In today’s newsletter we take a look at Meta’s agreement to pay up to $17.1 billion to settle allegations their products were deliberately designed to addict children. The settlement also brings new restrictions aimed at limiting young users’ access to social media. We also look at the latest primary runoff results, and a Supreme Court victory for President Trump involving citizenship verification for mail-in ballots. Finally, we turn to Iran, where tentative movement toward a Strait of Hormuz shipping arrangement comes amid continuing tensions.
Reading time: 9 minutes
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:7
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In the latest developments in the Iran conflict, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no strikes are planned against Iran unless they attack first. President Trump said the Strait of Hormuz is functioning, despite occasional drone strikes. And Iran and Oman revealed plans for a Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, ** which caused oil prices to drop to a two-week low**.
Trump also told Glenn Beck that the Iranian people are afraid to turn out and protest the regime because there are rooftop snipers who will shoot protesters.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the US will “gain nothing” from the overwhelming economic sanctions placed on Iran. He said Iran hopes to continue peace talks, adding, “Our approach is understanding and resolving issues through interaction and negotiation, but at the same time, we have stood and will continue to stand firmly against economic pressure.”
Yes, if Iran has proven anything over the past 50 years, it’s that their approach to their enemies is to engage them in fruitful, good faith peace negotiations. That, and firing missiles at them, funding terrorist attacks on them, and trying to build nuclear weapons to obliterate them. But also peace talks, because those buy time to do all those other things, which they also do to their alleged allies.
The DOJ has charged ** 17 Iranian hackers with conducting a cyber theft campaign** against hundreds of universities and other organizations, in the US and around the world.
We wonder if they were also able to hack into the university professors’ brains. That would explain a lot.
It was announced Wednesday morning that Facebook and Instagram parent company ** Meta has agreed to pay** up to $17.1 billion as a settlement of a lawsuit brought by 29 states, accusing them of designing their social media sites to addict children and misleading the public about their safety.
Meta still denies allegations that it collected data on minors, but it agreed to these new standards, and urged TikTok and YouTube to adopt them as well: “Strict daily time limits for young users, block access to its apps during certain nighttime hours, mute notifications during school hours and introduce additional parental controls.”
We hate to say it, but if parents would introduce parental controls – like taking away kids’ phones during school hours – this wouldn’t be such a problem.
**Tuesday brought run-off elections in Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina. ** This link has background and the latest vote totals. But since none of those are blue states, we already know the results and don’t expect them to flip over the next month.
The biggest story came from South Carolina, which Darline Graham, appointed to fill her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate term, won the GOP nomination to run for the seat. She defeated Ralph Norman by 52.5 to 47.6%.
Politics were also a family affair in Georgia, where Democrat Marcye Scott won the run-off to fill out her late father David Scott’s House term.
In Oklahoma, Trump-endorsed Mike Mazzei ** appears to have won a squeaker victory** over Gentner Drummond (50.3-49.7% with 95% counted.) In the Oklahoma Democrat Senate run-off, outsider N’Kiyla Thomas scored a 2-1 upset victory. The teacher with no political experience is running on a platform of expanding Obamacare, restoring Roe v. Wade, and most of all, impeaching Trump again. We predict this will be as popular with Oklahoma voters as gas station sushi in August.
Finally, Oklahoma voters approved by nearly 10 points a measure to require voter ID. So one more reason that Oklahoma isn’t likely to flip blue.
We have no idea how the executive branch ever functioned before all its decisions started being made by federal judges. They’ve saved so much work that otherwise would have been done by those actually elected by the American people. We get so many such stories, we don’t have space for them all, so we thought we’d do a quick Judicial Activism Roundup.
The biggest news today is that the Supreme Court ** ruled 6-3 Monday** in favor of President Trump’s executive order directing the DHS to verify the citizenship of people on the states’ mail-in ballot rolls.
It also instructs the post office to create rules to ensure that only verified, eligible voters receive mail-in ballots. But it’s not clear how much of it can be implemented before the November elections.
This wasn’t the Court’s final action but an unsigned order. It didn’t rule on the merits of Trump’s order but found that the states suing to block it hadn’t demonstrated that they would suffer harm by complying with the election integrity measures on mail-in ballots – unless you consider it a “harm” to risk turning from a blue state into a red state if the elections are honest.
But Trump suffered another judicial setback Friday ** when a federal judge ruled** that his suspension of immigrant visas to nationals of 75 countries violated the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The Trump guidance barred those nations because people from them pose a high risk of using welfare or becoming a public charge. But the judge said the law doesn’t list nation of origin as a reason to bar someone from getting into America. ** More details at the link**.
The legal challenge was brought by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, a network of nonprofits that’s been accused by conservatives of facilitating illegal immigration and misusing tax dollars to subvert national sovereignty.
And last week, ** a federal judge said** the Trump Administration wasn’t allowed to move the FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, as opposed to a site in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was chosen in 2023.
The ** judge ruled** that Congress has approved the Greenbelt site and Trump couldn’t redirect the funds to a different location because it would be more cost-effective. Doing something because it would be more cost-effective runs counter to everything that Washington stands for. Besides, why should the elected head of the executive branch be allowed to decide where one of the major agencies of the executive branch should be, when the legislative and judicial branches can make that decision for him?
The Smithsonian Institution is once again the center of controversy over accusations of an exhibit in a museum affliate pushing anti-American propaganda. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) in (you guessed it) Dearborn, Michigan, features an exhibit on the 9/11 attacks that ** spends more time** on alleged discrimination against Arab-Americans than on the attacks themselves.
It sounds like an exhibit inspired by the late comedian Norm Macdonald’s famous tweet, “What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”
Despite the museum pushing the liberal narrative that Arab-Americans and Muslims suffered intense discrimination post-9/11, the story notes, “President George W. Bush publicly urged Americans not to blame Muslims for the attacks, and polling later suggested attitudes toward Muslim Americans actually improved in the immediate aftermath. The share of Americans who viewed Muslim Americans favorably rose from 45% in March 2001 to 59% in November, two months after the attacks, according to the Pew Research Center.”
The story also notes that on September 10, one day before the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the AANM is scheduled to present the film, “Seeds for Liberation,” which portrays Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel as part of a decades-long Palestinian “struggle” within a broader history of “anti-imperialist and decolonial movements.” How many of our tax dollars are subsidizing that?
If you’re looking to give your kids an educational experience, we suggest visiting some other museum. Here’s ** a list of suggestions**, ranging from the Museum of Bad Art to the SPAM Museum. In fact, if you visit the SPAM Museum, the National Mustard Museum and the Idaho Potato Museum, you could make a gift shop meal that would be easier to swallow than the leftist propaganda at the Smithsonian-affiliated museums.
This Is Actually Real: In light of the trade war with Canada, President Trump said he’s ** thinking of renaming Lake Ontario** to “Lake America.” We also suggest that he change Lake Superior to “Lake Really Fantastic.”
Despite their politicians’ “sanctuary state” defiance and anti-ICE rhetoric, Virginia and Maryland have been the site of a major ICE operation. Over the past two weeks, ICE has quietly staged raids in those two states and ** arrested 1,328 illegal aliens** in just 14 days. Nearly 400 of them had criminal convictions or pending charges, including murder, attempted murder, rape, sexual battery, kidnapping, robbery and DWI.
Our deepest sympathies for the “immigrant communities” who will have to live without them in their midst, despite the Democrats’ best efforts to keep them there. And congratulations to those Democrat officials, whom we predict will take credit for the coming drop in the crime rate.
Derek Hunter at Townhall.com ** has an excellent column** on the fading effectiveness of the left accusing people of racism. It includes a quote that’s making news by new socialist Dem Senate candidate from Florida, Angie Nixon. Asked if she would work across the aisle with Republicans, she said no, because white Republicans are “literally trying to kill us” (meaning black people.)
FYI: Statistics show that one of the least common forms of murder in America is white people killing black people.
More Bad News For Blue States: The CEO of Buc-ee’s said ** the chain is growing**, but he looks for new locations in a “conservative, business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce.” As for opening new stores in blue states, he said, “I’m starting to realize life’s too short to try to build in places that people don’t appreciate what you’re bringing.”
Bonus: That link includes photos of the CEO with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, celebrating the opening of the first Buc-ee’s in Arkansas.
Finally, Wisconsin Democrat House candidate Rebecca Cooke launched a two-day “Coming Together Tour” where “all are welcome” and it was “free and open to the public.” She even said, “If I see someone with a MAGA hat on, I’m shaking their hand.”
So a woman from Stevens Point showed up in a MAGA cap with an American flag draped over her shoulders. ** She says she was denied entry**.
We guess that when Democrats excuse letting America-hating socialists into their party by claiming it’s a “big tent,” that just means they need a lot of clowns to fill it.
Thank you for reading the Huckabee Post.
