Using Starlink, a satellite service provider owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, United Airlines announced on Friday that it will deliver free in-flight Wi-Fi on hundreds of its aircrafts. This is the largest in-flight internet agreement the satellite carrier has ever been apart of.

Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that temporarily dated mail-in ballots won’t be counted in the upcoming November election, a potentially huge ruling in a deadlocked swing-state.

Various aspects of the rule are "inadequately explained" and "contradictory"

Boeing Workers...Go On Strike?

America was founded on liberty and rights, but Big Tech and Big Government keep trying to take them away. The latest example comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is currently working to develop wide-reaching digital IDs. More specifically, NIST is collaborating with tech companies and banks to link mobile driver’s licenses with people’s finances. The broader purpose is to work toward developing a digital ID for everyone that centralizes all their personal information, supposedly to boost cybersecurity and provide more convenience for financial transactions. The more digital ID is developed in America, the more alternatives to digital ID will become rarer, more complex to use, and, eventually, outlawed or severely restricted. Working with various associations, the California DMV, the Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft, iLabs, MATTR, OpenID Foundation, and various large financial institutions, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, NIST has now contracted various digital identity specialist companies to implement the project. According to NIST digital identity program lead Ryan Galluzzo, NIST’s advances are about allowing people to present ID in the most convenient and secure way possible while still allowing them to rely on traditional physical ID. “We want to open up the use of modern digital pathways while still allowing for physical and manual methods whenever they may be necessary.” By linking banking information with mobile driver's licenses, NIST will move one step forward to implementing a central digital ID that contains people’s private information. NIST promises that this new digital ID acceleration “will address ‘Know Your Customer/Customer Identification Program Onboarding and Access’ which will demonstrate the use of an mDL and/or Verifiable Credentials (VC) for establishing and accessing an online financial account.” The project will move forward in three main steps. According to NIST, it will aim to standardize and promote “digital ID standards” while still respecting and maximizing “privacy and usability.” This digital ID project is currently in the build phase. With technology that now analyzes how people walk and breathe and their irises, to identify them beyond a shadow of a doubt, and phones and GPS systems geolocating individuals at almost every moment of the day, digital ID is ripe for abuse by an authoritarian government or malicious actors. The easier it becomes for a citizen’s important data to be accessed by law enforcement, government, or bad actors, the closer we get to a digital panopticon in which citizens are constantly tracked and subject to potential suspicion while having no recourse to alternative methods of payment or identity. This move forward linking mobile driver's licenses with banking is bigger news than it appears on the surface. While it can be easily justified and explained as necessary, innovative, and forward-thinking, the more digital ID is developed in America, the more alternatives to digital ID will become rarer, more complex to use, and, eventually, outlawed or severely restricted. What starts as an incentive or benefit all too often becomes a mandate and a requirement down the road. NIST’s moves to build up a more powerful and connected digital ID will inevitably lead to Americans becoming less free, regardless of how these policies are framed or how much of a positive spin they are given.

Republicans are hailing a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as a victory for voter integrity while opponents say it may disenfranchise some voters. The court said that undated and misdated ballots in the upcoming election would go uncounted if they were misdated or undated. 'This makes mail voting in the Keystone State less susceptible to fraud.' Republicans said the ruling will make voter fraud more difficult in the key battleground state, but those on the left say the rule will likely mean that votes from Democrats will be unfairly discarded. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley praised the order on social media. "HUGE election integrity win in Pennsylvania. Following legal action from the RNC and [the Pennsylvania Republican Party], the PA Supreme Court REJECTED a Democrat attempt to count undated ballots," wrote Whatley. "This makes mail voting in the Keystone State less susceptible to fraud. We will keep fighting and winning!" he added. The senior attorney for the Pennsylvania ACLU decried the ruling. “Today’s procedural ruling is a setback for Pennsylvania voters, but we will keep fighting for them," said Steve Loney. "These eligible voters who got their ballots in on time should have their votes counted and voices heard. The fundamental right to vote is among the most precious rights we enjoy as Pennsylvanians, and it should take more than a trivial paperwork error to take it away.”A nonpartisan group said that as many as 4,400 mail ballots were rejected over dating issues in the state's primary election. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

No one knows for sure who is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but one thing I am sure of is that countless Democrats (and former Democrats) either won’t vote or will vote for Donald Trump. It is a phenomenon that has come to be known as “Dumping the Dems” (#dumpthedems has become a popular hashtag on X/Twitter).A lot of people are sick to the teeth of the Democrats, for a variety of reasons, including their insistence that some men are women if they say so. I hear from such Democrats and former Democrats every day. Democratic Party leadership has only itself to blame. Democratic Party leadership continues to ignore the 'Dumping the Dems' phenomenon at its peril. It’s not likely to go away any time soon.I have never voted Republican in a presidential election. I registered to vote in 1990, voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and have voted Democratic in every single presidential election since then, with one exception — I voted for Ralph Nader in 2020. I have voted Republican once in my life, many years ago, in a city mayoral election where the Republican was an openly pro-choice fiscal moderate and, I believed, genuinely the better candidate.I will not vote for Donald Trump because I think he is a disgusting, sociopathic rapist and because I staunchly support abortion rights. At this time, I also do not plan to vote for Kamala Harris because I’m appalled at her enthusiasm for throwing women and girls under the bus at the altar of “gender identity.”Democratic Party leadership has been attempting (and often succeeding) to enshrine “gender identity” in the law at least since 2015 when Democrats in Congress introduced the so-called Equality Act. If enacted, the legislation would allow men unfettered access to women’s spaces, sports, and prisons all over the country by redefining the word “sex” to include “gender identity” for all purposes under U.S. civil rights law.Leftist radical feminists — myself included — have been explaining to Democratic Party leaders how this harms women and girls as a sex class ever since. They have ignored us. In November 2023, I published “The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls.” I explained all the steps that leftist radical feminists have taken to get across to Democratic Party leadership that “gender identity” is sexist, homophobic, anti-science, and authoritarian.I listed countless examples of women being housed in locked prison cells with male convicted rapists and murderers who claim to have female “gender identities.”I provided a laundry list of female athletes losing races and medals to male athletes who claim to have female “gender identities,” and I explained that children are being irreparably harmed by doctors who are doing the bidding of a vicious industry that promotes “gender identity” at every turn. I told them to change course and provided a detailed policy prescription for doing so. They haven’t.Tulsi Gabbard, a former member of the House of Representatives from Hawaii, made headlines when she left the Democratic Party in 2022. Among her reasons for leaving is that the Democrats “can no longer define what a woman is, demand we replace words like ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person,’ and place women at risk to please biological men who claim to be women at any given moment.” She’s right. Gabbard chose to become an independent rather than becoming a Republican, but today she is serving on Trump’s campaign team. Gloria Romero, a former state senator from California and a prominent Democrat, went further this month. She announced last week that she’s leaving the party, becoming a Republican, and voting for Trump. She said, “It is terrifying to see how language has been modified so that, as a feminist and a former professor ... I would be condemned for saying that I can define a woman and distinguish between biological sex and gender identity.” (Romero elaborated on her decision for Blaze Media.)As a lifelong leftist and feminist who has herself been condemned for knowing what a woman is and distinguishing between sex and “gender identity” myself, I can sympathize.In August, I published an open letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, urging her to stand up at the Democratic National Convention and say that a woman is an adult human female and to apologize for the utterly embarrassing letter she sent to Dylan Mulvaney, congratulating him on his “365 days of girlhood.”“You profess to care about American women and girls,” I wrote. “It’s time to walk the talk. Many of us will be watching and hoping you do the right thing.” I didn’t expect her to, and she didn’t. Democratic Party leadership continues to ignore the “Dumping the Dems” phenomenon at its peril. It’s not likely to go away any time soon.

On August 19, tech billionaire Mike Lynch died when his yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily after encountering a violent storm. That same day, miles away in an English village near Cambridge, Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s business partner, was hit by a car while jogging and later died. Lynch and Chamberlain were cleared of fraud charges in the same trial just a month earlier, stemming from the 2011 sale of Autonomy, Lynch’s machine learning data analysis company, to Hewlett-Packard. The mysterious circumstances surrounding their deaths, combined with the sheer status of those on board the yacht, have sparked worldwide controversy and suspicion. Taking a deeper dive into some of the popular points of intrigue, here are the most peculiar points about the curious story of Lynch’s death.The unsinkable ship The story almost writes itself: Like the Titanic, the unsinkable ship … sinks. Lynch’s 56-meter luxury yacht, named Bayesian, was built by Italian company Perini Navi, a subsidiary of the Italian Sea Group. The Italian Sea Group has declared the sailing ships to be “unsinkable bodies.” 'We didn’t see it coming.' However, the claims of the group’s CEO, Giovanni Costantino, go much farther than that. Costantino went so far as to say that the incident “sounds like an unbelievable story, both technically and as a fact.” "Being the manufacturer of Perini [boats], I know very well how the boats have always been designed and built," he continued, per Sky News. "And as Perini is a sailing ship ... sailing ships are renowned to be the safest ever." This sounds exactly what a boat manufacturer would say about his product, but to sink that fast, most have surmised, including Costantino, the vessel likely would have had to have taken on water at an alarming rate in order to sink. Bad weather or bad captain? “The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Costantino told the BBC. “There was absolutely no problem with it.” That is, of course, unless something went horribly wrong. Costantino’s remarks seemed to place the onus on the ship’s captain, James Cutfield of New Zealand. The manufacturer said that before approaching the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, and pointed into the wind. This would have stabilized the vessel, and the ship would have cruised through the storm in “comfort,” he added. But Costantino said that there must have been a hatch or side entrance left open for water to have surged inside. Spotlights have since been focused on Cutfield, who survived the ordeal along with his crew and certain passengers. While the six most notable passengers all died, survivors include Charlotte Golunski, a co-founder with Lynch of the venture capital firm Invoke Capital, funded by the proceeds from Autonomy’s sale, and Golunski’s 1-month-old daughter. “We didn’t see it coming,” Cutfield told the media. It was an interesting statement, since others definitely saw the storm coming. The storm in question was described by local authorities first as a waterspout, or mini-tornado, but later changed to a downburst, a weather phenomenon that includes powerful downdrafts during a thunderstorm. The downburst results in damaging winds that spread in every direction. Costantino noted that there was another sailing vessel just 492 feet from the Bayesian that suffered no damage. The Sir Robert Baden Powell, a Dutch ship built in 1957, somehow weathered the same storm that Lynch’s modern yacht couldn’t. “A ship from those years cannot have the technology of the Bayesian,” Costantino said. “Yet that ship did not suffer damage. Its crew had prepared it well to face the storm. They even managed to provide assistance to the Bayesian.” Costantino then pointed to local fishermen, implying that others were more cautious of the weather that day than Lynch’s crew was. One of those fishermen, Matteo Cannia, told the BBC he saw flashes of lightning and heard thunder and wind and thus decided to go home. Another fisherman, Fabio Cefalu, had also planned to go out that morning but decided against it due to the weather conditions. He actually went out to sea in a rescue attempt when the Bayesian shot up a flare. While prosecutors said they believed one person was on watch in the Bayesian’s cockpit that night, a ship surveyor told the BBC that two crew members should have been taking turns on watch due to the storm warnings. These mysterious events resulted in state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio telling reporters that there were many possible culpabilities, but it could “just be the captain,” or it “could be the whole crew.” The banker on board Among the deceased was Morgan Stanley Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judith. According to Sky News, the 70-year-old and his wife were on the boat to celebrate Lynch's aforementioned court victory. The trial was regarding Lynch’s software company Autonomy, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion. Though it took less than a year for HP to write down over $8 billion of Autonomy’s value, fraud scandals from the sale took years to surface, culminating in Autonomy’s CFO Sushovan Hussain being found guilty of fraud in 2018. Lynch and Chamberlain, Autonomy’s VP of finance, faced more than a dozen charges in the trial but were acquitted in the summer of 2024. Read more on Autonomy here. Bloomer was a defense witness in that trial, the Independent wrote, adding that he was also the chairman of Autonomy’s audit committee during its sale to HP. Lynch’s lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda, also died on the yacht. — (@) Chamberlain died the same day In a shocking coincidence, Lynch’s colleague Chamberlain was struck by a car and hospitalized while jogging in Cambridgeshire, England. The incident occurred around 10 a.m. the same day as the boating wreck, which happened just hours earlier. The 52-year-old was running when he was hit by a Vauxhall Corsa driven by a 49-year-old woman, in an area where the speed limit is 60 miles per hour. The coroner stated that a vehicle was “presented with a runner crossing the road” between two parts of a bridleway, the Telegraph reported. The car caused “significant injuries” to Chamberlain, who later died in hospital from a “traumatic head injury” after being placed on life support. Police appealed for witnesses, but none came forward. The woman driving the car reportedly remained at the scene and was allegedly giving assistance to Chamberlain. Chamberlain was also using a fitness app that tracked his movements. Police were able to pinpoint that he had been running for about six miles before he was hit and that his route was plotted out in advance. Chamberlain was also reportedly still on “administrative leave” due to his trial from company Darktrace, of which he was the CEO. Darktrace’s intelligence ties After Autonomy’s controversial sale to HP, Lynch started a venture capital firm, Invoke Capital. His first big investment was in cyber intelligence firm Darktrace. “Darktrace wasn’t just an investment; team members from Invoke Capital who have intelligence ties, along with other unnamed intelligence professionals, were heavily involved,” Return’s James Poulos said. According to the Daily Mail, Chamberlain and other Darktrace executives had deep ties to both U.S. and U.K. intelligence. 'A combination of maths from Cambridge with the credibility of GCHQ and MI5 is unmatched.' Co-founder Stephen Huxter was a senior member of MI5’s cyber defense team. Huxter also installed Andrew France as chief executive at Darktrace, a former U.K. Government Communications Headquarters operative. Also, two high-ranking intelligence executives from opposite sides of the pond were reportedly on Darktrace’s board: ex-MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans and the NSA’s Jim Penrose, who rose to the rank of defense intelligence senior level. Penrose was also Darktrace’s executive vice president of cyber intelligence. Darktrace wasn’t exactly hiding these connections and even boasted of its intelligence ties in a 2015 Wired interview. "A combination of maths from Cambridge with the credibility of GCHQ and MI5 is unmatched," said Nicole Eagan, who was the Darktrace CEO after France. As questions arose about Darktrace, the company was eventually accused of manipulating sales numbers, misrepresenting revenue, and mismanaging expenses. The accusations mirrored those against Autonomy during its sale to HP. Darktrace’s shares subsequently plunged by more than 17%. Venture capital firm Quintessential Capital Management even issued a 70-page report that concluded with a statement about being "deeply skeptical" about the "validity of Darktrace's financial statements." Darktrace replied by saying the company had "rigorous controls in place." After years of up-and-down stock prices, Darktrace soared 24% thanks to its artificial intelligence-backed products. In April 2024, the cyber industry-focused private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which is the largest stockholder in the NASDAQ stock exchange, purchased the company for $5.3 billion, a deal that will go through notwithstanding the controversy and fallout surrounding the Lynch saga. From the onset of his career, Lynch has been suspected of having ties to national security agencies. His first company, called Cambridge Neurodynamics, specialized in computer-based fingerprint recognition. Lynch revealed to Wired in 2002 that he had done work with British intelligence through Cambridge Neurodynamics, stating that "they have the most interesting problems.” Since Lynch's death, HP has decided to move forward with legal proceedings against his estate. As Reuters reported, HP has filed the lawsuit against Lynch and the aforementioned CFO Hussain. HP is seeking more than $4 billion in damages.