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United Airlines has a new rule on the books that has some travelers cheering: Listening to audio without headphones can now get passengers removed from a plane.
The airline already had a pro-headphone policy in place, but last week it updated its contract of carriage – the rules a passenger agrees to in order to fly – to specify that “passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content” could be removed from a plane or not allowed to board.
“We’ve always encouraged customers to use headphones when listening to audio content – and our Wi-Fi rules already remind customers to use headphones,” United spokesman Josh Freed said in an email, adding that the carrier is expanding its high-speed Starlink connectivity. “It seemed like a good time to make that even clearer by adding it to the contract of carriage.”
Other airlines have their own policies encouraging or requiring headphones, though most do not come with the threat of enforcement.
Frontier Airlines includes the requirement in the carry-on baggage section of its contract, though it’s not clear what the penalty would be for ignoring the rule. Frontier did not respond to questions about enforcement. The airline says that portable electronic devices that make sounds “may be used only with headphones and provided the sound, even via the headphones, cannot be heard by others.”
On the entertainment section of its website, Delta Air Lines implores: “For the comfort of everyone around you, please use earbuds or headphones with any personal electronic device during your flight.”
Flight attendants also pass out free headphones to customers on most flights, the airline said.
“Customers are welcome to listen to audio or watch video on board, and we expect them to follow standard courtesy and flight crew instructions,” Delta spokeswoman Samantha Moore Facteau said in an email.
Southwest Airlines doesn’t mention headphones specifically in its contract, but notes on its website that they are required when passengers listen to audio.
“Our contract does include passengers not adhering to crew member instructions, including those about use of personal electronic devices,” spokesman Chris Perry said in an email. “Thus, a passenger would be expected to adhere to instructions about headphones.”
In 2023, an American Airlines pilot delivered a lecture from the front of the plane that went viral on social media, urging passengers to show respect for each other.
“The social experiment on listening to videos on speaker mode and talking on a cellphone on speaker mode, that is over – over and done in this country,” he said. “Nobody wants to hear your video. … Use your AirPods, use your headphones, whatever it is. That’s your business.”
Travel blogger Ben Schlappig, founder of One Mile at a Time, welcomed the news that United was treating the noise issue more seriously. The Miami resident said fellow travelers in his area are terrible sound scofflaws.
“It drives me absolutely bonkers,” he said. “Of all the things in the airline industry, this is probably what I’m most passionate about, which is quite sad. I just find myself in disbelief at the lack of respect they have for others that they’re just willing to blast whatever they’re listening to.”
Schlappig wondered how United would enforce the rule, but said just having it in place is a good move.
“The spirit of this is fantastic,” he said.
(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Hannah Sampson
A federal planning commission on Thursday delayed a vote on President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom until next month, citing “significant public input,” including tens of thousands of comments – nearly all of them critical of the project.
The National Capital Planning Commission had planned to review the proposal and vote on it – the final procedural hurdle for an effort to dramatically remake one of the most revered symbols of American power and democracy.
But partway into the meeting, commission Chair Will Scharf said that he expects public comment to last five to nine hours, with over 100 people signed up to testify, which will likely require the board to recess Thursday evening and resume Friday morning. The commission will discuss and vote on the project at its April 2 meeting, he said.
Ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the agency received more than 35,000 comments about the project, according to a Washington Post analysis of submissions posted on the commission’s website. The “vast majority” came from those who oppose the plan, commission staff said. The Washington Post found that more than 97 percent of comments were critical of the president’s plans.
The delayed vote is a snag in Trump’s push to rush the project through the approval process so construction can be completed before the end of his second term. Securing approval at the commission’s next meeting, however, could keep the project on schedule; the White House has said it plans to begin aboveground construction as soon as next month.
The commission’s endorsement would be the last bureaucratic obstacle in the Trump administration’s push to secure approval for the $400 million ballroom from two federal committees charged by Congress with reviewing the designs of major construction projects in Washington. Late last year, the White House laid out a strategy to complete the process within nine weeks, a plan that’s now been pushed to just over three months.
Historic preservationists have sued to stop the project, and a federal judge is considering their challenge, which alleges that Trump is unlawfully pursuing a project that requires express authorization from Congress.
Last week, the National Capital Planning Commission’s executive director, Marcel Acosta, recommended that the 12-member panel approve the project. In an 11-page report published Friday, Acosta said the proposed structure will provide presidents with a larger permanent event space while protecting “the historic integrity and cultural landscape of the White House.”
Acosta’s assessment contrasts sharply with the public response. Tens of thousands of comments criticized what opponents described as a rushed approval process, insufficient public input and a design that would overshadow the main White House building.
The president has made the building a priority of his second term, and he returns to it often in public remarks and social media posts. He clashed with the project’s previous lead architect about the size of the addition.
Trump has made strategic moves to secure its success, including reshaping the membership of the two federal bodies that must sign off on the project: the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. Last month, the Commission of Fine Arts, which now includes Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, voted unanimously to approve the project. Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr. called it a “desperately needed” and “very beautiful structure,” whose design he credited to Trump.
The National Capital Planning Commission is led by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary and Trump’s former personal lawyer, whom the president appointed in July. The commission includes a pair of other White House officials, James Blair and Stuart Levenbach. It also has nine seats apportioned to sitting Cabinet secretaries and other officials who have a role in overseeing Washington, although senior officials and lawmakers usually send a representative in lieu of attending themselves.
Although federal design commissions have traditionally acted as a constraint on government construction projects – often holding extended deliberations that last for years – Trump has pressed to move the project along swiftly so it can wrap before his term concludes.
Last year, the president ordered the rapid demolition of the East Wing annex without first seeking authorization from Congress or the review committees. Trump’s plan for a new ballroom building on the site that matches the “height and scale” of the main White House has advanced despite objections from a federal judge, architecture experts and historic preservationists, who argue that the structure would be too big, dwarfing a centuries-old American symbol.
White House officials want the commission to approve in one fell swoop the ballroom building’s preliminary and final plans, which the body normally takes up individually at separate meetings, giving agency planners time to incorporate commission feedback before resubmitting updated plans. For example, the planning commission approved a new White House perimeter fence in three steps over seven months, starting with a conceptual design in July 2016 and ending with final plans in February 2017.
Last week, Trump scored another victory on the ballroom front. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that construction on the project could proceed, citing procedural problems with a lawsuit challenging the president’s ability to unilaterally build the structure. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered organization that advocates for protecting historic sites, amended and refiled its complaint Sunday, three days after Leon’s ruling.
Trump has repeatedly defended the project’s $400 million price tag, saying it is a benefit to taxpayers that the project will be paid for with private donations.
“I built many a ballroom. I believe it’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world,” Trump said Monday at a ceremony in which he awarded the Medal of Honor to three Army soldiers.
Democrats and government watchdog organizations have raised concerns about those donors, which include major corporations such as Amazon, Google and Palantir – companies that together have billions of dollars in federal contracts. Critics have questioned whether donors could receive special access or other benefits in return. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Some Democrats say improvements to the White House complex may be warranted but contend that the ballroom should be far smaller and subject to congressional oversight to ensure transparency.
Polls have found that most Americans oppose the project. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they supported tearing down the East Wing to build the ballroom, compared with 58 percent who opposed doing so, according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted last month.
(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Jonathan Edwards, Dan Diamond
A coalition of Democratic-led states sued President Donald Trump on Thursday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing that his newly imposed across-the-board tariffs are illegal.
The suit is led by the Democratic attorneys general from Oregon, New York, California and Arizona along with attorneys general from 18 other states.
They accused Trump of trying to “sidestep” a February Supreme Court ruling that overturned many of his tariffs by using a different statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, as justification for new tariffs.
“The President is attempting to use an obscure law as a tool for his tariffs, and is yet again, going about it illegally,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
Section 122 gives the president the power to temporarily restrict imports to the United States to deal with “fundamental international payments problems.” Several prominent economists criticized Trump’s use of Section 122 when he introduced new tariffs in late February, suggesting that a trade deficit with another nation, Trump’s nominal reason for the tariffs, did not amount to a “payments problem.” During court case against Trump’s earlier tariffs, the Justice Department told an appeals court that Section 122 was not relevant.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said the Trump administration “will vigorously defend the president’s action in court,” and said Trump used “his authority granted by Congress to address fundamental international payments problems and to deal with our country’s large and serious balance-of-payments deficits.”
Trump turned to Section 122 after the Supreme Court struck down his original slate of widespread tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In a 6-3 ruling, the court determined there was nothing in the 1977 law to authorize Trump’s tariffs.
When first announced, the Section 122 tariffs, which have a 150-day limit, were set at 10 percent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday that they will increase to 15 percent “sometime this week.”
(c) 2026, The Washington Post · Alec Dent
