Week in Review

IN THE NEWS:

• Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children by violating federal and state child privacy laws, marking one of the largest settlements ever reached by a U.S. company. The settlement requires Meta to implement new safety features for teen users, including daily time limits, late-night notification blocks, hidden likes, and restricted access to algorithmic feeds. Meta agreed to pay an initial $12 billion over 10 years and an additional $5 billion if YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat implement comparable safety measures. The settlement drew comparisons to the tobacco industry’s 1990s legal reckoning, with critics arguing it could reshape how social media platforms treat young users across the industry.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared a new blood test, developed by Roche and Eli Lilly, that can help doctors detect Alzheimer’s disease in patients aged 55 and older experiencing cognitive decline. The test, named Elecsys pTau217, detects the Tau 217 protein—a marker of plaque buildup in the brain. The clearance comes as 6.7 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a figure that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates will double by 2060. This new test replaces expensive procedures like PET scans and spinal fluid tests with less invasive blood draws and works with more than 4,500 laboratory analyzers already in use.
• The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision staying a lower court injunction that prohibited federal officials from implementing an executive order directing federal agencies to take steps to restrict states from using mail-in ballots. The Supreme Court heldthat because the agencies had not yet implemented the order, the states challenging the order had not yet been harmed and so lacked standing to sue. The Court did not address the legality of the order.
• The Canadian government has announced tariffs on around $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances, and farm equipment. These tariffs were issued in response to the tariffsplaced on Canada by President Donald J. Trump, which were announced in late July of this year. The Canadian tariffs will take effect on September 8, 2026. The Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly encouraged Canadians to buy Canadian goods and stated that these tariffs will create pressure on the United States to improve the relationship between Canada and the United States.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule removing the public comment requirement on permits for minor new sources of air pollution, including datacenter projects. Under the Clean Air Act, states must provide for a 30-day public comment period for both major and minor sources of air pollution before issuing construction permits. EPA’s proposed rule, however, makes public disclosure at the discretion of state and local officials. Opponents of the proposal argue removing the public comment requirement would reduce transparency and result in less effective air quality rules.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that a group of private universities can appeal a class action lawsuit alleging they colluded to fix prices, reducing student financial aid offers. Most of the defendant universities have settled with plaintiffs, paying out nearly $320 million to members of the class. The Seventh Circuit’s order lets the remaining defendants appeal the admission of expert testimony that formed the basis for the size of the class. The defendants contended that the expert’s data model identifying the impact of the collusive behavior was “untethered from the challenged conduct and common sense.”
• The U.S. Department of Education announced that it reached an agreement with Topeka Public Schools in Kansas, resolving the Education Department’s finding that the district’s policies violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The Education Department stated that the district’s policies have encouraged schools to hide information from parents about whether their children were using differently gendered pronouns to identify themselves at school. The district has agreed to inform all teaching personnel that the district will no longer have gender support plans—school-based plans aimed at providing support to children who are questioning or changing their current gender identity. The district has also agreed to rescind any prior guidance that prevented schools from informing parents of their children’s chosen gender identity.
• The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued orders against Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, two former executives of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which collapsed in 2022, following aCommodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fraud-related enforcement action. The orders imposedfive-year trading bans on both executives, along with 10-year and eight-year bans on working in the financial industry for Ellison and Wang, respectively. The CFTC declined to seek financial penalties, citing both executives’ cooperation in its investigation and their guilty pleas to fraud-related charges, though each remains responsible for $11 billion in court-ordered repayment. The orders resolve the CFTC cases against Ellison and Wang, who testifiedagainst FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced in 2024 to 25 years in prison.

WHAT WE’RE READING:

• In a recent Urban Institute report, Kate Westaby, a senior research associate at the Institute’s Work, Education, and Justice​ Division, and several coauthors found that young parents face systemic barriers when pursuing college and early career opportunities. Westaby and her coauthors noted that young parents are significantly less likely to be enrolled in college or in the workforce than their peers. Although awareness and efforts to address systemic barriers facing these parents have improved, Westaby and her coauthors contend gaps remain because current education programs fail to address specific challenges young parents face—including child care needs and schedule constraints, stigma, and ensuring their basic needs are met. They recommended collecting better data on young parents and investing in pathways to educational and career exposure at the individual level to meet their needs.
• In a recent Pew Research Center report, Josh Goodman, a senior officer at Pew Research Center, discussed why state leaders are relying on tax amnesty to balance state budgets and boost revenue and described possible shortcomings of these amnesty plans. Tax amnesty is when states offer companies and individuals that owe penalties on overdue taxes forgiveness for the penalties if they provide the full owed amount. Goodman explained that historically states have made these amnesty offers during difficult fiscal years when state legislatures need immediate funding to balance the budget but do not want to raise taxes for constituents. Goodman, however, cited critics of these policies who focus on the loss of revenue from the forgiveness of the fines or other penalties that companies would have faced if amnesty were not given. Goodman concluded by explaining that although state leaders may begin to lean on amnesty tax agreements as the economy worsens, it is important for amnesty agreements to be used sparingly so companies do not begin relying on amnesty or assuming that they will be granted amnesty if they do not pay their taxes on time.
• In a recent Brookings Institution essay, Stephen Cecchetti, the Rosen Family Chair in International Finance, and Kermit Schoenholtz, a clinical professor emeritus, at the NYU Stern School of Businessexamined the five task forces that Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh appointed to reconsider how the U.S. Federal Reserve makes decisions about interest rates and inflation. Cecchetti and Schoenholtz argued that a common problem runs through all five areas, as the Federal Reserve must make policy decisions based on economic indicators that cannot be measured directly and that this reliance on estimates and historical models caused the Federal Reserve’s forecasts to be slow to signal the 2021 inflation surge. Cecchetti and Schoenholtz recommended that the Federal Reserve publish the reasoning behind its policy decisions rather than the outcomes alone, arguing that greater transparency would help the Federal Reserve and the public respond more quickly to changes in economic conditions.

EDITOR’S CHOICE:

• In an essay in The Regulatory Review, James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, argued that robust voting rights require a “stronger and more inclusive regulatory system.” Goodwin contended that opportunities to participate in the rulemaking process offer a “thicker” form of civic engagement than voting alone, creating more active citizens who are more likely to vote and vote in alignment with their interests. Goodwin noted that this regulatory participation fosters a deeper, more substantive public engagement in democracy and that regulatory protections enhance freedom and are not a burden. He concluded that advocates should work together to ensure that the constitutional democracy of the United States lives up to the vision of a representative government because the fights for voting rights and democratizing our regulatory system are “intimately connected.”