FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The El Pueblo Motor Inn, or what’s left of it anyway, sits vacant behind a chain-link fence along Route 66, its stucco walls clad in weathered sheets of construction tarp.

At first glance, the nearly 90-year-old motel appears to be another crumbling relic from the famed highway’s early years as a bustling thoroughfare for hundreds of thousands of Americans traveling between Los Angeles and Chicago.

But this isn’t just a fading Route 66 roadside attraction.

Six years after El Pueblo motel opened its doors, with the country plunged into World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the motel’s proprietor, Philip Johnston, devised a plan to enlist Navajo men into the U.S. Marines Corps. Their mission: create a secret code based on Diné Bizaad, the unwritten Navajo language, that could not be broken.

It’s believed that Johnston’s motel served as a recruitment outpost and way station for some new recruits en route to the Southern California base where they would train to become Navajo Code Talkers.

From an initial group of 29, more than 400 Navajo men would eventually become Code Talkers, rapidly transmitting hundreds of thousands of encrypted messages through some of the fiercest battles in the Pacific theater — messages that opposing forces never deciphered.

“Without these brave men and their knowledge of their language, the war in the Pacific would have been prolonged with great human loss,” then-U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-CO, said during a 2001 congressional Gold Medal ceremony for the first 29 Code Talkers. “And maybe it would not have turned out the way it did.”

Of the 400 or so Code Talkers, only two are alive today: Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay. Both men sat down with the Chicago Tribune this summer to talk about their experiences during the war and their hopes for the El Pueblo Motor Inn.

This is the story of the last two Code Talkers and the mastermind behind the top secret program whose Route 66 motel faces an uncertain future.

Two teens join the Marines

World War II came to Thomas Begay on a gravel football field near the Arizona-New Mexico border. There, a boarding school classmate heard on the radio that Japanese planes had bombarded American military personnel stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Fearful those same planes would strike closer to home, Begay found a Marine Corps recruiter in Gallup, N.M., near his family’s home. There was one catch: Begay was likely only 16 — his birthdate was never recorded. Because his age was “flexible” as Begay once described it, the recruiter said he could enlist with a parent’s permission. His mom signed the necessary form with a thumbprint in place of her name.

Like Begay, MacDonald wouldn’t let his age stop him from joining the fight.

Peter MacDonald, 97, one of the last two living Navajo Code Talkers, at his home in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, June 6, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The way he saw things, a soldier had to run fast and shoot straight. And he was just as fast as his 18-year-old cousin, who was already a Marine, and just as accurate with a hunting rifle.

So, in 1944, a then-15-year-old MacDonald and his cousin drove to a recruitment office in northwest New Mexico, where the cousin signed a form saying MacDonald was 17.

Later, sitting on a cold steel truck bed on a chilly evening heading to his barracks, he would briefly regret his decision and entertain the notion of desertion — until a Navajo friend sitting next to him reminded MacDonald that he could either stay in the Marines or go to jail for lying on an official government document.

Thomas H. Begay, left, is seen in April 1945 shortly after participating in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Begay is believed to be one of two surviving Navajo Code Talkers who used the Navajo language to send coded messages during World War II. Code Talker Peter MacDonald, right, is seen in 1944 after finishing U.S. Marine Corps boot camp. MacDonald was 15 when he enlisted. (Family photos)

MacDonald had hoped to join an artillery or tank unit. Begay wanted to be an aerial gunner. Instead, both were shipped to the Marine Corps communications school outside San Diego. They learned Morse code, how to repair radios, how to quickly climb coconut trees to tie telephone lines and rapidly descend before being picked off by Japanese sharpshooters.

Once that training was over, they and other Marines — all of them Navajo — were sent to a restricted area on the base with separate barracks. A large sign warned all others to keep out.

That was when MacDonald and Begay first learned they were training to become Code Talkers, and when they first met the staff sergeant leading that training: Philip Johnston.

“He’s the one,” joked Begay, “who got us in trouble.”

‘The one who got us in trouble’

Johnston learned Diné Bizaad as a young child playing with Navajo kids he befriended while living on the western edge of the Navajo reservation, where his father worked as a missionary.

He was apparently so well-versed in the language that in 1901, at age 9, he traveled with his dad to Washington, D.C., to translate land negotiations between a group of Navajo leaders and newly elected U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.

Johnston attended what’s now called Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and served in the U.S. Army during World War I. It’s possible it was during that conflict that the seeds that became the Navajo Code Talkers first took root; soldiers from at least a half-dozen different Native American tribes — including the Choctaw, Ho-Chunk and Comanche — sent coded messages in their native languages during the Great War.

The vacant El Pueblo Motor Inn sits along Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, on June 6, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Around 1936, he and his wife opened the El Pueblo Motor Inn on Route 66, commissioned a decade earlier. Three Spanish colonial-style buildings with attached carports provided six rooms for guests. A fourth building near the road served as the office.

By the time the United States entered World War II in 1941, a nearly 50-year-old Johnston was living in Los Angeles and working as a civil engineer for the city.

In a collection of his writings and photographs kept in a special collection at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library, he wrote of his frustration at being too old, it seemed, to join the conflict.

“Chances were overwhelming,” he wrote, “that the most deadly weapons I could wield in this war were a slide rule and pencil.”

After reading a news story about an armored division’s attempt to send secret messages via soldiers from one Native American tribe, he met with a lieutenant colonel at Camp Elliott, near San Diego.

“Colonel,” he wrote of that meeting, “what would you think of a device that would assure you of complete secrecy when you send or receive messages on the battlefield?”

What Johnston proposed was impossible, the lieutenant colonel responded. No code was completely secure. Even codes based on Native languages, as Johnston had suggested, were inherently flawed. They either lacked certain words for essential military terms or had been studied by other countries after the success of Native Code Talkers in WWI.

The Navajo language had never been written down, Johnston argued, so it could not be studied. Its complexities made it difficult to learn outside of Navajo members or those who, like Johnston, grew up immersed in the language.

To illustrate the point, Johnston wrote, he uttered a few Navajo words to the lieutenant colonel and asked, “Tell me if you honestly believe that anyone but a Navajo could understand them.” He repeated them again, slower.

“Dammit, Mr. Johnston,” the man replied, “you may have something there! I’d like very much to see some of these Navajos.”

About two weeks later, Johnston returned to the base with a few Navajo men, ready to demonstrate for select commanders how the code could work.

Soon, the newly enlisted Marine Corps staff sergeant would head into the Navajo Nation to find recruits, using El Pueblo motel as a base for that effort and as a place for candidates to stay before heading to their Southern California base.

Twenty-nine Navajo men were eventually tasked with crafting the code.

The irony of the moment was not lost on those first Code Talkers and the ones who came after. Here was a country that repeatedly sought to eradicate their culture, if not their very existence. That had, less than 80 years earlier, forced at gunpoint tens of thousands of Navajo men, women and children to march some 300 miles from their homes to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo, N.M. That set up boarding schools where Native American children were punished for speaking their language.

Now, that same country needed their language.

‘It was a bad place’

By the time Begay, and later MacDonald, arrived at Camp Pendleton, the battle-tested code contained hundreds of words.

All 26 letters in the alphabet were represented by a corresponding Navajo word or words. The letter A, for example, could be wol-la-chee (ant) or be-la-sana (apple) or tse-nill (axe). A submarine was a besh-lo, or iron fish. A bomber plane was a jay-sho, or buzzard.

Code Talkers had to commit every word to memory. Nothing could be written down to ensure the code would not fall into enemy hands.

A mural honoring the Navajo Code Talkers is seen just off of Route 66 on a building in downtown Gallup, New Mexico, June 8, 2025. It was painted by artist Be Sargent. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Begay would find himself thrust into one of the war’s most infamous and deadly battles. In February 1945, while aboard the USS Cecil, his unit landed on the beach at Iwo Jima. One Code Talker, a friend of his, had been killed in a bombing at an airfield. A second died from a Japanese sniper’s bullet. Begay was ordered to replace that Code Talker.

He made his way to the front, through gunfire and exploding mortar rounds.

“It was a bad place,” he remembered, sitting in a veterans memorial park in Albuquerque, N.M. “Nothing but rock. No place to hide. No place to dig a fox hole.”

Japanese troops dug a network of tunnels in the 8-square-mile island’s volcanic rock. At one point, Begay remembered, three Japanese soldiers “came out of nowhere,” maybe 40 feet away. Begay raised his rifle in their direction. Someone in his unit yelled for him to hold his fire. One of the Japanese soldiers was naked. The others wore tattered uniforms. They repeated only one word: mizu.

Water.

During the first two days of the invasion, six Code Talkers “sent and received more than 800 error-free messages,” reported Maj. Howard Connor, 5th Division signal officer. “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

A post-war secret revealed

After serving with units in Guam and northern China, MacDonald earned an engineering degree from the University of Oklahoma and worked to develop the Polaris missile system for the Hughes Aircraft Co., founded by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

In 1971, he was elected chairman of the Navajo Nation. His four nonconsecutive terms ended in scandal. Ousted by the Nation’s council in 1989 amid corruption allegations — his removal sparked a deadly riot in an attempt to restore his chairmanship — MacDonald was eventually convicted in tribal and federal court of charges including fraud, racketeering and bribery. He was later pardoned by the Nation and his sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton.

Struggling to find post-war employment, Begay enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in the Korean War. Back home, he worked as a senior administrator with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

For years after WWII, both men were forced to say nothing about the Code Talkers. Not even their families knew what they had done during the war. Their work remained classified until 1968. One night, sitting with his family around the dinner table, Begay revealed his secret.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Ronald C. Begay cares for his father, Navajo Code Talker Thomas H. Begay, who is at least 100, at a war memorial in Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 9, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

“We didn’t know what he was talking about,” remembered his son, retired Army Lt. Col. Ronald C. Begay.

The Navajo Code Talkers were eventually honored in 1982 with a congressional resolution establishing National Navajo Code Talkers Day on Aug. 14, and congressional Medals in 2001.

“In war, using their native language, they relayed secret messages that turned the course of battle,” then-President George W. Bush said during a medal ceremony. “At home, they carried for decades the secret of their own heroism. Today, we give these exceptional Marines the recognition they earned so long ago.”

Navajo Code Talker Thomas H. Begay wears a large medal surrounded in turquoise — a congressional Silver Medal he and other Code Talkers received in 2001. The inscription at the bottom translates to: “The Navajo language was used to defeat the enemy.” (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

A motel’s uncertain future

As for Johnston, his post-war years are a bit of a mystery. He retired from civil service and gave talks on the Navajo language — including one in 1954 (14 years before the Code Talker program was declassified) that, according to a Los Angeles Times brief, touched on its use “as code for secret communications” during the war. He died in 1978, six days before his 86th birthday.

Johnston and his wife sold El Pueblo motel in 1947. It changed hands several times in the ensuing years. Subsequent owners sold off pieces of the property, converted carports to guestrooms, added a roadside sign and a fifth building and transitioned the motel from tourists to weekly rentals.

The property was last sold in 2007, county records show. Current owner Nava Thuraisingam also heads the Tempe, Arizona-based Kind Hospitality, which operates around two-dozen restaurants, most in Arizona.

Thuraisingam did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Around 2018, Thuraisingam hired Flagstaff realtor Jacquie Kellogg to sell the now-vacant El Pueblo motel. After learning its history, she tried to marshal public awareness and resources toward restoring the motel and commemorating its association with the Code Talkers.

The campaign garnered plenty of attention but ultimately fizzled.

“Everyone thinks it’s the coolest thing,” she said, “but nobody wants to do anything about it.”

Though eligible, the property does not appear on the National Register of Historic Places, nor does it have local historic landmark designation. A Flagstaff City Council report from last month says Thuraisingam did not want to pursue local historic designation and had been advised by financiers not to seek its inclusion on the national register in fear it “may limit the development potential of the property.”

An architect hired by Thuraisingam submitted plans in 2020 to restore the motel’s three guest room buildings and office. Two years later, revised plans from a different architect called for a “substantial motel building” behind the three historic buildings, which had been essentially gutted in preparation for rehabilitation.

Those plans also noted the office had deteriorated to the point it could not be saved. It has since been razed.

“It’s not in great shape right now,” said Flagstaff Councilmember Khara House, who requested a council discussion on the motel’s preservation. But, she added, “there’s a glimmer of hope.”

Kellogg is less optimistic.

“It’s just gonna rot away until somebody tears it down,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”

MacDonald is 97. Begay is at least 100. It’s possible they won’t live to see what becomes of El Pueblo Motor Inn. Still, they and their families said it should be preserved, its legacy celebrated and not destroyed.

“The guy that actually envisioned the Navajo code was Philip Johnston, and he needs to be recognized,” MacDonald said from his home in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. “Flagstaff should be proud. Set up a huge statue of some sort for (Johnston). Yes, the motel may be bad. But do something.”

This summer, a new realty firm listed the property for sale. Asking $2.75 million, the listing notes that two of the five original buildings are gone, “with the remaining structures reduced to studs, providing an open slate for redevelopment.”

“With high traffic flow and prominent exposure, this site is ideal for a variety of commercial uses including lodging, dining, retail, or mixed-use development,” the listing continues. “Don’t miss this rare opportunity to reimagine a landmark location in a high-demand area.”

By SOPHIE BATES

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Twenty people, including 14 current or former Mississippi law enforcement officers, have pleaded not guilty to federal charges that allege a widespread drug-trafficking conspiracy.

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The indictments accuse officers from multiple law enforcement agencies in Mississippi of taking bribes to provide safe transport to people they believed were drug traffickers. Six other people — three in Mississippi and three in Tennessee — were also arrested.

The officers are alleged to have understood they were helping to transport 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of cocaine through Mississippi counties and into Memphis. Some of the officers also provided escort services to protect the transportation of drug proceeds.

Two Mississippi sheriffs, Washington County Sheriff Milton Gaston and Humphreys County Sheriff Bruce Williams, were among those arrested. Both Gaston and Williams are accused of accepting thousands in bribes from someone they believed to be a member of a Mexican cartel. In return, the sheriffs allegedly gave the cartel their “blessing” to operate in their counties.

Michael Carr, an attorney representing Williams, said his client maintains his innocence.

“Let’s just get to the merits of it and get in front of a jury so the officers and my sheriff, Bruce Williams, can have his name cleared, can be publicly vindicated, and can hopefully get back to work,” Carr said.

A lawyer for Gaston did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

All law enforcement officers charged in the case were offered a $10,000 bond with a condition that bars them from continuing or seeking employment as law enforcement officers. The Mississippi Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training has also suspended the officers’ law enforcement certificates, pending a full hearing before the board.

In addition to the two sheriffs, those charged include: Brandon Addison, Javery Howard, Truron Grayson, Sean Williams, Dexture Franklin, Wendell Johnson, Marcus Nolan, Aasahn Roach, Jeremy Sallis, Torio Chaz Wiseman, Pierre Lakes, Derrik Wallace, Marquivious Bankhead, Chaka Gaines, Martavis Moore, Jamario Sanford, Marvin Flowers and Dequarian Smith.

The Associated Press spoke with several lawyers representing those charged who emphasized that their clients are innocent until proven guilty.

“He is absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, and everybody knows it,” attorney Thomas Levidiotis said of his client, Dequarian Smith.

Smith served as a law enforcement officer with the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office and Isola Police Department at the time of the alleged crime.

The indictments are a blow to already shaky public trust in law enforcement, Robert Eikhoff, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jackson Field Office, said when the charges were announced last month.

During the same press conference, U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner called the alleged scheme a “monumental betrayal of public trust.”

By MAURICIO SAVARESE

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Some acai berry lovers visiting Brazil for this week’s U.N. climate summit are in for a surprise when they taste the fruit popular around the world in smoothies and breakfast bowls.

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Acai bowls served by local vendors in Belem — the city hosting the 30th annual United Nations climate summit, the Conference of the Parties, known less formally as COP30 — are true to the dish’s rainforest roots, served unadulterated and without sugar.

This traditional preparation has been a tough sell for some visitors, used to the frozen and sweetened acai cream sold in other countries and elsewhere in Brazil.

“I can’t say this is bad and I totally respect the cultural importance of it, but I still prefer the ice creamy version,” said Catherine Bernard, a 70-year-old visitor from France, as she tasted a traditional acai berry bowl in downtown Belem on Thursday.

“Maybe if we add a little honey, some banana,” she added.

Not a dessert

People in the Amazon, where the nutrient-rich berry has been cultivated for centuries by Indigenous populations, don’t treat their acai bowls as a side order or dessert.

It is often the main course for any meal. They don’t add granola, fresh fruit or nuts. Sugar is forbidden. Served at room temperature, the traditional dish is a thick liquid prepared from whole berries and a bit of water, typically sprinkled with tapioca flour.

Locals hope that exposing visitors to this original blend will increase awareness about a fruit facing pressure from tariffs and a changing environment.

Acai berries sit in a bowl at a market amid the nearby COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

“The acai coming from Indigenous people is the food when there’s no food. It was never a drink or an extra. It can be the main course for us,” Tainá Marajoara, an activist and owner of a restaurant, told The Associated Press, wearing an Indigenous headdress.

As Marajoara poured some of the dark liquid into an Amazon bowl called “cuia,” a vessel traditionally fashioned from gourds and now popular throughout Brazil, she said that acai trees need a protected surrounding in the rainforest so they can be at their best.

“Acai is also the blood running in the forest,” she added.

Marajoara’s restaurant at the COP30 pavilion charges 25 Brazilian reais ($5) for a bowl, about the same as bowls in other parts of Brazil that use industrially processed and sweetened acai cream, often with toppings.

That version was made popular in the mid-1990s by surfers and jiujitsu fighters in Rio de Janeiro, and then exported around the world as millions of tourists developed a taste for it.

Even in many parts of Brazil, it can be hard to find unsweetened acai. Some Brazilian parents who want their children to have the superfood’s benefits without the sugar look for stores that sell acai cream without added sweeteners. But most popular brands only produce sweetened versions.

Acai is served to a kid at a market amid the nearby COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Where the world’s acai comes from

Nearly all the acai consumed in the United States originates from Brazil, with the state of Para, whose capital is Belem, accounting for 90% of the country’s total production. Many communities in the Amazon depend on its harvest, which largely goes to the industrialized product.

Prices of acai smoothies look uncertain for U.S. consumers as the product is subject to a 50% tariff imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on many Brazilian exports.

The harvesting of acai is a physically demanding job that requires workers known as “peconheiros” to climb tall trees with minimal safety equipment to fill baskets and place them carefully in crates.

A full crate of acai sells for around $50 at local markets in Brazil, a price that is expected to plummet if U.S. sales slow down. The U.S. is by far the largest acai importer of a total Brazilian output, currently estimated at about 70,000 tons (63,500 metric tons) per year.

Acai sits in a bowl at a market amid the nearby COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In some coastal areas of the Amazon under little environmental protection, erosion is changing the taste of some of the acai, making them saltier and less colorful. That’s why people like Marajoara keep pushing not only for their original bowls during COP30, but also for higher surveillance for acai trees of the region.

“The acai berry that belongs in our food culture comes from flood plain areas, from a healthy ecosystem,” she said. “For acai to be healthy, the rainforest needs to be healthy too.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By CLAIRE SAVAGE

A Virginia transportation security officer is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of sex discrimination over a policy that bars transgender officers from performing security screening pat-downs, according to a federal lawsuit.

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The Transportation Security Administration, which operates under DHS, enacted the policy in February to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes: male and female.

According to internal documents explaining the policy change that The Associated Press obtained from four independent sources, including one current and two former TSA workers, “transgender officers will no longer engage in pat-down duties, which are conducted based on both the traveler’s and officer’s biological sex. In addition, transgender officers will no longer serve as a TSA-required witness when a traveler elects to have a pat-down conducted in a private screening area.”

Until February, TSA assigned work consistent with officers’ gender identity under a 2021 management directive. The agency told the AP it rescinded that directive to comply with Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order.

Although transgender officers “shall continue to be eligible to perform all other security screening functions consistent with their certifications,” and must attend all required training, they will not be allowed to demonstrate how to conduct pat-downs as part of their training or while training others, according to the internal documents.

A transgender officer at Dulles International Airport, Danielle Mittereder, alleges in her lawsuit filed Friday that the new policy — which also bars her from using TSA facility restrooms that align with her gender identity — violates civil rights law.

“Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialized certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday,” the complaint says.

Mittereder declined to speak with the AP but her lawyer, Jonathan Puth, called TSA’s policy “terribly demeaning and 100% illegal.”

TSA spokesperson Russell Read declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But he said the new policy directs that “Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs.”

The legal battle comes amid mounting reports of workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees during Trump’s second administration. It is also happening at a time when TSA’s ranks are already stretched thin due to the ongoing government shutdown that has left thousands of agents working without pay.

Other transgender officers describe similar challenges to Mittereder.

Kai Regan worked for six years at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, but retired in July in large part because of the new policy. Regan, who is not involved in the Virginia case, transitioned from female to male in 2021 and said he had conducted pat-downs on men without issue until the policy change.

“It made me feel inadequate at my job, not because I can’t physically do it but because they put that on me,” said the 61-year-old, who worried that he would soon be fired for his gender identity, so he retired earlier than planned rather than “waiting for the bomb to drop.”

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — a legal organization that has repeatedly challenged the second Trump administration in court — called TSA’s policy “arbitrary and discriminatory,” adding: “There’s no evidence or data we’re aware of to suggest that a person can’t perform their duties satisfactorily as a TSA agent based on their gender identity.”

DHS pushed back on assertions by some legal experts that its policy is discriminatory.

“Does the AP want female travelers to be subjected to pat-downs by male TSA officers?” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin asked in a written response to questions by the AP. “What a useless and fundamentally dangerous idea, to prioritize mental delusion over the comfort and safety of American travelers.”

Airport security expert and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck, said that the practice of matching the officer’s sex to the passenger’s is aimed at minimizing passenger discomfort during screening. Travelers can generally request another officer if they prefer, he added.

Deciding where transgender officers fit into this practice “creates a little bit of uncertainty,” Jacobson said. But because transgender officers likely make up a small percent of TSA’s workforce, he said the new policy is unlikely to cause major delays.

“It could be a bit of an inconvenience, but it would not inhibit the operation of the airport security checkpoint,” Jacobson said.

TSA’s policy for passengers is that they be screened based on physical appearance as judged by an officer, according to internal documents. If a passenger corrects an officer’s assumption, “the traveler should be patted down based on his/her declared sex.” For passengers who tell an officer “that they are neither a male nor female,” the policy says officers must advise “that pat-down screening must be conducted by an officer of the same sex,” and to contact a supervisor if concerns persist.

The documents also say that transgender officers “will not be adversely affected” in pay, promotions or awards, and that TSA “is committed to providing a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and retaliation.”

But the lawsuit argues otherwise, saying the policy impedes Mittereder’s career prospects because “all paths toward advancement require that she be able to perform pat-downs and train others to do so,” Puth said.

According to the lawsuit, Mittereder started in her role in June 2024 and never received complaints related to her job performance, including pat-down responsibilities. Supervisors awarded her the highest-available performance rating and “have praised her professionalism, skills, knowledge, and rapport with fellow officers and the public,” the lawsuit said.

“This is somebody who is really dedicated to her job and wants to make a career at TSA,” Puth said. “And while her gender identity was never an issue for her in the past, all of a sudden it’s something that has to be confronted every single day.”

Being unable to perform her full job duties has caused the Mittereder to suffer fear, anxiety and depression, as well as embarrassment and humiliation by forcing her to disclose her gender identity to co-workers, the complaint says. It adds that the ban places additional burden on already-outnumbered female officers who have to pick up Mittereder’s pat-down duties.

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley urged TSA leadership to reconsider the policy “for the good of its workforce and the flying public.”

“This policy does nothing to improve airport security,” Kelley said, “and in fact could lead to delays in the screening of airline passengers since it means there will be fewer officers available to perform pat-down searches.”

Associated Press Staff Writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.