administration.
The claim (archived) circulated as TSA agents worked without pay at U.S. airports while a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security stalled in the Senate.
On Instagram, the progressive nonprofit organization The Other 98% appeared to suggest that squeezing the TSA was part of achieving Project 2025's alleged agenda. The group posted a graphic featuring text from a Threads user's post (archived), which read:
Hear me out. Project 2025 explicitly calls for TSA to be privatized but it cannot happen until unionized TSA agents are eliminated.
So here's the play - defund DHS, agents without pay will quit, airport security breaks down / massive delays, send ICE to "help", push the narrative that this crisis requires privatization framed as no cost to taxpayers, private contractors come in, TSA unions are eliminated and ICE becomes a permanent presence in American airports.
The end.
Similar iterations of the rumor also spread on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived), while Snopes readers wrote in, asking about Project 2025's plan regarding the TSA.
The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 text mentions the TSA on two occasions, one of which recommends that "The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) be privatized" (Page 134, Bullet Point 4).
For the purpose of this article, we interpret the foundation's Project 2025 recommendation as an aim. Therefore, we rate this claim true.
Project 2025 generally calls for dismantling the DHS. Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration DHS official wrote (Page 133) that, "Breaking up the department along its mission lines would facilitate mission focus and provide opportunities to reduce overhead and achieve more limited government."
The Heritage Foundation's text outlines several suggestions for what a dismantled TSA could look like. The chapter on the agency (Pages 158-159) primarily argues that the TSA should not regulate security screenings and also carry them out.
Instead, Project 2025 recommends (Page 159) privatizating and/or outsourcing screening operations either by outsourcing the task to private companies (such a system already exists for some airports) or by creating a new "government corporation" that would contract screening services to private contractors.
Even if the TSA were privatized, Project 2025 says, "the intelligence function for domestic travel patterns" should remain with the government. According to the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that established the TSA, the agency has a mandate to "receive, assess, and distribute intelligence information" (Page 2) related to its work to protect the United States' transport systems.
Project 2025 estimates that the government could save 15-20% of its existing aviation screening budget by privatizing this function (Page 159).
Until privatization, its text says that the TSA should be treated like a national security provider and that its workforce should be deunionized "immediately" (Page 159).
Snopes could not independently confirm whether stalling a funding bill for the DHS was part of a larger plan to privatize the TSA or dismantle the DHS, as outlined in Project 2025.
The blueprint text was not official government policy in March 2026, though Snopes' previous reporting has tracked how people involved with Project 2025 have gone on to work for Trump during his second term and how some of his administration's policies align with recommendations from the text.
Snopes has reported extensively on Project 2025 even before the start of the second Trump administration.