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

0:00Some 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. How many Martinez that is Steve Ineskeep and this is up first from NPR News. Metta agreed to settle a lawsuit. States said the company made its apps addictive for kids. 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. Flood waters 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. This message comes from the Center for U.S. Voters Abroad Foundation.

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2:06Republicans facing reelection 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 that Aegis 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 weak in 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, which includes China. Trump's under a lot of pressure to end this war and he's running out of time before the

3:07midterms. 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 also mentioned Canada. There's a terrified 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 terror tactics aren't new, but it's reignited tensions with an ally and it's likely to increase prices even more for Americans. Okay, 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. The tariffs on Canada that led to some Republicans who were running in some really title actions, like Senator Susan Collins and 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

4:11pushback 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 freezing it. I think a good example of this is on AI data centers. 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 racism, 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 town should have a data center because he says that it brings in jobs and tax benefits. But that puts him at odd Steve with the seven out of 10 Americans who are opposed to a data center getting built in their area according to Gallup.

5:13Okay. 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 lower-end costs, Trump just points to how he lowered the price of eggs, which happened a year and a half ago. And when he says that the war with Iran, you know, when it does, and 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. And Piers, Deepah 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 miners, Meta denies this.

6:15The 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 if you're a health correspondent, Reto Chatterjee is here in Studio 31 to talk about this. Good morning. Well, this is personal for you and me where parents are 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 miners 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 miners and only parents can opt out of that. Oh, meaning that the kid would have to say, Mom, Dad, can I have an extra look? Exactly. And the parents will have to agree. And so Meta will have to have a default block on nighttime use from midnight to 6am and a block on notification to miners, both overnight and during school hours when they are in classrooms.

7:20There will also be a ban on showing miners how many likes or reactions they have to their pose. Sounds good. Does it actually make kids say for them? In theory, yes. So, psychologists Mitch Princeton, 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. He 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 hyper sensitivity 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.

8:21I suppose there's still a lot writing on how meta would execute these changes. Exactly. First of all, Princeton 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 this 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 resisted requirements that kids show that they are miners or not miners or workers. 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, we still have to wait and watch how this plays out. And, do you guys read to a strategy?

9:21Thanks 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. And 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. It caused water to build up some 30 feet and 30 minutes. The water then tore through Riverside communities from miles downstream, burying people and places under mud. And for us, Dia Hadid covers Nepal and it's on the line. Hi there, Dia. Hi, Steve. What are you hearing from people? What we managed to get through to one survivor. Her name is Santa Tomang and she's a 25 year old university student. He lives in one of the river valleys and she spoke to the MPR producer, Mamita Bandari over the phone and Mamita translated for her. We were doing house chores.

10:23All of a sudden, police started the sirens of warning of the flood. Tomang says 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 Tomang says she's grateful to have just survived. So many people lost their lives. Everything is gone. My child, 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 an immigration building. And here's one prominent spiritual leader. He's known as Sudgur and he's sharing the news with other worshippers. He posted the video on X. So this is a terrible and an extraordinary event. It's unfortunately has done about this way. Hard to get your brain around all of this or rescue efforts underway.

11:25They are underway but they're in their first stages. I spoke to Riyal's Loddy 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 in the under-deaf circumstances it's impossible. Loddy 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, Napoli authorities have a well-practiced 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 Faruk Azam. He's from Isimad. It's an environmental advocacy group that covers Asia's high mountains.

12:28The Himalayas, Karakorum, Hindu Kush. And he says the Himalayas are just warming faster than the global average and it's destabilizing some of the 60,000 glaciers up there. And that's triggering these other launches. 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 but 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. And, Piers, DIA, Hedid covers South Asia and she'll keep us updated. DIA, thanks so much. You're welcome. And that's up first for this Thursday, August 27. I'm Steve Inskeven. And many more teen-es. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Diane Weber, Tina Crya, Mohamed El-Bardici, and Alice Wolfley was produced by Julie Deppinbrock and Nia Dumas.

13:31Our 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. Hey, you know that nagging voice in your head? The one telling you to put the phone down and stop doom scrolling? Well, it's time. Look up. Take a daily curiosity break with Shorewave, NPR's science podcast. Let your mind wander to the edges of outer space or wonder about what's lurking in the depths of the sea floor all in under 15 minutes. Shorewave, your daily mental reset. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. I interviewed feminist icon Gloria Steinem several times over the years

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