Jackson airport rejects Kristi Noem’s federal shutdown video amid legal questions

Mississippi’s largest airport joined dozens nationwide in refusing to show a blatantly political video blaming Democrats for the federal shutdown

The Jackson–Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, Mississippi’s busiest, joined dozens of others nationwide this week in refusing to play a short video message featuring Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the federal government shutdown and the resulting disruption of Transportation Security Administration operations.

The Jackson airport operator provided a statement to The Mississippi Independent on Thursday saying the facility “follows longstanding policies that prohibit politically partisan messages on airport-controlled screens.”

Lsherie Dean, director of communications, marketing and public relations at the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, said in the statement, “Jackson Municipal Airport Authority owns and maintains all monitors at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport (JAN); therefore, all content displayed must comply with the JMAA Advertising Policy. The recent TSA video regarding the shutdown does not meet this policy, which prohibits content that is political in nature or implicates government actions or policies.”

Dean confirmed that the request to display the video came from the federal government but was not a directive.

It is unclear whether other airports frequently used by Mississippians have refused or agreed to play the video. The Gulfport–Biloxi Regional Airport Authority and Memphis International Airport did not respond to questions from The Mississippi Independent about what actions they had taken. A spokesperson for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International said it is “currently evaluating” the government’s request. Airports in other cities with connections to Jackson, including Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, and Houston, Texas, have declined to show the video.

The contentious 37-second video, described by congressional Democrats as likely illegal, began appearing in airport security checkpoints on Oct. 9. Within days, the nation’s 10 largest aviation hubs, representing about 35 percent of all U.S. passenger traffic, refused to play the video. Airports in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver and Dallas cited policies banning political messaging and advertising, though not all mentioned politics directly.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport, the nation’s busiest, said it “strives to maintain a neutral and welcoming environment for all travelers,” while a representative for Denver International Airport said it “does not have monitors capable of playing videos at checkpoints.”

The director of Pensacola International Airport in northwest Florida told local media that “all allocated and available time slots” for its monitor wall at the security checkpoint were “under contract” and “solely for marketing and revenue generation and not for public service announcements.” The airport offered the TSA the option to deploy its own video equipment to play the Noem message, according to WEAR News 3.

Many medium and smaller airports also declined to play the clip, including those in Portland, Ore., San Jose, Calif., Westchester County, N.Y., and Green Bay, Wis.—where annual passenger numbers of 675,000 equal about three days of traffic at Hartsfield–Jackson.

In the video, Noem says the TSA’s “top priority” is to make travel pleasant and efficient while keeping passengers safe.

“However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” Noam said of the agency, which falls under her control as Homeland Security secretary.

Roughly 61,000 of the agency’s 64,130 employees are required to continue working during the shutdown, now in its third week.

A group of 17 Democratic senators co-signed an Oct. 15 letter accusing Noem of a “flagrant violation” of federal law, including the Hatch Act and the Anti-Lobbying Act.

“We write to demand that you immediately remove these videos and provide information about the resources that were used to create and disseminate them,” the letter said.

Legal experts said Noem likely violated the Hatch Act, which restricts executive branch employees from engaging in political activity while on government time or using government resources.

“And that’s essentially what’s on the Noem message in the airports,” Stanley Brand, a professor at Penn State Dickinson Law who teaches criminal law and government ethics, told NPR. Brand also said that airports receiving federal funding are limited in how they can spend that money, including a ban on using it to influence politics.

“They just don’t want to threaten their funding,” Brand added.

Since the Oct. 1 federal shutdown, several government agencies have taken to their official websites to point fingers, many at Democrats. At least eight federal departments have published statements linking the shutdown to Democratic leaders or the political left, a move critics say crosses the line by turning public information portals into tools of partisan messaging. Democrats blame Republicans for the shutdown for refusing to address the loss of federal healthcare subsidies for lower income Americans.

One day before the shutdown deadline, on Sept. 30, the Department of Housing and Urban Development went further, declaring that any disruptions in service would be the fault of the “Radical Left.”

That view is not widely held, however. With Congress at an impasse on a solution to reopen the government, six in 10 respondents said President Trump and Republicans in Congress had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown, according to an AP-NORC poll. At the same time, three-quarters said both parties share some blame.

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Image: Kristi Noem video on monitor at unidentified airport (via MSNBC)