This week's long screening lines at several big airports, tied to the partial government shutdown, are reviving a longtime aviation-industry debate over privatizing airport security.

• Checkpoints at nearly two dozen airports — including San Francisco International — are staffed by private contractors who are shielded from shutdown-related pay disruptions, AP reports.
• SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel told AP: "The money's already been allocated, the payments have already been made, and that continues without interruption."

👮 TSA's screening partnership program allows airports to use private security companies chosen by the federal government to run checkpoints.

• TSA retains authority over procedures and oversight.
• The agency says private screeners get the same background checks as their federal counterparts.

🛫 Some aviation experts see the program as a model for keeping security lines moving during government shutdowns.

• But the union representing federal screeners argues that privatization could erode job protections and reduce pay and benefits for workers.

President Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid in a brief phone interview today that the war with Iran will end "soon" because there is "practically nothing left to target."

• Trump said during the five-minute call: "Little this and that. ... Any time I want it to end, it will end."

🗓️ "The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period."

• He said Iran's hostility extended beyond Israel and the U.S. to Gulf states across the region: "They were after the rest of the Middle East. They are paying for 47 years of death and destruction they caused. This is payback. They will not get off that easy."

🛢️ The International Energy Agency is asking member governments to jointly release up to 400 million barrels of oil from strategic stockpiles after the war sent prices skyrocketing.

• More from Barak.

1. 🇮🇷 Iran's Mojtaba Khamenei hasn't been seen in public or on video since being named supreme leader three days ago. One factor: Khamenei was injured on the first day of U.S. and Israeli strikes, The New York Times reports. Gift link.
2. 🏛️ Dorothy McAuliffe — the former Virginia first lady, onetime State Department official and wife of then-Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe — announced she's running for Congress in newly drawn VA-07. Go deeper.
3. 🤖 OpenAI plans to launch its Sora video AI tech within ChatGPT, The Information reports. Sora has been housed in a stand-alone app. Go deeper.
4. 🍔 McDonald's is rolling out a new McValue menu with items costing $3 or less, The Wall Street Journal reports. Gift link.
5. ☕️ Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz moved his family from Seattle to Miami, he announced on LinkedIn: "We are enjoying the sunshine of South Florida and its allure to our kids on the East Coast as they raise families of their own." Starbucks is opening a new corporate hub in Nashville — though HQ is staying in Seattle. Read his announcement.

The White House is still getting energy from solar panels that President Trump's predecessors put on its roof, Axios' Amy Harder reports.

• The panels have somehow endured through Trump's criticism of renewable energy.

🛰️ In addition to confirmation from the White House, they're visible on Google satellite images.

• A White House spokesperson wouldn't comment on whether there are any plans to remove or otherwise update them.

Go deeper ... Get Axios Future of Energy.