Airplane Wi-Fi Is Now … Good?
Expensive and erratic, in-flight Wi-Fi has been more of a punchline than a pipeline over the past decade. But 2025 has marked a sea change for the skies: the rollout of fast, and free, connectivity on most of the world's major airlines.
Satellite technology has enabled leaps in speed and bandwidth. SpaceX's Starlink network of low Earth orbit satellites, for example, can deliver a connection capable of downloading more than 200 megabits per second—twice as fast as most basic home internet plans. As a result, a host of global airlines are inking deals with the company.
'We're creating a little bit of a living room in the sky,' says Grant Milstead, vice president of digital technology for United Airlines, which flew its first Starlink-equipped route, from Chicago to Detroit, in May.
The boost in bandwidth is changing the face of business travel, giving flyers the unprecedented ability to Slack, Zoom, and collaborate with coworkers from 35,000 feet. They can download lengthy PowerPoints, edit Google Docs in real time, and join livestream conferences as seamlessly as on the ground. (Voice and video calls are technically possible with satellite technology but prohibited by the FAA and 'strongly discouraged' by airlines around the world from an etiquette standpoint.)
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Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk says he has created a new US political party
Elon Musk, an ex-ally of US President Donald Trump, said Saturday he had launched a new political party in the United States to challenge what the tech billionaire described as the country's "one-party system." Musk, the world's richest person and Trump's biggest political donor in the 2024 election, had a bitter falling out with the president after leading the Republican's effort to slash spending and cut federal jobs as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. "When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy," the Space X and Tesla boss posted on X, the social media platform that he owns. "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom." Musk cited a poll -- posted on X on Friday, US Independence Day -- in which he asked whether respondents "want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system" that has dominated US politics for some two centuries. The yes-or-no survey earned more than 1.2 million responses. "By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!" he posted on Saturday. The Trump-Musk feud reignited in dramatic fashion late last month as Trump pushed Republicans in Congress to ram through his massive domestic agenda in the form of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Musk expressed fierce opposition to the legislation, and ruthlessly attacked its Republican backers for supporting "debt slavery." He quickly vowed to launch a new political party to challenge lawmakers who campaigned on reduced federal spending only to vote for the bill, which experts say will pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the US deficit. After Musk heavily criticized the flagship spending bill -- which eventually passed Congress and was signed into law -- Trump threatened to deport the tech tycoon and strip federal funds from his businesses. "We'll have to take a look," the president told reporters when asked if he would consider deporting Musk, who was born in South Africa and has held US citizenship since 2002. ph-mlm/sst
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?
Threats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president's warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation. In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world's richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden's former homeland security secretary. The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump's agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech. On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government. But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump's signature 'one big beautiful bill' into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents. 'Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk's companies, and – it seemed – his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters before boarding a flight to Florida. 'We might have to put Doge on Elon,' he said, referring to the unofficial 'department of government efficiency' that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. 'Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible.' Musk's many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump's behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him. But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners. 'Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world's richest man, he could certainly do it to you,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. 'It's important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.' Musk was not the only target of Trump's capricious vengeance. He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats' prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration. Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to 'Alligator Alcatraz', a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump's flagship mass-deportation policy. After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media. 'Why hasn't he been arrested yet?' asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified – and subsequently impeached – by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border. 'Was he given a pardon, Mayorkas?' Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: 'I'll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence … Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn't necessarily hold him harmless.' Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to 'communist' Mamdani – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist – over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: 'Then we will have to arrest him. We don't need a communist in this country. I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.' He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 – who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child – was in the country 'illegally', an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through 'willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism'. The threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump's border 'czar' Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump's deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice's arrests of immigrants. Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism. 'Part of the rhetoric we've heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,' he said. 'Mamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren't questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.' Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump's second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents – including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives – as 'the enemy within'. Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year's defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked. Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump's first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander. Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden's adult children, Hunter and Ashley. Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration. For now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces – whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for 'treason' and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed – have not materialised. 'I [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn't done that,' said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets. 'There are all kinds of lists floating around … with names of people that might be under investigation, but you'll never know you're under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep – and these people are just getting on with their lives.' Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump's latest threats should be taken seriously – especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference. 'When the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that's as serious as it gets,' said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama's administration. 'Whether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it's designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.' While some doubt the legal basis of Trump's threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally. 'Trump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,' he said. 'When the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn't be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].' But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned. 'One definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,' he said. 'When the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn't like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you're no longer free. 'And if he's making clear that that's true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.'
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Everyone is watching Musk's influence on D.C. politics. But what about Texas?
He painted a bleak picture of what could happen if they didn't give him his way. 'We would, I'm afraid, we would fail,' Musk told the assembled representatives. 'So for us, it's a matter of life or death.' Clad in a dark suit instead of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the younger Musk was unable to persuade lawmakers in Austin. That year, Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up More than a decade later, however, Musk's fortunes inside the Texas Capitol have changed — dramatically. Advertisement Musk is now not only one of the richest people in the world, who, During this year's legislative session, Musk's lobbyists and representatives publicly advocated for almost a dozen bills that would benefit his companies. The Texas Newsroom identified these priorities by searching legislative records for committee testimony and other evidence of his public stances. Musk wanted legislators to pass new laws that would make it faster and easier for homeowners to Advertisement Musk got them all. In a Capitol where the vast majority of bills fail to pass, all but three of Musk's public priorities will become law. The two bills his lobbyists openly opposed are dead, including a measure that would have regulated autonomous vehicles. Musk made gains even on bills he didn't publicly endorse. Texas lawmakers followed the tech giant's lead by By all accounts, Musk's influence was great enough that he did not have to formally address lawmakers in person this session to make the case for any of his priorities. Critics said these new laws will hand Musk's companies more cash, more power and more protection from scrutiny as 'The real harm is the influence of a private company on the decisions made by government,' Cyrus Reed, the conservation director for the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter, told The Texas Newsroom. The Sierra Club is part of a group suing the state over SpaceX's activities in South Texas. Advertisement Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for an interview. He Contrary to his slash-and-burn tactics in Washington, D.C., where he bulldozed his way onto the scene after Trump's reelection, Musk has played the long game to amass power in Texas. He still hasn't succeeded in changing Texas law to allow for Tesla direct sales, but that hasn't stopped him from steadily investing his personal and professional capital in the state over more than a decade. Most of his businesses, including the tunneling firm The Boring Company, Musk has also moved his personal home to the state, reportedly securing properties in In the Texas Capitol, Musk's power is subtle but undeniable. Calendars and emails obtained by The Texas Newsroom through public information requests show his company's representatives met regularly with lawmakers backing his priority bills and invited Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to tour SpaceX. Patrick, who leads the state Senate, also penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting the rocket company's request to increase its launches in South Texas. Texas politics, with its long history of outsize characters, has never seen the likes of Musk, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. Advertisement 'Even in the heyday of the [George W.] Bush era, you couldn't find somebody who had such dramatic wealth as Musk, who also had the same level of access and business interests here in Texas,' Jones told The Texas Newsroom. 'Today, Elon Musk is arguably the most powerful and influential private citizen in the country.' 'It's All to Help Elon' When lawmakers convened their 2025 legislative session in January, one of Musk's top priorities was quickly clear. He wanted more control over the Known as Starbase, the massive rocket testing and launch facility has come to dominate the small rural area between Brownsville, on the border, and the Gulf of Mexico. It is the launch site for Although SpaceX owns most of the land around Starbase, county officials retained the authority over access to the adjacent public beach, called Boca Chica. The county worked closely with SpaceX to ensure the area was cleared ahead of launches, but the company's leaders did not have ultimate control over the process. That changed this year. First, Musk Musk then wanted state lawmakers to hand the new city the power to close Boca Chica Beach and the adjoining public highway during the week, a change the county officials opposed. Advertisement State Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a newly elected Republican who represents the area, authored the legislation to shift control to Starbase. Dozens of SpaceX employees got involved in the effort, submitting Democrats succeeded in killing Hinojosa's bill, prompting local The new law states that the commission's board can close highways and gulf beaches with the approval of a local municipality, which, in this case, is Starbase. SpaceX retains a connection to the commission itself: Kathy Lueders, who confirmed that she left her job as Starbase general manager last month, still sits on the Space Commission board. She directed additional questions to the commission. The Space Commission declined to answer questions on SpaceX's potential future involvement with these discussions. 'The way I view it is SpaceX wanted a certain amount of power,' said Reed, with the Sierra Club. 'And at the end of the day, they didn't quite get it, but they got something pretty close.' The Lawmakers passed several more bills to benefit spaceports, the sites where spacecraft launch, like SpaceX. While Texas is home to multiple spaceports, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, SpaceX dwarfs the rest in size and scope of influence across the state and country, boasting large federal government contracts and a growing satellite industry. Advertisement Hinojosa was an author or sponsor on most of these bills; he did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this story. Other than the beach closure legislation, many passed with the support of Democrats. At SpaceX's urging, Texas lawmakers passed a measure to Bekah Hinojosa with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, a local activist group, told The Texas Newsroom the new critical infrastructure law will let Musk 'militarize our Boca Chica Beach for his dangerous rocket testing endeavors.' The Sierra Club and other groups from South Texas, including a local Indigenous tribe, are suing the state, arguing that closing Boca Chica violates an amendment to the Texas Constitution that The General Land Office, the main defendant in that suit, declined to comment. In court filings, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues the state can still regulate beach access for public safety reasons and that it cannot be sued in this case because it has immunity. The case is pending at the Texas Supreme Court. Legislators also passed two more new laws that will shield companies like SpaceX from This law went into effect on May 15. SpaceX's only significant public defeat during this year's legislative session was the failure of a bill it supported to give spaceports a Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, believes Texas is pandering to Musk. 'It's all to help Elon,' said Jah, who added that his viewpoint is rooted in resisting policies that enable what he called 'environmental plunder masked as 'innovation.'' He has concerns that the state is investing in spaceports, most notably Musk's, while carving out exceptions that prohibit public insight and input into what's happening at those facilities. 'There's this whole cloak of secrecy with whatever Elon is doing,' Jah said. 'We will not and should not cease to launch satellites or explore space. But the way in which we do it matters a lot.' 'They Never Come Out of the Shadows' This year, Tesla's lobbyists publicly advocated against only two bills. Both died. One was a GOP-authored Bill author Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat, believes his legislation failed because it was not pro-industry enough. 'Tesla is the worst actor that I've ever dealt with in the Capitol. They're subversive. They never come out of the shadows,' Canales told The Texas Newsroom. 'Not only did I not hear from them, I didn't expect to hear from them because that's the way they operate.' Lawmakers instead advanced It will require commercial operators, such as robotaxi and driverless big rig companies, to obtain authorization from the state. This approval can be revoked if the company's vehicles endanger the public, including causing 'serious bodily injury,' though it requires no public hearings in the case of a fatality, as Canales' bill would have done. Autonomous vehicle companies will also have to develop plans for interacting with emergency responders. Tesla took a neutral stance on the legislation. But the bill's author, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, told The Texas Newsroom that Tesla's team participated in work groups and stakeholder conversations with industry groups, trial lawyers and others. Texas has been at the forefront of testing this technology for years, rolling out its first regulations in 2017. But with more autonomous vehicles hitting the streets, Nichols said it was time to clarify the rules and called his bill 'a real opportunity here to actually improve safety.' Nichols' legislation initially died in the Texas House. But with less than a week before lawmakers packed up to go home, a House member added the entirety of Nichols' bill as an amendment to Tray Gober, a personal injury lawyer who handles vehicle crash cases in Austin, said it's smart to get new regulations for autonomous vehicles on the books. But he worries that Texas is rushing to give its blessing to a technology that has not been fully tested. 'We're not talking about rockets crashing into the ocean. We're talking about cars crashing into other people,' he said, When asked about concerns that there could be fatalities as the number of driverless cars grows in Texas, Nichols said, 'There probably will be. Eventually there will be. I would not doubt that.' But he pointed to studies showing 'If you start looking at the breakdown of the fatalities on the roads and the crashes and the wrecks, what causes them? It's not equipment failure. It's driver distraction,' he told The Texas Newsroom. Critics of these studies argue their scope is too narrow to make conclusions about the safety of self-driving technology. Citing safety concerns, some local lawmakers asked Tesla's robotaxi rollout in Austin to Many Democrats opposed Nichols' proposal. But at least three other bills affecting Tesla got bipartisan support. At times, the Sierra Club was fighting against Musk's SpaceX bills while working with his Tesla lobbyists on clean energy legislation, said Reed, the club's conservation director. For example, Tesla and the Sierra Club both supported legislation to create Tesla also backed a bill that had bipartisan support to make it easier for homeowners to install backup power generators, such as the company's Reed said Musk's shift to the right has created interesting bedfellows, sometimes making it easier for Republicans to back some of the energy policies more traditionally associated with progressives. He remarked, 'It's an interesting time in our country, right?' Musk's Indirect Influence For all the bills Musk pushed to see pass, he also indirectly influenced the creation of new laws on which he did not take a public stance. Texas lawmakers created the Musk himself took no public role in creating the new office. But at a signing ceremony for the bill, Gov. Greg Abbott explained he was the inspiration. Texas legislators also rewrote the state's corporate laws after Musk raised concerns about business codes in other states. Authored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, Musk and his lobbyists never came out in support of the bill, but he has long complained that states needed to shore up protections for CEOs and other business leaders. Musk began crusading on the issue after his The legislation written in response was dubbed the 'DExit' bill. 'Texas is much better than Delaware,' Musk posted on Last year, a Delaware judge ruled In an interview, Hughes told The Texas Newsroom he heard input from different groups in crafting the Texas legislation and could not remember whether Musk's companies were involved. Standing behind Hughes was a representative from Tesla.
