In mid-2024, as she grew increasingly critical of the Biden Administration and increasingly involved with the Trump campaign, Tulsi Gabbard noticed changes as she went to the airport. She had more screening. Federal agents with dogs kept showing up for her flights. Other federal agents followed her on the plane and reported back on her activity.
When I learned of this, I launched an investigation into the TSA’s Quiet Skies program and the Biden administration’s weaponization of watchlists against everyday Americans. Under public scrutiny, the Biden administration removed now-Director of National Intelligence Gabbard from the program, but they spent the remainder of their time in office stonewalling any investigation.
Thankfully, that era is over. President Donald Trump, himself a victim of government weaponization, set out to reverse the previous administration’s targeting of the very citizens it is sworn to protect. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has taken decisive action to eliminate bureaucratic obstacles resisting transparency. We are finally getting answers.
And now we know exactly why the previous administration fought so hard to keep us in the dark.
Director Gabbard was surveilled on at least five domestic flights by federal air marshals under Quiet Skies. Internal records for her targeting show her congressional portrait and that she was a “former congresswoman from [Hawaii].”
So, there was no doubt: They knew who they were monitoring.
Multiple concerns were raised internally, and one air marshal asked a colleague: “Why the heck is she a Quiet Skies subject?”
If this can happen to a combat veteran, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, and now Director of National Intelligence, it can happen to anyone.
And it did.
Today, for the first time, you will hear directly from a federal air marshal whose wife was labeled a domestic terrorist simply for engaging in protected First Amendment activity. Records show the FBI labeled her as a domestic terrorist for “unlawful entry into the Capitol” on Jan. 6.
But she didn’t … and they knew it.
Her phone location data did not put her inside the Capitol. Facial recognition did not identify her inside. She had no criminal record and no history of extremist views.
What they do know is that this Catholic schoolteacher from Texas supported President Trump and went to Washington to attend his rally on the Ellipse. That was enough for the government to label her a suspected domestic terrorist. For two years, her family was surveilled when they flew. This was not an isolated case. It happened to hundreds of Americans.
It happened because the TSA used First Amendment-protected activity as a predicate for watchlisting Americans.
That’s unconstitutional, of course. First Amendment activity cannot be the “sole basis” for watchlisting someone. But “sole basis” is an important caveat, and it’s an opening the TSA exploited.
Today, we will release internal TSA records that reveal how the agency authorized First Amendment activity to be used to justify the surveillance of Americans with no evidence and no recourse. Using broad and vague authorities, TSA deemed hundreds of Americans as threats to national security simply for holding opposing political views.
The federal government used its investigative authorities, anonymous tips, and university research institutions to build a flimsy case to put them on the watchlist.
They didn’t just “coincidentally” watchlist hundreds of people who attended the same Trump rally.
They did it intentionally and obscured the process to create plausible deniability. For example, documents obtained in my investigation reveal TSA relied on data collected by the George Washington University Project on Extremism.
Consider this:
First, DHS funds the Project on Extremism, an external partner not bound by the same laws and regulations as federal agencies.
The Project on Extremism identifies supposed domestic threats by “meticulously tracking Jan. 6 defendants …”
DHS then uses the Project on Extremism reporting as evidence—sometimes the only evidence—for putting someone on a watchlist.
But the abuses weren’t limited to Jan. 6. The TSA also viewed skeptics of COVID mandates as threats. Simply removing a mask on an aircraft got 12 Americans watchlisted.
Records also show three current Members of Congress—all Republicans—were included in the companion Silent Partner program, either as a sitting Member or while seeking elected office. A cursory review would have revealed them to be a Member of Congress or decorated active or former U.S. military members.
All of this was wrong, and I am glad these abuses are beginning to be exposed. I commend Secretary Noem for ending Quiet Skies and opening the books.
But our work is not done. We must make sure this program does not come back under another name. Every official who directed or approved surveillance of Americans for protected speech must be removed. Full transparency must become the rule rather than requiring a year of investigation. The result will be a process that respects the Constitution, ends real-life shadow bans against Americans, and gives all of us the assurance that our government is focused on protecting us, not on chasing political ghosts.
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