Evening Wire: Meta To Pay $17 Billion Settlement & The Tate Lawyers’ Brutal Admission | 8.26.26

What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day with pray.com you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers inspiring Bible stories and messages created to strengthen your faith whether you need peace encouragement or a fresh start pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today. Mehta agrees to dull out over $17 billion in a landmark settlement. Dolly Parton is honored across the world even in the UK by the royal family and a shocking reveal about the Tate Brothers Public Persona is revealed by their own attorneys. I'm Georgia Howe with daily wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Wednesday August 26th and this is evening wire. In a landmark legal settlement Mehta has agreed to pay up to a $17 billion penalty for violating federal child privacy and state consumer protection laws. Datawire contributor Tim Pierce as a story. Mehta which owns Instagram and Facebook reads the settlement with 47 states, three US territories and the District of Columbia. Part of the penalties hinge on if other major social platforms agree to settle similar lawsuits facing them. According to the terms, Mehta will pay about $12 billion up front and then another $5 billion if the owners of Snapchat TikTok and YouTube make similar settlements. Mehta described the deal as an effort to set a new industry standard for social media companies as Mehta agrees to new restrictions on its own operations. Instagram and Facebook will make major changes that include strength into age verification, no more notifications at the night and a two hour daily use limit. Country music icon Dolly Parton's international honors and recognition have continued to pour in since she passed on Tuesday and her cause of death has also been revealed. Daily wire entertainment reporter Amanda Harding has more. Within hours of Parton's death, President Trump announced that the American flag would be flown at half staff for a week in honor of one of country music's biggest stars. Here was Trump talking about Parton with radio host Glenn Beck. She wasn't a very political person. He really liked me. I won't tell you, but she also wanted to stay very, you know, he was absolutely opinion, you know, the 50% who needs to lose. I don't think it's 50. I think it's probably 20% of the fans. Okay, not 50, but she was a great person that she was just a nice person. You know, I like real lot. And I thought it was a natural thing to load the flags. In the UK, Parton received a tribute from Buckingham Palace during the changing of the Guard on Wednesday morning. The military ban played one of Parton's hits nine to five. And breaking this afternoon, the cause of the late icons passing has been revealed to be a private fight with cancer. The details were confirmed by a spokesperson for Parton's estate. A statement was also released saying, quote, "After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dali departed her earthly life at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones. The type of cancer was not specified, but according to TMZ, an earlier hospitalization had to do with kidney and autoimmune issues." Trump backed Senator Darlene Graham Nordon, one South Carolina's Republican Senate runoff yesterday, defeating Representative Ralph Norman, 53% to 47% and securing the GOP nomination for a full six-year term. Graham Nordon, who was appointed to finish the Senate term of her late brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, entered the race with President Trump's endorsement, along with backing from Governor Henry McMaster and Senator Tim Scott. Trump personally rallied voters behind her ahead of the runoff, while more than $5 million in outside spending targeted Norman during the final two weeks of the race. Graham Nordon will now face far-left Democrat Annie Andrews in November's general election. Since L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Rahman debated a week ago, the reviews of each candidate's performance have been rough. According to Fox News, one voter described the choice in front of voters as disgraceful. The event itself was fiery with both candidates talking over one another, attacking each other, and offering little of their plans for L.A. to voters. Even voters that supported one or the other in the open primary only offered lukewarm endorsements for their chosen candidate. One voter said she was, quote, "a huge champion for ramen early on," but now she quote, "doesn't have much good to say about either of them." An Encino resident said that after last week's debate, many who watched won't be able to vote at all. As Andrew Tate continues to fight extradition, his lawyers have an interesting new defense. Here's reporter Drew Burke-Myerthmore. Andrew and Tristan Tate are currently in lockup, fighting to avoid extradition to the UK on charges including rape, sexual assault, sex trafficking, and offenses involving child sexual abuse material. Federal prosecutors have argued that the Tate's wealth and resources demonstrate a high flight risk. In a recent court finally, however, the Tate's lawyers have made it perhaps not so surprising claim that the brothers online personas, wealth, and lifestyle are completely fabricated. The filing freely admits that social media posts made by the Tate's were entirely designed to be as hyperbolic as possible, and that the two were essentially playing a role. Their lawyers also wrote that luxury cars, watches, and other high-end items featured in their videos were all rented. A luxury yacht that the Tate's often filmed in, represented as their own, was also borrowed. The filing states that the brothers misrepresented their own wealth and lifestyle in order to sell their online classes, Hustler University, which purported to teach others how to become wealthy. The brothers are currently being held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, while extradition proceedings are moving forward. More than 70 percent of small businesses need additional funding at least once every year. The surprising part? Many of them qualify. They just don't have the weeks to spend waiting on paperwork and approvals. Cardiff helps solve that problem with an application that takes less than five minutes, approvals and minutes for eligible businesses and same-day funding of up to $500,000. If you want bank rates without the bank delays, you need to check out cardiff.co/dailywire for up to $500,000 in same-day funding. Banks try to lock out small businesses, Cardiff has the key. If you've been in business for at least a year, are pulling $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co/dailywire. Again, that's cardiff.co/dailywire. Real growth, fast funding, cardiff, are all better. Hundreds have died or are missing following catastrophic flash flooding in Nepal, including at least 50 Americans. While the story is still unfolding, the flooding is believed to have been caused by a massive mudslide forcing colossal walls of water through the surrounding river valleys. At the time of reporting nearly 100 individuals have been confirmed dead with hundreds still missing. At least 54 American tourists remain unaccounted for. Heroing videos posted online show walls of water surging through towns and villages, toppling buildings and washing away roads and bridges. Aid efforts from multiple nations are still underway. Tune into morning wire tomorrow for full coverage of the tragic event. A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report has confirmed daily wires 2024 reporting that FEMA disaster response teams were ordered to skip over the homes of Trump supporters following Hurricane Milton, reporter Jacob Wheeler has more. In November 2024, the daily wire first exposed a FEMA scandal after multiple federal employees confirmed that a supervisor ordered disaster relief workers to quote "ovoid homes advertising Trump as a canvassed lake placid Florida to identify residents eligible for federal aid." Internal messages obtained by the daily wire show that supervisor Marney Washington issued the directive both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team according to multiple government employees. The inspector general has now reviewed thousands of FEMA canvassing records and identified at least 11 cases with notes indicating potential political bias. Record notes included phrases such as quote "Trump sign no contact per leadership." Three FEMA supervisors were fired following the incident but as of yet none have faced any legal repercussions. Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania have died from measles amid a major outbreak in Lancaster County marking the first measles death in the United States this year. Daily Wire reporter's actual has the story. The outbreak has infected more than 390 people and hospitalized 70 with about a third of those infected being children. Though health experts believe the true case count could be significantly higher because some Amish and Menonite communities often avoid traditional health care. Pennsylvania officials say vaccination rates in some Amish communities are extremely low with one 2025 estimate finding only about 25% vaccinated while nationwide childhood vaccination rates have also fallen below the 95% level considered necessary to prevent outbreaks. The state has held 91 pop-up vaccination clinics during the outbreak, administering more than 1,000 MMR doses. Measles can cause serious complications, including pneumonia and brain swelling, and about one in five unvaccinated Americans who contract the virus require hospitalization. In some good medical news, a 67-year-old woman in Turin, Italy, who was blind for several years, can now see again. This miracle is thanks to a first-of-its-kind surgical transplant. Her specific blindness was caused by a road incident, which severed the optical nerve and her left eye, while the rest of the tissue was unaffected. Wildly, the inverse was true for her right eye. The procedure then sought to transplant her complete macula, along with the cornea, sclera, and connective tissue from one eye to the other. The procedure took six hours to complete, and according to the surgeon, it was, quote, a complicated marathon led mainly by intuition. Alaina did come out the other side, though, and was forward to realize she had regained enough of her vision to recognize her son, as well as her canine companion Joe. The surgeon called the accomplishment a, quote, "new frontier and ocular surgery and hopes to streamline the process with a team that made it possible." And sadly, we've lost another legend as Tim Curry, 80 years old, passed away in his Hollywood home last night. The actor began his decades-long career by lying his way onto a production of the hair musical in 1968. He was discovered not to have had any professional experience, but was kept on due to his raw talent. Curry would later land iconic roles such as Dr. Frankenfurter in 1975, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Rooster Hannigan in 1982's Annie, Wadsworth in 1985's Clue, Pennywise, the Clown in 1990's It, as well as being a prolific voice actor. Even Princess Diana requested to meet him once, telling him that Rocky Horror, quote, "quite completed her education." Whether working with Muppets, Terry Pratchett, or the troop of Monty Python, the British actor gave everything to his roles, inspiring and shocking audiences across generations. All right, those of your drive home updates, still or more about these stories, get a dailywire.com, and in case you missed it earlier, today we covered some major stories, including the White House and Republican strategy for staving off a Democrat wave in the midterms, Pennsylvania's Democrat governor pushing to radically rewrite the state's health code, and the fallout from a shocking murder case involving an illegal immigrant. Thanks for tuning in, we'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire. Can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, Pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the Pray.com app today.