SCOTUS After the Midterms, Social Media Lawsuit, Life Under Economic Pressure in Cuba

Democrats swept the midterms, securing control of Congress next year. So with under two months left in power, could Senate Republicans, say, confirm a new Supreme Court justice? I'm Scott Simon. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. But Republicans can and cannot do when it comes to confirming judges in the lame-duck session of Congress. Plus, big tech companies sued to block a California law placing social media restrictions on teenagers. And as the U.S. increases its pressure on the Cuban regime, life on the island keeps getting harder. So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. The overwhelming electoral victory for Democrats in Congress could have massive implications for another branch of government. The judiciary is unelected. But judges depend on Senate confirmation to take office. So how will the new Democratic majority affect the Supreme Court and lower courts? And Paralegal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg joins us. Nina, thanks for being with us. Pleasure to be here, as always. Let's begin with rumors this week that Justice Alito might retire so President Trump could appoint a successor while Republicans hold control of the Senate. And that would ensure conservatives their 6-3 majority for the foreseeable future, right? Well, not only has Alito said in a couple of recent interviews that he does not plan to retire, but the politics really would be nigh unto impossible. But after all, Republicans would still control the Senate until the start of the new Congress in January, wouldn't they? Look, Senate Republicans just took a terrible drubbing, in part because they were little more than rubber stamps for Trump. So I doubt they want to spectacularly do more of the same. Not to mention that there simply is not time to confirm a nominee. There are roughly 20 scheduled legislative days left on the calendar before January. And in that time, this Congress has to reach another deal over the budget, or there could well be another, wait for it, Scott, government shutdown. Republicans got rid of the filibuster nine years ago for Supreme Court nominees. So couldn't a nomination be pushed through? Not really. Even without a filibuster, opponents can eat up a huge amount of time on the Senate floor. In fact, as I understand it, there's a lot of time on the Senate floor. Republicans are hoping to at least get a bunch of lower court judges confirmed before the switchover in power. And even that could be hard. Well, then looking at the big picture, what does the election mean for judicial appointments once the Democrats take over the Senate? With Democrats holding at least 54 votes starting January 3rd, they will run judicial appointments likely until 2030. And among other things, they'll have to decide whether to slow walk Trump's judicial nominees. Or maybe even block most of them, which Republicans did in the Obama and Biden administrations, or try to make deals on nominations with the president. I can tell you one thing for sure, though. If any of the Trump nominees wants to get confirmed, they will have to answer the question they have consistently refused to answer at their confirmation hearings. Who won the 2020 election? What effects of any will the shift in power have on the Supreme Court? Well, just to cite one example. The court's emergency docket, which has ballooned under Trump to staggering proportions. Congress could put some limits on that. It could require disclosure of who votes how. It could put in place an ethics enforcement regime for the court. Or it could include the Supreme Court in any legislation that bars stock ownership, but likely only if Congress puts the same rules in place for itself. Looking ahead to the presidential election in 2020. Looking ahead to the presidential election in 2028, regardless of who wins, the likelihood is that Democrats will still control the Senate. And that makes it much easier for Justice Sotomayor, who will be 74 then, to retire if she wants to, or for that matter, Justice Kagan, who will be 68. And at the same time, Justice Alito will be 78 by then and Justice Thomas, 80, making the actuarial tables much more friendly for Democrats. Anna, what were the down-ballot effects of the election on the Supreme Court? This is really interesting, and I've got to give credit to Georgetown Law Professor Stephen Vladeck for this observation, which involves the role played in Supreme Court litigation by state attorneys general. The Democrats have apparently picked up five attorney general seats, among them in Texas, where for almost 12 years, Republican Ken Paxton has led the charge for the hard right in the Supreme Court and aligned himself so closely with Trump that the Texas, A.G.'s office is often referred to as MAGA's private law firm. Now, though, the Texas, A.G.'s office will be run by a Democrat, and that has some consequences that most people would never think of. Many of the cases that Paxton's office brought will be dropped. Think, for example, the challenge to DACA or sales of Mifepristone. And as Professor Vladeck observes, while other states will try to pick up the conservative slack, there are procedural reasons. The Texas was particularly well-situated to lead this sort of litigation. And I would assume that having Democrats in Congress holding hearings and issuing subpoenas, that sort of thing, will also make things harder for the Trump administration. Exactly. Though, let me remind you that issuing subpoenas is way easier than winning compliance in a long legal battle that ends up in front of a potentially hostile Supreme Court. And, Pierce, Nina Totenberg, thanks so much for speaking with us this week. Always. A pleasure. Thank you. Big tech companies are suing the state of California over a law aimed at shielding youngsters from addictive social media features. Meta, Google, and TikTok are among the plaintiffs. And before we start, we should note that Google is among our financial supporters. KQED's Rachel Miro joins us. She's senior editor of member station KQED's Silicon Valley News Desk. Rachel, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me. First, please remind us about the law these companies are suing over. It was only signed in September, hasn't gone into effect yet. What's it supposed to do? The law goes into effect in January. It prohibits social media platforms from offering children under 16 things like personalized feeds and autoplay for videos. It also requires the deletion of children's accounts with those features. So in separate lawsuits filed in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles, Meta, Google, and TikTok respectively said the law wrongly compels them to honor California's preferred means of presenting content to children and substitutes the state's judgment for that of parents. They also said the law violates First Amendment free speech protections, as well as Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act. That broadly shields. online platforms from liability over user content. The California Attorney General's office wrote me that it is reviewing the lawsuits, adding, quote, And Rachel, I gather there are groups and individuals in the state who oppose this law when it's passed. What's been their reaction? Well, one law professor here in Silicon Valley I talked to argued AB 1709 is filled with censorship problems. He's particularly worried about what I mentioned earlier, that the law requires these companies to delete children's accounts if the platforms refuse to withdraw the features that make them so addictive. From his perspective, that deprives those children of the ability to publish their own speech in really what has become the public square. Meta and TikTok echoed those arguments in email statements to KQED. I also talked to the digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which also lobbied in Sacramento against the bill. They want to see a comprehensive privacy law at the federal level that limits the data social media companies can collect, sell, and use to hook consumers. The group isn't pro-big tech, but they don't like this law. And Rachel, what do supporters of the law say? I spoke with Jim Steyer of the children's advocacy group Common Sense Media, which sponsored the bill. The lawsuit's target. He is also a big mover and shaker in Sacramento, sometimes partnering with big tech, though more often not. He says there's a wave of outrage against the social media platforms over the ways they allegedly damage children and young people. That outrage has taken several forms, this law, but also thousands of lawsuits, some filed by attorneys general, some by individual families. The public and the attorneys general. They're outraged at the behavior of the big social media and AA platforms. And now they're winning. They're winning big. And so the companies are trying to delay the inevitable, defer the settlements, minimize the settlements, and somehow try to explain after the fact that they aren't really liable for all the damages and all the harm they've caused to young people. So these lawsuits, he says, fit right into that pattern. Rachel Miro with member station KQED. Thanks so much for being with us. My pleasure. Bye. Life in Cuba keeps getting harder as the Trump administration increases economic pressure on the country's communist regime. The lights go out for hours at a time. Food, fuel and medicine are increasingly hard to come by. The Cuban authorities do not routinely grant visas to foreign journalists, but NPR's Eder Peralta has recently been able to return to the island a year after his last visit and joins us now from Havana. Eder, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me, Scott. How has the city changed since you were last there? It's so much darker. I mean, it feels like a hurricane just hit and blew away all the electricity poles. Yesterday, I went on a walk around Old Havana and I found these two guys sitting in front of the hotel that Ernest Hemingway used to stay at. I couldn't even see them. It was so dark. And they told me that after the sun sets, all they do is stare at the dark and wait to get sleepy. We're not using their names because they fear speaking would get them in trouble with the government. And what they're saying is, in the Cuba of the past, this place would be completely full. Couples and drinks and parties. And I asked him, you know, do you think this is going to change anytime soon? And he stayed quiet for a while. And he said, I'll tell you what my dad taught me. Until you start to actually see things, you should keep your mouth shut. Eder, do the people you spoke with there seem to want economic relief, political change, both? They just want change. You know, it's been more than 10 months since the U.S. oil blockade plunged them into darkness. And, you know, many years before that, the country had already been deteriorating by some estimates in the past decade. About a quarter of Cubans have left the country. A lot of Cubans I talk to feel betrayed by politics. And what they want is the basics, food, electricity, water. Here, things are so bad, a month's salary barely buys you a bottle of cooking oil. In some ways, this is the upside-down world. And Cubans don't really care how they get it. They just want their world to be normal again. And how much of this crisis is due to that U.S. blockade of the island? And how much is the result of mismanagement by Cuba's own leadership? Both of those things are to blame. The blackouts in Cuba, they predate this oil blockade. But the ratcheting up of U.S. sanctions has made things way worse. I'll give you one example. The COVID pandemic hit Cuba very hard. But its hospitals were able to keep performing dozens of kidney transplants. This year, hospital officials say they haven't performed a single transplant. Because they don't have the medical supplies or medicine they need to perform them. Does the Cuban government feel their survival is at stake? Yeah, I mean, they view this moment as a very serious threat. President Trump has continually said a military intervention is on the table. And something like that might be harder now that Republicans have lost to the House and Senate. But this is more complicated than that. The big irony here is that as the U.S. has tightened its sanctions and put up an oil blockade, U.S. exports. To Cuba are at a historic high. Right now, nearly all of the gasoline getting into Cuba is coming from the United States. So you can imagine the kind of leverage it has over the Cuban economy. Yesterday, I sat down with Cuba's deputy foreign minister, Josefina Vidal. And she said that's exactly what these sanctions are designed to do. That's the contradiction. The U.S. is unwilling to recognize Cuba's right to be sovereign. The policies are designed to make Cuba dependent on the U.S. And of course, we're going to fight so that doesn't happen. And what you're hearing there, Scott, is defiance. She's saying we're not going to change our political system no matter what you do to us. And it tells you that these two countries continue to talk past each other. And there is not much hope for immediate relief for the Cuban people. And Pierre-Jean? Peter Peralta in Havana. Thanks so much. Thank you, Scott. And that's Up First for Saturday, November 7th, 2026. I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. Our producer is Dave Mistich, along with Gabe O'Connor. Fernando Narro is our editor, with help from Dee Parvaz, Jacob Fenston, Tara Neal, and Ravenna Koenig. Michael Radcliffe directed. David Greenberg is our technical director, with additional technical help from Zoe Vankenhoven, Simon Laszlo-Janssen, and Jay Ciz. Our managing editor is Catherine Laidlaw. Our executive producer is Evie Stone. And our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes. Tomorrow, on the Sunday Story, the Democrats won big in the midterm elections. We take a deep dive into the forces that drove the blue wave and what this means for future elections. So thank you for listening and for supporting your local NPR station. And if you need, if you want, if you desire, if you crave to find yours, go to stations.npr.org. Quench your thirst.