Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh has bravely stepped into the light to tell hardworking Americans what too many in Washington have been trying to hide: he was placed on the TSA’s Quiet Skies watch list and surveilled by the previous administration. Hamadeh’s revelations — shared in mainstream conservative media appearances — pull back the curtain on a deeply troubling pattern of federal overreach that targeted ordinary citizens and elected officials alike.
The Department of Homeland Security has already moved to shut down the Quiet Skies program after finding it was politicized, costly, and failed to prevent a single terrorist attack, with Secretary Kristi Noem calling for a congressional investigation into widespread abuses. What was sold as a national-security measure became a $200 million-a-year tool for favoritism and persecution, and that betrayal of public trust cannot stand.
Hamadeh didn’t mince words: he says the Biden-era bureaucracy targeted him because he dared to question the integrity of the 2022 election and because he refused to bow to the left’s machinery of censorship and coercion. For a veteran and former prosecutor to be treated like a suspect for exercising free speech and patriotism is an outrage — and it proves the worst fears of conservatives who have warned about weaponized government.
This scandal isn’t limited to one congressman. Independent reviews and reporting show other public figures, including now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, were swept up in the program, prompting Senate and House Republicans to demand answers and accountability from those who abused their power. The fact that senior TSA officials were removed amid these revelations should be the start, not the end, of restoring integrity to our security institutions.
Whistleblowers and watchdog groups have come forward with detailed disclosures about how Federal Air Marshals and other resources were misused to shadow Americans who posed no credible threat, and conservative investigators are rightly pressing for full transparency and prosecutions where laws were broken. This is the kind of corruption that eats away at liberty and makes a mockery of the agencies Americans pay for to keep them safe — not to spy on them for political reasons.
Now is the moment for patriots in Congress and the country to demand real consequences: reform or dismantle programs that allow secret lists and arbitrary surveillance, hold those who betrayed their oaths to account, and restore the privacy and rights of every American traveler. We must defend our Constitution against bureaucrats who would weaponize security, and we must stand with leaders like Rep. Hamadeh who refuse to be intimidated by the swamp.
