Meta To Pay $18 Billion & Flash Flood Devastates Nepal | 8.27.26

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. Metta agrees to pay out 18 billion dollars to states in the biggest tech settlement in history. What does this mean for the social media landscape? You have the documents coming from the inside in which they were training their AI to groom children just the widespread effect that it's clearly had on children's socialization. I'm Georgia Howe with daily wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, August 27th and this is Morning Wire. sudden catastrophic flooding in Nepal sweeps away hundreds of people including dozens of American tourists. And the Trump administration takes sweeping action on immigration visas amid a crackdown on fraud. The Trump administration is looking to conduct the largest mass visa revocation effort since Trump returned to the White House. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. I remember as a kid dreading sleeping in my grandparents house because I would be on the pull-out couch living room and I'd wake up at midnight to the sound of what I thought was a full-grown grizzly bear but it was just my grandpa's snoring which I'm confident would register on the Richter scale. So for my childhood sanity I wish my grandpa had known about excite OSA. For people dealing with primary snoring or mild obstructive sleep apnea, excite OSA treats a root cause instead of just managing the noise and you actually use it while you're awake. 20 minutes once a day that's all it takes. Do it daily for six weeks and then a lighter routine afterwards to keep it. 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The sweeping deal arrived just days into a federal trial involving 47 states and could open the door to a new wave of litigation against Big Tech. Daily Wire Culture Reporter Megan Basham is here now with the details. So Megan, before we get into the impact of the settlement, can you just walk us through how it was reached? So this case accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on the platform that get kids addicted to the platform and also of hiding internal research that showed some of these harms. Now, it also accused Meta of violating federal law by collecting data on minors under 13 without parental consent. And as John said, you know, eventually 47 states joined this coalition in this lawsuit. But it was being led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. So California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was co-arguing this case, encapsulated what the coalition's argument was just last week. The company had a legal not to mention a moral obligation to consider the safety of young users when designing their products. The data is clear. More time on social media tends to be correlated with depression and anxiety, body image issues, susceptibility to addiction and interference with daily life, including learning. So then on Tuesday, this week, Instagram had Adam Miserie testified and denied that kids can become "clinically addicted" to social media and he'd compared it to them just binge watching Netflix where Netflix will suggest the next thing to watch. He also denied that he had directed anyone on his team to hide any internal research. Now, Mark Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand on Wednesday morning, but instead we got news that he would not be taking the stand because of this settlement deal. Now, what the coalition reached was as much as 18 billion, but initially they were seeking 200 billion. And it's also important to note that this isn't just financial. Mehta also agreed to set up a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18, also defaults limiting overnight use and use during school hours. And then it also agreed to institute a ban on displaying likes and reaction counts for kids under 18. Probably won't be a popular measure to those kids, but I think that what we're seeing is that minors are going to experience some real differences on what their user experience is on these platforms going forward. Now, all of that said, we do also need to note that even though Mehta has agreed to this settlement, they do still continue to deny any wrongdoing. Now, about the 18 billion dollars, is that going to be the final financial fallout or could there be more? So that's actually a really interesting part of this settlement because Mehta is going to pay at least 12 billion over the next 10 years to the states that sued and that's no matter what, but that additional five billion is is kind of an incentive that's going to sit in escrow. And it's only going to be released if Mehta's competitors, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat agree to a couple of provisions here, one, to match that time limit and age verification restriction. And then two, to also pay out roughly five billion dollars of their own. Now, Mehta gave the daily wire a statement and they said this, because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers TikTok, Snap and YouTube to implement this new framework right away. So it looks like we're seeing a little bit of tech peer pressure here on the part of Mehta to ensure that they're not the only one single doubt for what up to this point have been pre-standard practices across the social media landscape. So how much will this really hurt Mehta? And what do we expect the larger ramifications to be? Well, resolving this lawsuit could actually help Mehta's stock in the short term, even though it's potentially the largest tech settlement in history, it pales in comparison to Mehta's revenue in 2025 of over 201 billion. And it also pales in comparison to the biggest corporate settlements involving Big Tobacco in the 90s. I mean, that reached the 200 billion range. But George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley stressed on Fox that the real impact of this lawsuit is going to be the floodgates that it opens up. Well, this is seismic. It's going to be something of a dinner gong for both states and playing out for attorneys. And I think that Mehta knows that. And to Turley's point there, the state coalition has an ongoing lawsuit against TikTok that was filed back in 2024. And Bonta said that the attorney's general plan to quote, continue to demand better from all parts of this industry. Also Florida's AG signaling that they are independently going to potentially sue Mehta. So very likely we're going to see more lawsuits coming out of this and probably more concessions from Big Tech. Well, it definitely feels like this is just the beginning and there is an appetite to see some accountability from these Big Tech companies. Megan, thanks for reporting. Yes, of course. At some point, I just accepted that I was going to be tired all the time. Kids work life. You get your seven or eight hours and somehow still wake up, feeling like you barely slept. I figured that this was just adulthood. But I realized that what you're sleeping in makes a much bigger difference than what I ever gave a credit for. 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So Cabot, the video circulating online yesterday, looked like something out of a movie. What do we know so far? - Yeah, absolutely horrifying stuff. Some of the most shocking videos I've ever seen of a natural disaster. So these floods hit northern Nepal close to the Chinese border. And as you can see in the videos, the victims had almost zero chance to get to safety with how fast all of this happened. Water levels at the nearby river rose 29 feet in under 30 minutes. And that surge sent a tidal wave of water and rocks and dirt through the valley, killing what were likely into being hundreds of people. A video from the mainland route between Nepal and China shows the entire crossing being absolutely decimated just leveled in less than 60 seconds. A wall of mud and water came over the building while people are trying to run. And then photos of the aftermath show buildings packed with mud up to the second floor and debris hanging from tree branches and power lines. A search and rescue effort is underway, but a lot of infrastructure has been severely damaged and three helicopters actually had to turn back because of how bad the conditions still are as this effort continues. - The footage paints a grim picture for this effort. What do we know about the Americans who are missing? - So the vast majority of folks who are missing are foreign nationals. There were a lot of tourists that traveled to this part of the world. It's a very beautiful place. And initial reports say that 47 of the people missing are American, along with 133 Indians, 34 Australians, 24 Canadians and 33 British citizens, so people from all over the world. And on top of that, this is the peak time for a sacred pilgrimage and Mount Kalash in Tibet and the route ran right through this impacted area. A Hindu religious leader said that a group of 77 pilgrims sponsored by his foundation were all sitting at the local immigration office when this flash flood hit and he still has not heard from a single one of them. As for the missing Americans, we don't have much more information beyond just the numbers. The State Department said that right now it's working to account for all American citizens, but they've not released any information on the condition of those affected. - So what caused this? This was in the mountains, correct? - Yes, early on there were reports of an earthquake, but it turns out that that was wrong. The floods were triggered by a landslide so massive that the US Geological Survey initially reported it, again, as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, that's how powerful this landslide was. There's still a lot that is unclear about what caused that landslide, but the working theory among experts is that a massive chunk of ice broke off of a glacier at the same time a landslide was already occurring. And as that chunk of ice fell into the valley with the landslide, it picked up sediment rocks that you can see in some of the videos and again, everything snowballed from there, but that is the running theory right now. Scientists are still struggling to reconcile the sheer amount of water that you see in these videos. So again, things still unclear, but hopefully more answers come to light as more is investigated. - Yeah, so what comes next? - Well, the first priority for authorities is a potential second flood. The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development said there's still a blockage in a river on the Nepal-China border that could cause another flood. Evacuation orders are already in place, and conditions are expected to improve substantially for search and rescue teams over the next few days. Right now, there are more than 600 police already on the ground, and leaders in China and India have already pledged resources to help with the search and rescue operation, but when it comes to the rescue side of this, time is of the essence. There's only so long you can survive in conditions like this. - So is this an unprecedented type of disaster or is this something they've dealt with before? - Unfortunately, this is not the first time something like this has actually happened here. This same valley has now flooded twice in less than 14 months. Last year, a glacial lake in Tibet overflowed, killing nine people and taking out a bridge, connecting Nepal and China, and experts there have been advocating for an early warning system to be implemented in this region for decades now. But at the moment, these people have nothing between them and hazards that come from these mountains, just a horrifying situation. - Well, for people who are only listening, you have to check out the footage. It's really unbelievable. Cabot, thanks for reporting. - Absolutely. - The Trump administration is pausing all visa appointments worldwide as part of an ongoing effort to audit abuse of the legal immigration system. - Daily wire immigration reporter Jenny Tehrer joins us now to discuss, good to have you on. - Good to be here. - So why is the administration making this move now? - This is part of the administration's effort to audit legal immigration systems. So in doing so, they're hoping to train all their consular staff to better detect when there is fraud in these immigration cases. And what they're specifically looking for is whether these people are potentially going to exploit the generous American welfare system when they come to the United States. The administration earlier tried to institute a 75 country visa ban to target those looking to take advantage of taxpayer-funded public benefits, but the effort was struck down by a Biden appointed judge. And we should note that this latest effort, it doesn't appear to apply to tourist students and temporary foreign workers. - All right, so there is some carve outs there. You've also reported on the administration's plans to revoke a large number of visas as well. Can you unpack that for us? - Right, so through a separate effort, we learned this week that the Trump administration is looking to conduct the largest mass visa revocation effort since Trump returned to the White House. Now the State Department is preparing to revoke the business and tourist visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who later sought to apply for asylum in the United States. And the targets of this plan received those visas between 2016 and 2026. Some immigrants try to take advantage of the system by coming here on a legal program, maybe through one of these visas, and then they apply for asylum, knowing that that case will take years to adjudicate essentially extending their stay in the United States. Now we saw a lot of this under the Biden administration and it was used in a different way. These were illegal immigrants who crossed the border. They took advantage of catch and release. And then they went on to buy their time in the United States by filing other immigration applications. - Now President Trump has long been critical of the H-1B visa system. Are we seeing any movement from him on that front? - Yes, the federal government has actually proposed a $103,265 fee for employers who are looking to hire H-1B foreign workers through this visa program. Now they're arguing that employers have long abused it to hire foreign workers at cheaper rates who are also less skilled than the American workers who could have those jobs. This also comes after a federal judge earlier struck down the Trump administration's previous attempt to institute a $100,000 fee for those H-1B visa employers. - And definitely lots going on when it comes to these legal immigration programs and the Trump administration clearly firing on all fronts here. Johnny, thank you so much for reporting. - Thank you. - Other stories we're tracking, the testimony and the polarizing Lindsey Clancy case wrapped up Wednesday and closing arguments are set to begin today for the latest C-Daily wires breaking coverage. - Thanks for waking up with us. - The reporting that fuels this show is only possible because you tune in every day and because of our daily wire subscribers. - To enjoy the show, add free and join our mission become a member at dailywire.com. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know. - 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.