United Airlines Blocks Ai Agents From Booking Flights

United Airlines says it will prevent artificial intelligence agents and assistants from booking flights, citing data and security concerns.

The company said in a news release Wednesday that sharing details with third-party AI assistants “can expose sensitive information” or lead to unintended purchases or changes to customer accounts.

Such agents may also violate federal regulations, the airline said, including requirements for passengers to confirm their luggage does not include explosives or other banned substances during check-in.

“As a result, United is taking steps to restrict access — directly within our digital platforms and indirectly via travel agencies and aggregators — to prohibit use by unauthorized, third-party personal AI agents or assistants,” United Airlines said, adding that it would update its booking, ticketing and distribution policies.

Southwest Airlines has taken a very different approach to the use of AI: In October, the company announced the launch of a ChatGPT plug-in to allow customers to “discover and shop” for flights on the platform.

Good morning. It’s Thursday, Nov. 12, and I must thank screens critic Monica Hesse for watching new reality show “The Vow” so I don’t have to. It’s basically “The Bachelor” for tradwives.

Today’s edition of The 7 briefing begins in Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a tightly contested Senate race. He’ll be the state’s first Black senator since the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Elsewhere, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth finds himself under more scrutiny. Yesterday, he was scolded by a military sentinel at Arlington National Cemetery after he and his entourage were seen laughing and talking near the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Further down, the briefing looks at how the housing market has cruelly shifted for millennials. And, if your cat is prone to meowing for no apparent reason, we might have an explanation.

Read today’s edition of The 7 briefing here.

A dark-money nonprofit that quietly boosted Democrats in Mississippi, Kansas and Alaska this fall is the subject of a federal complaint alleging it ran an illegal straw donor scheme.

United Futures Inc., which was registered as a corporation in Delaware on Aug. 12, spent nearly $20 million over the next two months to boost Democrats in the midterms, making it one of the top megadonors of the 2026 election, according to a Washington Post analysis.

The nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint this month with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the group is a shell organization set up to illegally conceal the identities of its donors by funneling money through the nonprofit to donate to Democratic super PACs. United Futures did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Each year, there are more and more efforts to direct undisclosed money into our elections,” said Erin Chlopak, the senior campaign finance director at the Campaign Legal Center. “Groups continue to find new creative ways to do that.”

United Futures gave at least $3 million to super PACs backing Democratic candidates in Alaska, Mississippi and Kansas. The complaint alleges that those super PACs, which were incorporated around the same time as United Futures, illegally coordinated with the nonprofit to conceal the identities of their donors.

Only a couple hundred votes separated the two candidates in North Carolina’s last uncalled race for its state Senate, a seat that will determine whether Democrats take full control of the state government as part of a stunning sweep.

As of Wednesday afternoon, state Sen. Danny Britt (R) led Catina Hamm (D) by 228 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, which is within the range for a recount. Britt’s margin has thinned this week as election officials have reviewed provisional ballots.

Gov. Josh Stein (D) has been constrained by a state legislature that has been controlled by Republicans for 15 years. If Britt loses his seat, Republicans and Democrats would be evenly split in the state Senate, and a Democratic lieutenant governor would cast tiebreaking votes. Democrats flipped more than 20 seats in the midterms to win the state House.

Republicans received one of their worst drubbings in North Carolina, losing the U.S. Senate race by 20 percentage points and losing five U.S. House seats and, potentially, two more.

The deadline for North Carolina counties to certify their vote tallies is Friday. Local candidates who lost by less than one percentage point can request a recount by Tuesday.

Hamm and North Carolina Democrats have not said whether they would seek a recount. Britt told WRAL on Tuesday that he felt “confident that a recount changes nothing.”

Members of the House Freedom Caucus said in a news conference Wednesday that House Republicans didn’t do enough to appeal to the nation’s most conservative voters this election — resulting in massive losses for the House GOP.

“It’s not because we didn’t do enough liberal things that we had the result last Tuesday,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania), who lost his seat. “It’s because we didn’t deliver on the things that we told America we were going to do.”

Members of the ultraconservative caucus argued that House Republicans should have done more to push President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda, including codifying his border security policies.

They also said that House Republicans should have ensured the passage of voter ID legislation (bills on the matter have repeatedly passed in the House, only to die in the Senate) and that they should’ve done more to cut the nation’s deficit to secure their House seats.

The caucus’s assessment of why the GOP took such heavy losses diverges sharply from most others, including those of prominent Republicans such as Vice President JD Vance, who recently argued that the war in Iran and cost of living were among the party’s chief weaknesses. And Trump has publicly questioned whether his immigration policy hurt the party.

The members presented a plan of demands that they want House and Senate Republicans to get through in the already busy lame-duck period, and suggested Congress shorten scheduled recesses to further advance the Republican agenda before both chambers turn blue.

“We have 53 days to deliver on exactly what our Republican conferences campaigned on,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Missouri). “It’s time to go big before we go home.”

Alexander Darchiev, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, died Wednesday in Moscow, authorities there said.

The 66-year-old diplomat died of an unspecified “chronic illness,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The Russian Embassy in Washington said he had died “suddenly.”

Darchiev entered the diplomatic service in 1992, the year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

A specialist in North American affairs, he served in several roles at the embassy in Washington, culminating in his appointment as ambassador in March 2025. He led Russia’s delegation in talks with the United States on the war in Ukraine last year in Istanbul.

Darchiev was Russia’s ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2021 and director of the foreign ministry’s North America department from 2021 to 2025.

“Alexander Nikitich devoted his entire life to steadfastly defending Russian interests in North America and building relations with the United States on an equal footing,” the embassy said on X.

Zakharova said Moscow had received condolences from around the world. She also claimed that “American media sharks have become more active, spreading vile conspiracy theories.”

Alex Karp, the chief executive of data analytics firm Palantir, said Wednesday that he is a staunch liberal, a seeming departure from his actions during the second Trump administration when he declared his firm “completely anti-woke” and oversaw the company’s key role supporting the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

“I know more about being a progressive than almost anybody on the planet,” Karp said in an interview with Politico Playbook. “I absolutely believe Palantir — all of our products are essentially progressive.”

The comments come roughly a week after Democrats captured both chambers of Congress — and corporations, including Palantir, are probably preparing for an onslaught of Capitol Hill probes.

Karp, who said a decade ago that he respected “nothing” about Trump, publicly supported the president’s immigration agenda.

“Unfettered immigration in Europe, where I lived for well over a decade, has been a disaster,” he told The Washington Post last year.

Karp told Politico he was glad the president acknowledged that he went “too far” on immigration, which Karp had been “saying in private.”

Former Democratic senator Jon Tester’s announcement this week that he had signed onto an “advisory” role with Palantir sparked outrage. “I think Palantir has got a good story to tell,” Tester, a defender of rural America and critic of the Patriot Act, told NPR.