Trump Midterm Pressure, Meta Settles In Social Media Case, Nepal & Tibet Flash Floods

Some Republican candidates are having to distance themselves from President Trump's actions. With midterm elections approaching, Trump picked new fights with Iran, China, and Canada, highlighting inflation and an unpopular war. I'm Amy Martinez, that is Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Meta agreed to settle a lawsuit. States said the company made its apps addictive for kids. As the company denied the allegation but agreed to make changes and pay up to $17 billion, how could Facebook and Instagram be safer? Also, a glacier collapsed on the border of Nepal and Tibet. Floodwaters swept away roads and bridges. So many people lost their lives. So many people lost their families. The missing includes 65 Americans. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. U.S. Department of State Republicans facing re-election fights this fall are in the position they often face. They would like to appeal to voters but are chained to a president who does what he wants. So far this week, President Trump has clashed with Iran, China, Canada, and even some members of his own party, fights that emphasize inflation and war. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram is covering all of this. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, so what is the president trying to achieve on some of these issues? The issues that A just mentioned. Yeah, well, let's look at Iran, for example. This war is about to hit six months, right? And it was a conflict that when Trump started, said it would last about six weeks. This war continues to be unpopular among voters. It's weakened the economy. And Trump's threats against Iran haven't worked. There's no deal. There's no end in sight to this war. And this has led to a different approach the administration is trying to take, where Trump is now threatening sanctions against Iran and other countries that do business with Iran. Trump is under a lot of pressure to end this war. And he's running out of time before the midterms. But what's unclear is how these sanctioned threats might get applied and how seriously countries like China take them in the next couple of months. And then, you know, you also mentioned Canada. There's a tariff fight going on with Canada this week. A curious move from Trump when high prices are already top of mind for voters this year. Trump's tariff tactics aren't new, but it's reignited. Tensions with an ally and it's likely to increase prices even more for Americans. OK, so then relate all of that to the midterm elections, which are coming in November and early voting is not so far away, really. You're right. So with the tariffs on Canada, that led to some Republicans who are running in some really tight elections, like Senator Susan Collins in Maine, to distance herself from Trump, say that these tariffs are a mistake. And Trump recently also announced that the U.S., this is a different move, would import more beef from abroad. That was an effort to try and lower the cost of beef, which has increased in part because of the war. And the White House is trying to say that this decision is a big win, but it got immediate pushback from Republican senators in states like Montana and Wyoming, saying that beef imports would hurt American farmers, many of whom support the president. Are there other moves by the president recently that seem politically awkward? Yeah, it's a good way of phrasing it. I think a good example of this is on AI data centers. This is something that's been going on for a long time. This is something that has just blown up in the last few weeks. It's become a huge issue in the midterms. There are candidates now proposing moratoriums, attacking their opponents for being too soft on data centers, just trying to put forward a stance that matches this public backlash. It's come up in races in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas. But the president is taking a different approach than a lot of members of his own party. He's saying that he wants the U.S. to win the AI war against China. That's long been his stance. And he recently said that he thinks every, every town should have a data center because he says that it brings in jobs and tax benefits. But that puts him at odds, Steve, with the 7 out of 10 Americans who are opposed to a data center getting built in their area, according to Gallup. Okay, so is the president responding at all to this feedback? You know, when Trump's on the road in front of voters, he usually falls back on his favorite campaign lines. He attacks Democrats, say that they're bringing back communism. When it comes to lowering costs, Trump just points to how he lowered the price of eggs. And that's what he's been doing for the past year and a half. And when he says that the war with Iran, you know, when it does end, he says the oil prices will come down. But he's been telling that to voters for months. So lately, he's just been talking about what he really wants to talk about. And that's largely his construction projects at the White House. That's one example. He's done just one event in front of cameras this week where he talked about education and then invited guests to go on a tour of the South Lawn where he's building a new helipad. NPR's Deepa Shivram. Thanks for the details. Appreciate it. Thank you. Meta has agreed to settle with the states that sued it. The states allege that the company knowingly designed social media platforms to be addictive to minors. Meta denies this. The proposed settlement requires Meta to pay up to $17 billion in penalties to states over 10 years. They also say they will make specific changes to Facebook and Instagram to make them safer for kids. And PR health correspondent Ritu Chatterjee is here in Studio 31 to talk about this. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay. So this is personal for you and me. We're parents. We're thinking about our kids. What kinds of changes has Meta agreed to make? So the changes involve both restricting the kind of content kids can see and features that will make their social platforms a lot less addictive. So, for example, they will have to give minors the option of having non-personalized feeds where Meta does not use an algorithm to throw specific content to keep them scrolling. There will be a default daily time limit of two hours for minors. And only parents can opt out of that. Oh, meaning that the kid would have to say, Mom, Dad, can I have an extra? And the parents will have to agree. And so Meta will have to have a default block on nighttime use from midnight to 6 a.m. and a block on notification to minors both overnight and during school hours when they are in classrooms. There will also be a ban on showing minors how many likes or reactions they have to their posts. All this sounds good. Does it actually make kids safer, though? In theory, yes. So psychologist. Mitch Prinstein co-directs the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And in fact, he was scheduled to testify at the trial on Monday. Doesn't have to do that, of course. He told me that these constant notifications and likes and dislikes on platforms are not well suited for the preteen and teenage brain. By the time a kid turns around 10 or 11, the part of their brain that makes them suddenly super interested in things like popularity and who sits at what lunch table. are really showing a hypersensitivity to social signals. And you can imagine when you have social platforms that give kids 24-7 access to how many followers they have, how many likes, that makes them hooked to social media. So getting rid of those notifications, especially during school hours and nighttime, should help make a big difference. I suppose there's still a lot riding on how Meta would execute these changes. Exactly. First of all, Prinstein told me that these changes will take years to implement. And there has to be close and careful monitoring of how Meta makes these changes and what impacts they have. And he also says there's a role for the government. We still need our state and federal government to act and to create regulations to make sure that as tech evolves, we continue to see that kids' safety is prioritized over profit. One detail here. In order to have these safety measures for kids, you have to know who a kid is. That's right. Social media companies have. They have resisted requirements that kids show that they are minors or not minors. Right. And we know that kids lie all the time on social platforms about their age, right? And that's a problem that the settlement requires Meta to address with new measures to detect when a user is under 18. And we'll just have to see what the company does for age verification. So overall, you know, we still have to wait and watch how this plays out. NPR's Ritu Chatterjee, thanks for coming by. My pleasure. Some other news now. Flooding has killed more than 170 people and left far more than that missing in Nepal and Tibet. This includes at least 65 Americans missing, according to the latest numbers from the Nepal Tourism Board. The floods were triggered after a part of a glacier collapsed into a valley, blocking a river early Wednesday. That caused water to build up some 30 feet in 30 minutes. The water then tore through riverside communities for miles downstream, leaving people and places under mud. NPR's Diya Hadid covers Nepal and is on the line. Hi there, Diya. Hi, Steve. What are you hearing from people? Well, we managed to get through to one survivor. Her name is Santa Tamang, and she's a 25-year-old university student who lives in one of the river valleys. And she spoke to the NPR producer, Mamita Bandari, over the phone, and Mamita translated for her. We were doing house chores. All of a sudden, police started the sirens of warning of the flood. Tamang said, People were shouting all around them. So her brother carried their elderly grandmother, and they rushed to higher ground. Their home was washed away, but Tamang says she's grateful to have just survived. Everything is gone. My childhood, my family, my community. The thing is, Nepal is a popular tourist destination. And so the missing also include foreigners, including Americans. Many were Hindu pilgrims. One tour group of about 80 people lost contact after the flood swept away in immigration. Building. And here's one prominent spiritual leader. He's known as Sadhguru. Sadhguru. and he's sharing the news with other worshippers. He posted the video on X. So, this is a terrible and an extraordinary event, which unfortunately has turned out this way. Hard to get your brain around all of this. Are rescue efforts underway? They are underway, but they're in their first stages. I spoke to Riyaz Lodi, who heads the World Food Program there, and he says workers at this point are just trying to dig people out of the mud. But roads have been washed away, so the government's deploying helicopters. It's all happening in the mountainous region, where road access is always challenging, but under these circumstances, it's impossible. Lodi says they estimate about 10,000 households have been badly affected by this disaster, but he says that number will go up. At least, aid workers say, Nepali authorities have a well-practised emergency response. They learned a lot from the 2015 earthquake. It was devastating, killed more than 9,000 people. But they also say no one's seen anything like these floods, how powerful they've been. But experts say it's going to keep on happening. Why would they keep happening? It's happening because of climate change. I spoke to Mahmoud Farouk Azam. He's from ISIMOD. It's an environmental advocacy group that covers Asia's high mountains, the Himalayas, Karakoram, Hindukush. And he says, Himalayas are just warming faster than the global average, and it's destabilising some of the 60,000 glaciers up there. And that's triggering these avalanches. So he says communities in these areas urgently need more real-time data, but they don't have it. We don't have a lot of data from the region so that we can develop some AI model to know the fragile areas or to know the areas where we are about to having such events. He says, though, they'll have to get it done because this will keep on happening. NPR's Diya Hadid covers South Asia, and she'll keep us updated. Diya, thanks so much. You're welcome. And that's Up First for this Thursday, August 27th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Amy Martinez. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Diane Weber, Tina Kriah, Mohamed El-Bardisi and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Julie Deppenbrock and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hainas. Our technical director is Carly Strange, and our deputy executive producer is Kelly Dickens. Join us again tomorrow. Thank you.