Meta and Google Found Liable in Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial

In a landmark ruling that could affect thousands of future cases, Google and Meta were found liable Wednesday for inducing depression and anxiety in a woman who obsessively used social media as a child. It was the first jury trial in which tech companies were sued over the addictive nature of their social media apps. Google and Meta own the apps YouTube and Instagram, respectively.

The California jury ruled that the companies should award the woman a total of $3 million in damages, with Meta paying 70 percent of the fee.

The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified as Kaley, said she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 11. Her lawyers contended that the social media apps were intentionally addicting, and that both companies knew they were creating mental health issues in children. They presented an internal memo from Meta that detailed how 11-year-olds were four times more likely to use Instagram than rival apps. This contradicts Instagram’s own terms, which require users to be at least 13.

Lawyers for Google and Meta argued that their apps were being unfairly blamed for broader mental health problems in adolescents. Both companies are expected to appeal the decision.

The owners of Snapchat and TikTok, two more popular social media apps, reached pretrial settlements with the plaintiff back in January.

The ruling will likely impact roughly 2,000 ongoing lawsuits against social media companies. The suits, filed by parents and school districts around the country, similarly allege that the tech behemoths should be punished for getting children addicted to their services.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump has been facilitating shipments of oil to private businesses in Cuba while cutting off government-run institutions for months.

Since capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the United States has barred Cuba from receiving any Venezuelan oil and threatened any countries that export oil to the island country. But since early February, the U.S. has exported 30,000 barrels of oil to Cuba’s small but important private sector, Reuters reported Wednesday.

This means that while private businesses, like foreign-owned hotels, will receive a boon amid the ongoing blockade, state-run entities will suffer. Speaking to NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío called Trump’s fuel policy an “energy asphyxiation,” and claimed it had already caused mass disruptions to Cuba’s health care system.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this is all part of the plan. The policy was “entirely designed to put the private sector and individual private Cubans—not affiliated with the government, not affiliated with the military—in a privileged position.”

In February, the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security released guidance that authorized the export of gas to eligible Cuban businesses, specifying that the fuel was not available for resale. Fuel soon began to trickle into private companies that were initially crippled by the U.S. blockade, three Cuban businesspeople told Reuters.

Cuba has historically required 100,000 barrels of oil per day to fuel cars, planes, and power plants. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced last week the country had not received any ​fuel in three months. The Trump administration is reportedly pressing Diaz-Canel to step down as part of the president’s so-called “friendly takeover” of the island. Cuba has already outlined some changes it plans to make to open up the island’s economy to the U.S.

In 2026, 61 ships carrying goods imported by private companies arrived in Cuba, including fuel. While overall arrivals are down, there has been an increase in shipments originating from a key energy corridor on America’s Gulf Coast, according to vessel tracking data from LSEG Data & Analytics analyzed by Reuters.

In a failed attempt to prevent voter fraud, a Wisconsin man was convicted of … voter fraud.

Harry Wait, a 71-year-old MAGA loyalist, was found guilty of election fraud and identity theft in Racine County, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. In 2022, he admitted to unlawfully requesting the ballots of Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Democratic Racine Mayor Cory Mason, which he claims proves how easy it is to commit voter fraud.

He was charged with two misdemeanor election fraud charges and one felony identity theft charge.

The retired consultant is the leader of H.O.T Government, a Wisconsin group that aims “to hold public officials and institutions accountable to the people they serve.” The group claims both Wisconsin and federal elections are riddled with fraud, and it unwaveringly maintains that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Trump lost Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.

Wait has spent years mobilizing against Wisconsin’s state website that allows voters to order mail-in ballots, the same one he used to feign the identities of Vos and Mason.

His conviction comes as Trump and the GOP desperately try to pass the SAVE Act, a bill that would supposedly prevent voter fraud (which is exceedingly rare), but in reality would disenfranchise millions of marginalized voters.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the republic,” Wait said during the trial. His actions have garnered praise among Republicans. At rallies, supporters across Wisconsin have worn “Free Harry Wait” T-shirts, and in 2022, Senator Ron Johnson called Wait a “white hat hacker.”

“I would do it again,” Wait told WTMJ following the verdict.

When Texas Representative Pete Sessions went on C-SPAN to take questions from everyday Americans on Wednesday morning, he was probably expecting something a bit more polite than what he got.

Instead, the Republican lawmaker received a call from “Jack, in Silver Spring, Maryland,” who chose not to mince words:

“Your party has given the power of the presidency to an insane, pedophilic serial killer. You’re evil, and this—”

Jack was then cut off by the C-SPAN moderator.

Amusingly, Sessions did not dispute the claim that Donald Trump is “an insane, pedophilic serial killer.” After nodding subtly as he listened to the caller, Sessions instead offered a wishy-washy statement about tolerating those with different opinions.

“I would just say that I am aware, across this country, that there are people who have varying views. I would tell him that I can control myself. And I try to work on a straightforward, honest basis, with a bipartisan mission that I have with Mr. [Democratic Representative Kweisi] Mfume and the duty and responsibility of my job on Oversight. I would like for him to at least offer some credibility to—there are people who are trying to move this nation away from anything that would be a fight to fix.”

Sessions is a boilerplate Republican who has served in Congress for 28 years. He’s perhaps best known for his love of magic—he introduced a bill that would recognize magic “as a rare and valuable art form and national treasure,” which has been stalled in committee for 10 years—and his passion for trading stocks while in office.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was caught lying while trying to explain why President Trump rejected bipartisan plans to reopen the government and get TSA workers paid.

“Mr. Speaker, it seems as if the Republicans and Democrats are talking past one another right now. Is the only person who can solve this the President of the United States, and why isn’t he involved?” Fox News’s Chad Pergram asked Johnson during a Wednesday press conference.

“Well, I think he is involved,” Johnson replied. “I mean, I know he had a group of—”

“He shot down the plan yesterday,” Pergram said.

“Well, that’s what’s been reported, OK,” Johnson replied.

“He said that in the Oval Office that he was not pleased.”

“Well I actually have his exact quote somewhere … to paraphrase him, I think he said that he’s a little skeptical or cynical that a deal’s gonna come together,” Johnson said. “What we’re hearing in our chamber is that there’s discussions going on. Democrats are demanding to break off parts of Homeland [Security] and fund it separately.”

Johnson’s long answer was actually less accurate than the “reporting” he dismissed. Earlier this week, GOP Senator Joe Kennedy stated plainly that they were prepared to work with Democrats to reopen the government by the end of this week, but Trump “said no. No deals with the Democrats.” The president himself doubled down on that, stating that he would be unhappy with virtually “any deal they make.”

That sounds like the president is not involved, and does not want to be—regardless of what Johnson spews. Meanwhile, hundreds of TSA agents continue to go unpaid, and the lines at airports keep getting longer.

Nobody is safe from airport chaos as President Donald Trump refuses to fund the Transportation Security Administration.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr was one of thousands of travelers stuck in a three-hour security line at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston Wednesday morning.

The 75-year-old Republican, whom many describe as the worst attorney general in history, served under Trump from 2019 to 2020. Though he’s since turned on the president, Barr’s tenure was marked by his absurd manipulation of the Department of Justice in favor of Trump, including his bogus handling of the Mueller report, covering up evidence of the Trump campaign’s cooperation with Russia, and dropping the case against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Some might consider his airport experience on Wednesday karma, if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the nation is also subject to the same horrid conditions.

As the partial government shutdown enters its sixth week and TSA workers continue to not be paid, airport lines have reached disastrous highs across the country. Nowhere has the mayhem been worse than at Houston’s George Bush Airport, where 36 percent of TSA officers have quit. On Tuesday, more than 40 percent of the airport’s security staff did not show up to work, The New York Times reported.

Though Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the long lines at airports, the president rejected a deal from Senate Majority Leader John Thune last week that would fund the Transportation Security Administration.

In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump wrote he wouldn’t make a deal with Democrats unless they vote with Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would have catastrophic impacts on voting rights. “It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding,” the president wrote.

Trump instead deployed ICE agents to airports across the country, including Houston, to help manage lines. But, as Barr, experienced Wednesday, sending untrained, armed federal agents to airports isn’t doing much.

U.S. fertilizer prices have skyrocketed ahead of a crucial spring growing season for farmers as Iran continues its retaliatory blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But instead of admitting that Trump’s war has farmers at home suffering, White House officials are blaming former President Joe Biden and poaching fertilizer from other countries.

“What are you doing in your department to ensure that the farmers, in this very important spring growing season, are not getting impacted harshly by the spike in the price of fertilizer?” Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Wednesday morning.

“Obviously the farm economy that we inherited, the farmers have struggled. They have only made money a few years out of every ten years. We’re working to bring the price of inputs down. The president has signed 18 new trade deals in the last year. Corn is up almost 30 percent, exporting dairy is up. The infrastructure’s being built, it is being put in place,” Rollins replied, avoiding the question initially. She then shared that the U.S. would be snatching fertilizer from Venezuela to make up the difference.

“But in this temporary time with the fertilizer.… The president has opened up lines from Venezuela, the Jones Act Waiver, we’re looking at other places for fertilizer to bring in. But again, it shouldn’t be too disruptive, it’s just a smaller segment of our farmers,” Rollins added.

Fertilizer—like oil—is expensive because President Trump bombed Iran and tried to tariff the entire world, not because of Biden. About one-third of the world’s shipping trade in fertilizer goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Rollins’s admission that they’ll be seizing fertilizer from Venezuela and begging it from others only makes it seem like the Iran war will continue indefinitely, no matter how often Trump signals that it will end soon.

President Donald Trump’s behemoth spending bill is forcing Republican lawmakers to consider dramatic budget cuts in many states.

Lost tax revenue from Trump’s tax cuts and added costs for new requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are costing Republican-led states as much as $450 million per year, Politico reported Wednesday.

Many Republican-led states were already working with budgets that were stretched thin. But H.R. 1, Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill,” required states to pay a larger share of SNAP and expand resources to handle new Medicaid work requirements, costing states as much as $50 million per year, according to Politico.

In Idaho, Trump’s federal tax cuts will cost the state an estimated $155 million in 2026, and $175 million in 2027, according to the governor’s office.

“We’re stealing from Peter to pay Paul,” Idaho State Representative Jordan Redman said. “It’s put us in a predicament where now we’re trying to figure out, ‘Ok, what programs do we keep? What programs do we cut?’”

Idaho State Senator Jim Guthrie told Politico that his constituents weren’t convinced that the short-term benefits of Trump’s tax cuts outweighed the cost of services stripped by shrinking budgets.

“The feedback I’m hearing from citizens is that extra few bucks on their [return] at the end of the year, because of the taxes they didn’t have to pay, comes secondary to wanting us to take care of the things that government needs to be invested in,” Guthrie said. “Which is your infrastructure and your roads and bridges and schools and also your Medicaid population.”

In Iowa, Trump’s tax cuts have gutted an additional $350 million from a state that was already facing a $1 billion hole in its budget, the Iowa Legislative Services Agency told Politico.

In Indiana, federal tax cuts on tips and overtime will cost the state an estimated $251 million in tax revenue in 2026. In Arizona, taking on the full federal tax code could cost an estimated $381 million in 2026. In Missouri, Republican House Budget Committee Chair Dirk Deaton proposed an approximately $51.5 million reduction to childcare subsidies. “We’re faced with hard decisions,” he said during a hearing earlier this month. “It is what it is.”

Trump’s federal spending bill is sapping state services’ budgets at the same time as the president’s disastrous, and increasingly expensive, war in Iran has driven prices up where they will likely stay.

Donald Trump announced his “President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology” on Wednesday, in what can only be described as a nightmare blunt rotation.

The group, chaired by David Sacks and Michael Kratsios, consists of 13 individuals, most notably:

Marc Andreessen, the egghead, Twitter-obsessed co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. His net worth is estimated at $1.9 billion. Interestingly, Andreessen generally voted Democrat until 2024, when he concluded that Joe Biden’s administration “flat-out tried to kill us”—by which he meant they were attempting to regulate crypto and AI. Andreessen promptly donated $2.5 million to one of Trump’s super PACs. He has since criticized diversity initiatives and immigration, and fought against the construction of multifamily housing near his secluded California mansion, despite previously advocating for an increased supply of housing in California. The hypocrisy makes some sense when one considers that Andreessen hates introspection and apparently never tries to consider his own thoughts.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire of the moment. Worth roughly $191.6 billion, the Oracle co-founder was briefly the richest man in the world back in 2025. Ellison funded the merger between Skydance Media and Paramount (owned by his son David), which involved Paramount essentially handing Trump a $16 million bribe in July to ensure the FCC would approve the deal. Ellison participated in a 2020 conference call in which a cabal of powerful figures brainstormed ways to overturn the election results, has personal ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and sports some of the most disgusting facial hair around.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (sorry, Meta) and original tech bro. Net worth: $205.8 billion, even more than Ellison. Once a dewy-eyed darling of Silicon Valley, Zuck took a turn around 2024 and became, if not full MAGA, at least more tolerant of Trumpian politics. He has reportedly discouraged his employees from political activism, and even donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. But Zuckerberg’s true sin is aiding the surveillance state through Facebook’s incessant, sometimes unauthorized data collection. Happily, he also has made some terrible business decisions that have come back to bite his beloved Meta in recent weeks.

Others on the council will include:

• Sergey Brin
• Safra Catz
• Michael Dell
• Jacob DeWitte
• Fred Ehrsam
• David Friedberg
• Jensen Huang
• John Martinis
• Bob Mumgaard
• Lisa Su

This story has been updated.

Every day for the last 25 days, President Donald Trump has sat comfortably in his office and watched a glorified highlight reel of his destruction in Iran.

The daily video compilation is about two minutes long and shows the largest and most pulverizing strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, NBC reported Wednesday.

Three U.S. officials and one former official told NBC the video update—which one described as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up”—is raising alarms among the president’s allies that he’s  not receiving a “full scope” of what’s happening in Iran, distorting his view of the nearly month-long conflict that’s wreaked havoc across the globe. 

Though he does receive other verbal updates from officials, the daily sizzle reel of bombs has also made Trump even more furious with the media’s negative coverage of the war, which, in his eyes, has apparently been a success. He’s questioned why the public narrative isn’t reflecting the highly curated, crowning moments of U.S. military power he’s seeing on-screen, the officials and former official told NBC.

That’s because what’s happening in Iran over the last month has been disastrous. More than 1,500 Iranians and 13 U.S. soldiers have been killed, gas prices have skyrocketed, Trump’s goal of reopening the Strait of Hormuz is looking increasingly fantastical, and public opinion of his handling of the war is at an all-time low. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that the president doesn’t have a total picture of the war. 

“That’s an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room,” she said in a statement to NBC. “Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full throated honesty from all of his top advisors.” 

Full-throated honesty apparently means showing the president an edited montage of bombing another country over and over again.