I’m surprised that they didn’t take the opportunity to blame it on the shutdown...
They’re trying to but they can’t - although the funding bills were being held up by then government employees were still getting their paychecks until last week.
Note also that the absences that day - 5% - were the normal absence levels.
So they soene paragraphs talking about the shutdown but in reality it has nothing to do with it and the TSA majorly screwed up.
If you read the story, the entire point of the article was to blame the shutdown. The TSA is having none of it, providing facts that the reporter buries in later paragraphs that most people won’t read (or can’t read because of the paywall).
For example, the airport in question had exactly the same percentage of callouts on this day as they did last year on this day.
Turns out callouts go up around the Christmas holidays — which everybody knows, but the newspapers are ignoring.
The article also has to point out that guns DO occasionally make it through checkpoints (while saying it is “rare”).
The article doesn’t even bother to explain why the passenger reported himself, because they didn’t care about the gun, which caused no problems, they just cared about attacking Trump for the shutdown.