Dolly Parton

 

On Tuesday, Dolly Parton’s family announced the death of the beloved country music icon, a woman whose career spanned so many decades and so many disciplines, who wrote so many unforgettable songs and inspired so many people through her joy, kindness, and empathy, that attempting to summarize her legacy feels as futile as bottling up the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.

Parton grew up in poverty but rose to become one of the most successful, instantly recognizable musicians of the 20th century — embodying the American dream in a way that few ever have. She was a savvy entrepreneur, and an actor with a knack for delivering plucky dialogue in classic movies like Steel Magnolias and 9 to 5 (“I’m gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!”) She was an astonishingly prolific songwriter, and one of the best to ever do it, penning “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” within a matter of days.

Parton’s creative gifts were legion. Yet she was, if anything, just as well-known for her outrageous personal style: the voluminous blond wigs, the rhinestone-bedazzled outfits, the bold acrylic nails that helped inspire the opening riff of “9 to 5.” “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” she famously said. With a gift for folksy zingers, Parton was effortlessly funny — certainly more amusing than the uninspired comedians who made countless lame jokes about her bust — and she typically made fun of herself rather than others.

There are few Americans alive today who aren’t familiar with some aspect of Parton’s life — whether her music, her screen performances, or even just her ubiquitous image, emblazoned on T-shirts, prayer candles, and countless tchotchkes across the land. Parton was a secular saint, admired by people across the political and cultural spectrum who shared little else in common, so untouchable that not even Donald Trump had a bad word to say about her.

Which is all to reiterate that quantifying Parton’s contributions to the world is exceedingly difficult. But here is one number that can at least begin to put her extraordinary contributions into context:

332,411,218. That’s the number of books that her charity, the Imagination Library, has given to children around the world over the last 31 years. In addition to being a brilliant entertainer and an exceptional entrepreneur, Parton was also one of the country’s most generous philanthropists. The organization, which provides free, age-appropriate books to preschool children, was founded to honor her father, Lee, who was illiterate.

“He was the smartest man I have ever known, but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams,” Parton has said.

Originally intended to benefit the children of Sevier County, Tennessee, the program has since expanded across the United States and to Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the U.K., instilling a love of reading in millions of young people who eagerly anticipated the arrival of their monthly gift from “Aunt Dolly.” Because Parton knew the stigma that came with getting “handouts,” she ensured that any child could receive books through the Imagination Library, regardless of their family’s income or economic status.

The Imagination Library is now the flagship program of the Dollywood Foundation, which Parton formed in 1988 — not long after the opening of the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee — with the modest goal of improving educational outcomes for students in her home county. Through an initiative in the early ‘90s called the Buddy Program, she vowed to give every 8th grader who graduated from high school $500. The dropout rate subsequently decreased from 35% to 6%.

The Dollywood Foundation has continued to be a vital source of aid for the people of East Tennessee during times of crisis. In 2016, the organization launched the My People Fund to assist families who lost their homes to wildfires in the Great Smoky Mountains. In less than a year, it had distributed $12 million to those affected.

Parton was also a benefactor for life-saving medical research. She donated $1 million to fund Moderna’s COVID vaccine and got the shot — which she called “a dose of her own medicine” — as soon as she was eligible to reassure anyone who might be hesitant. “I just want to say to all of you cowards out there: Don’t be such a chicken squat,” she teased in her inimitable way. In 2022, she gave another $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Centre for research into infectious pediatric disease because, she said at the time, “No child should ever have to suffer.”

Even Parton’s business endeavors have benefitted her community in tangible ways. Dollywood is Sevier County’s largest employer, with more than 4,000 people working at the park itself during high season. According to one case study, the 160-acre park — which includes a bald eagle sanctuary — makes a direct annual impact of $1.8 billion a year in Tennessee.

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Parton, a leading gay icon, repeatedly expressed her support for the LGBTQ+ community, before such opinions were widely held in either country music or the country at large. Her company, Sandollar Productions, co-produced the Oscar-winning 1989 documentary Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, which tells the story of the AIDS memorial quilt and chronicles the lives of five people in its panels. She also contributed to the compilation album Red, Hot + Country, which raised money for AIDS charities, and participated in a public awareness campaign.

Parton’s generosity was not only financial, it also extended to her humane, compassionate songwriting, which she consistently used to tell stories about the downtrodden and marginalized. Though she became fabulously wealthy, Parton never lost her working-class solidarity. And though she avoided wading into partisan politics, she made her views clear in song.

Accepting the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2022, Parton, the first female entertainer to receive the honor, spoke about what motivated her charitable endeavors. “I cannot be a hypocrite and just say I’m going to donate this money for a tax write-off. I’d really like for it to mean something to me — something I can take pride in,” she said.

Parton’s philanthropy has inspired similar largesse in other celebrities. Ahead of their wedding in July, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift donated $26 million to various charities — including $2 million to the Imagination Library.

But with the possible exception of Swift, the world doesn’t produce celebrities as enormous as Parton anymore. The few people who rival her fame today are not once-in-a-generation artists, but tech oligarchs who hoard their wealth to buy elections and castles in Ireland, not books for preschoolers.

In a vintage TV clip that’s now circulating on social media, Parton was asked about her ultimate goal in life. “Just to be happy, to be as productive as I can be, make as many people happy as I can, make as much money as I can, so I can do for more people,” she said. “And I just want the freedom to work, and everybody else can have the money.”

If only more people lived by her example.

-The Contrarian

Jeffries Never Should Have Met with Kushner

Democrats of all political stripes were exasperated by a New York Times report Sunday that “Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground.” Numerous Democrats fumed that the get-together violated pro-democracy, anti-corruption values, defied common sense, and seemed politically naïve.

First and foremost, Jeffries made a cardinal error in meeting with Kushner, a non-government employee whose self-promotional antics — aided by his family connection — have no doubt made Hunter Biden blush. (If you can imagine Speaker Mike Johnson meeting with Hunter Biden in search of “common ground,” you can appreciate the absurdity of the Jeffries meeting.)

The meeting inevitably extends legitimacy to Kushner’s ethical gamesmanship, which characterizes the regime’s grotesque corruption. Kushner has fully exploited his name to pursue billions in foreign investment opportunities, all the while evading whatever ethical constraints (concern for presidential relations’ ethics — how quaint!) exist for those performing top government jobs. While continuing to carry out missions for his father-in-law regarding Gaza and Iran, Kushner has leveraged his role to reap riches in the Middle East, triggered an uprising in Albania stemming from his scheme to develop an island resort, and been forced to back out of a scandal-plagued Serbian boondoggle.

As Jeffries surely knows, reports in March that Kushner was soliciting funds from Middle East sovereign wealth funds (while acting as an envoy, however incompetently, in Iran talks) triggered a furious statement from Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA). 

In it, they recapped Kushner’s years-long exploits, starting with Wyden’s “investigation of Kushner’s conflicts of interest in 2020 with an initial probe into whether Kushner advised Donald Trump to support a blockade against Qatar while Kushner Companies was seeking a billion-dollar bailout from Qatari, and possibly other Middle Eastern officials, for the property at 666 Fifth Avenue.”

As Wyden recounted, his investigation in 2024 examined “whether Affinity Partners, the firm Kushner launched immediately after the end of the first Trump administration, was in reality a compensation scheme designed in part to skirt federal disclosure requirements.” As a result of the investigation, he referred Kushner to the Justice Department for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with his Saudi investment activities.

On the House side, in 2024, Ranking Member Garcia and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin “urged Chairmen James Comer and Glenn Grothman to hold a hearing regarding Kushner’s apparent influence peddling and quid pro quos for actions he undertook to reshape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond, as senior adviser in President Trump’s first Administration, following reports that Kushner was close to finalizing investments in Albania and Serbia and leveraged relationships he built during his time as a senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House.” 

And Kushner continues to evade Congressional inquiry to this day, a direct affront to its Article I power. Once in the majority, Democrats should be investigating — not looking for common ground with — Kushner.

Given all that, any meeting with him strikes one as ill-conceived (at the very least). One can imagine some critical messages Jeffries could have delivered, including: a warning to preserve all documents relevant to allegations of self-dealing with foreign powers; a heads-up that Democrats will pursue, without exception, all allegations of corruption involving Trump, Trump family members, associates, and government employees; a preview of legislation that would mandate full financial disclosure and conflicts of interest rules for anyone serving as an envoy/international negotiator; and an FYI that the disgraced Board of Peace will be put under close supervision of Congress (and/all U.S. government employees and/or presidential relations barred from participation), beginning with public hearings and a subpoena of all relevant documents.

In response to written questions to Jeffries’s staff asking whether Kushner’s conflicts of interest came up at the meeting; what common ground Jeffries believes might exist; and why Jeffries decided to meet with someone who has purposefully sidestepped a government role to avoid scrutiny, I received a bland written statement early Monday evening:

Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people. To stop the madness, we have repeatedly made clear that an extremist approach will not work and will be met with forceful opposition. 

The American people want bold change and that’s what House Democrats will deliver. In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”

To review: Jeffries’ tone did improve, although the original decision to meet with Kushner was, as they say in soccer, an “own goal.” When Democrats, as seems increasingly likely, win the House majority, their leadership will meet with Trump, his Cabinet, and/or White House staff. But even then, it is hard to fathom any rationale for meeting with someone who has chosen to avoid a government post to flout White House conflicts of interest laws and keep his affairs hidden from Congress.

Moreover, in the future, Jeffries must avoid any signal that that this is a “normal” president with whom he expects to do business, lest he rekindle criticism that he does not appreciate the nature of the Trumpian threat to democracy and is seeking to accommodate rather than confront a dangerous president. 

To be clear: no “common ground” exists with a regime engaging in an illegal war (contemptuous of Congress’s constitutional role), massive self-dealing (allegedly involving family members!), a reign of terror against immigrants, routine destruction of constitutional guardrails (e.g., ignoring Congress’s appropriations’ role, violating the Epstein Files Disclosure Act), a savage assault on healthcare to pay for billionaires’ tax cuts, thorough corruption of the Justice Department, and routine racist insults.

If they gain the majority, Democrats’ mandate will not be to find “common ground” with a decrepit autocrat bent on destroying congressional power. It will be to halt him in his tracks, reverse disastrous policies, and exercise exacting oversight. 

For now, Democratic leaders should focus entirely on achieving a resounding defeat that will hold Kushner, his father-in-law, and the entire regime accountable for their incompetence, malfeasance, and illegality.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Trump's executive order

 

The Supreme Court ruled in the case brought by state attorneys general challenging Trump’s executive order on elections. In this case, the government wants an injunction to stop Judge Indira Talwani’s injunction, which stops the administration from implementing the EO—it gets a little confusing.

The Court did what the Trump administration asked. In an unsigned per curiam order, with dissents from Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justice Kagan) and Justice Jackson, the Court told the government it could go ahead and execute the EO.

It’s important to issue two caveats before we go any further:

This is not a decision that Trump’s EO is lawful. And as Steve Vladeck and I discussed tonight (link forthcoming), the Court would have to defy the Constitution, which gives control of elections to the states, to reach that result. That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods here; this is a Court that, as Steve aptly puts it, is at its worst when it’s deciding voting cases, and its thumb will be on the scales for Trump. But today’s decision is limited to the injunction in the AG’s case.

Judge Talwani also issued a separate, nationwide injunction in the League of Women Voters case. That injunction stays in place, at least for now. As we’ve been discussing, the government owes her a response to the plaintiffs’ motion asking her to enforce it, after the Postal Service indicated it was ready to issue a final rule putting procedures in place to execute its role in the EO. Judge Talwani has indicated she’s prepared to rule quickly, likely tomorrow, so this case will be before the Court before long.

In its decision today, the Court held that Judge Talwani incorrectly entered the injunction and that it believes the government will prevail on the factors necessary to get an injunction of its own to put an end to hers. The Court ruled the Judge was wrong on two doctrines we’ve been discussing a lot lately: ripeness and standing.

The Court wrote that while “the District Court rejected the Government’s argument that it lacked jurisdiction over the States’ claims because the States lack standing to bring them,” the Supreme Court believed the government was likely to succeed on those jurisdictional arguments. That means the Court believes, not necessarily that the EO is lawful, but that these are the wrong plaintiffs to bring the case, that they lack standing and that they sued too early.

The Court also wrote that it believed the government would prevail on two other factors necessary for its injunction to succeed: that the injunction is causing it irreparable harm and that the equities do not favor leaving the injunction in place while the Government’s appeal is pending.

That’s what tonight’s decision is about. It doesn’t say the EO and what Trump wants to do are lawful. It doesn’t even let the administration move forward because the second injunction is still in place. Is it disturbing? Yes. I dislike the Court’s framing, which characterizes the EO like this: “President Trump issued an Executive Order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections.” But the political value signaling isn’t a substantive decision. This is about where we are procedurally.

That leaves us with some questions:

Will the same analysis apply to the LWV case, or are the plaintiffs situated differently?

Why is the court willing to change election rules so close to the start of elections? What about the Purcell principle?

Does this decision mean the government will win on the merits, i.e., the legality of the EO?

-Joyce Vance

"This week, the Trump administration will continue its transparent efforts to manipulate the election this year in its favor. There is no other way to interpret the events we are now living through"

 

The Postal Service, pursuant to the executive order we’ve been discussing ever since Trump promulgated it earlier this year, is on board to try to keep ballots out of the hands of people whose votes this administration fears. 

In a 95-page “final rule” it has scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Wednesday, it “is amending the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual, regarding the transmission of mail-in or absentee ballots for federal elections pursuant to its rulemaking authority.” 

This is how the executive order, which is largely an aspirational statement of what the president wants to see happen, would be put into effect. It would circumvent states’ control over their own elections by imposing a federal restraint in the form of which ballots the Post Office will accept and deliver.

We discussed the executive order on August 11th, when Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a nationwide injunction in the League of Women Voters lawsuit, which blocked the Postal Service from doing exactly what it’s now trying to do. The government’s major argument in that case had been that the dispute wasn’t “ripe” for a decision from the courts because the government hadn’t taken sufficient steps to put the EO into effect. That argument would seem to be off the table now.

And how does the government gild the lily, since there is an injunction against putting the EO in place for the 2026 elections? They try to do it like this: “To ensure the faithful execution of federal law in connection with federal elections, this rule has an immediate effective date.” They claim that “Delaying the effective date would jeopardize implementation of this rule in time for the 2026 general election,” before conceding that “Given injunctions currently in place … the Postal Service will not take actions to implement the rule specifically for the 2026 election unless and until the government obtains relief from those injunctions.” 

On the one hand, they write a rule meant to apply to 2026. On the other, they pay lip service to following court orders, which is mighty nice of them since they have no choice in that matter unless the Supreme Court intervenes for the administration.

But there’s another problem with what the government has done, since they specifically discuss application of the new measure to the 2026 elections. Judge Talwani ordered that the government was “preliminarily enjoined from implementing, giving effect to, or enforcing Section 3 of Executive Order No. 14399, with respect to the November 3, 2026, or any earlier federal election, including refusing to transmit mail-in or absentee ballots; or otherwise initiating or completing rulemaking to promulgate the specific regulations outlined in Section 3(b)(i)–(v) or (d) of the EO for the November 3, 2026 or any earlier election.” [emphasis added].

Section 3 of the executive order, which the Judge enjoined the government from implementing, is the part of Trump’s order that applies to the Postal Service’s role in interfering with Americans who are trying to cast ballots. In other words, the government is proceeding in precisely the manner the Judge told them they could not.

Judge Talwani has only enjoined the government with regard to the 2026 elections, leaving the questions of both ripeness for action and the legality of the substance of the EO for future proceedings. There are also cases in front of other judges. So, this issue doesn’t go away after 2026, but the legal issues are particularly acute now, with the election less than three months away and Trump intent on preventing eligible Americans from voting.

We should never forget Trump’s August 18, 2025, Truth Social post that started like this:

Yes, it’s ironic. Trump votes by mail, as do a significant number of Republicans. But this is about something more for him; this is about building a narrative of fraud that he can try to use to overturn an election whose outcome he doesn’t like. That’s what it’s all about, Trump versus the voters of the United States. He has no respect for the Constitution, the democratic process, or the rule of law. We know that. He showed it for everyone to see on January 6. 

And having essentially gotten away with it and now being well on the way to erasing the insurrection from the history books, he is looking forward to the next election and figuring out how to erase losses there too. If only he would put as much energy into earning the voters’ trust and working for them as he does into circumventing their will.

In 2024, Trump told a gathering of conservative Christians ahead of the election that it would be the last election they’d ever have to vote in if he won.

Your right to vote shouldn’t turn on whether a hastily prepared federal list, almost certain to be full of errors, includes your name. The Constitution leaves decisions about elections, including who is qualified to vote in them, up to each state. Every day, the press, the Democratic Party, and the public should be bombarding everyone aligned with Trump with one simple question: “Why don’t you trust the voters?”

We’ll be watching the litigation over this as it takes shape this week. Saturday night, the League of Women Voters filed an emergency motion to enforce their injunction. Judge Talwani ordered the government to respond by 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, to permit her to rule before the Wednesday date the Postal Service indicated it would publish its new rule.

When I left the Justice Department the night before Trump’s first inauguration, I never imagined that my interest in voting law would become a mainstream topic of conversation in our country. But I’m deeply grateful to those of you who care and who trust me to help explain it when you read this newsletter. 

We’ve known since Trump first issued this Executive Order what everyone else is waking up to now: that it’s a deeply disturbing signal of Trump’s willingness to bypass the voters’ wishes and the fundamentals of democracy. 

Thank you for sticking with me and for relying on Civil Discourse for plain talk and an explanation of how the law works and intersects with our politics.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

The Trump Administration's Contaminated Food Supplies

In March 2025, shortly after his return to power, Donald Trump’s administration postponed the compliance deadline for the FDA’s Food Traceability Rule by 30 months. That moved it back from January 20, 2026, to July 20, 2028. We are now paying the price.

At the time, the administration claimed that there were complex supply chain challenges. It used language in an appropriations rider to prevent the use of federal funds for enforcement before the July 2028 date. The primary goal of the Traceability Rule was to enable faster identification and rapid removal of potentially contaminated food from our supply, lessening foodborne illnesses and deaths.

Taylor Farms (the parent company of Taylor Fresh Foods) donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, on March 26, 2025, just days after the Traceability Rule extension. It’s not hard to follow the money. 

Now, we’ve learned Taylor Farms' produce is behind a major outbreak of Cyclospora. Even though the company is a serial offender, it took the FDA a month after it developed the link to travel to inspect the farm in Mexico believed to be responsible.

In other words, corruption isn’t just a one-sided offense, where people in power make money through the grift. There’s another side to the equation: the people who are harmed by its consequences. We’re seeing that plainly now when it comes to foodborne illness. There is no telling where else it will crop up as this administration and its key players continue to benefit wherever they can from their time in office.

DOJ has statutory authority to act here. But they seem to be asleep at the wheel. Of course, DOJ’s investigations aren’t always public, but given this administration’s love of the tweet, it’s reasonable to expect they’d be taking credit if they were doing something about it. There have been at least two deaths and over 13,000 cases, just of Cyclospora. Many other food contamination issues are being reported now, as well. It’s difficult to assess whether the statistics are reliable or just the tip of the iceberg.

As DOJ’s website explains, “The Department of Justice (DOJ), working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through its Health & Safety Unit and Consumer Protection Branch, prosecutes companies and executives under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) for introducing adulterated foods into interstate commerce. Charges range from strict-liability misdemeanors to felony indictments and permanent injunctions.”

What could DOJ be doing? 

This is an area I discuss with my first-year criminal law students because it involves unusual strict liability. Normally, to prove a crime, prosecutors must show both an actus reus, a criminal act, and mens rea, a guilty state of mind like intent or recklessness. But under the FDCA, distributing adulterated food is a strict-liability misdemeanor. Prosecutors do not need to prove that a company or executive intended to violate the law or knew the food was contaminated. And under the Park doctrine, corporate officers can be prosecuted personally for corporate safety failures.

There are also felony charges available in cases of intentional fraud, deliberate concealment of safety data, or repeat offenses. 

Companies can face millions of dollars in fines and asset forfeiture, while individual executives can face personal fines and imprisonment. Under 21 U.S.C. § 331, it is illegal to manufacture, sell, deliver, or receive an adulterated food product in interstate commerce. 

But we’ve seen nothing to suggest any criminal violations are being explored here. Perhaps that will happen as public outrage grows, but one way to bring problems under control is to create deterrence by prosecuting known offenders and being public about it so others will be more careful.

To protect public health, DOJ routinely files civil complaints to secure injunctions that force companies to stop distributing items that are making Americans sick until their facilities come into compliance with the law and pass a review by independent experts. 

But even after the outrage when people realized it took the FDA a month to act, nothing has been forthcoming from DOJ, which could be taking immediate steps to protect Americans’ health from additional problems.

In the middle of all of this, Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, Heidi Overton, says the FDA, CDC, and NIH need to be “reformed” to fund more “conservative-based” research instead of peer-reviewed and evidence-backed medical science. 

Overton is a surgeon, currently working as the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy at the White House. She is an alum of the conservative America First Policy Institute, where she wrote in opposition to gender-affirming care for minors and questioned the safety of medication abortion despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It feels like the era of conservative religious beliefs instead of science is upon us.

This is what happens when institutions break down. This is how the rule of law and those “cumbersome requirements” big business complains the federal bureaucracy imposes on it work to protect us. 

There are reasons we want those agencies to do their jobs. But sometimes, it’s not apparent until it all breaks down, as it has in this critical area. Heather Cox Richardson characterized it like this earlier this week: “It’s the largest cyclospora outbreak in U.S. history, spurred by cuts of more than 40% to food safety detection systems.”

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been posting each fresh report of a new issue in the food supply on our family chat:

Eggs recalled because of “probability of death”

Deli meals, possible metal contamination

Bacon

Whole Foods products

Beef

Cheese

Blueberries

Prepared pasta products

Finally, one of the kids posted back, “Mom, you need to stop getting your news from Instagram.” But isn’t that the problem here? We aren’t getting a comprehensive report from the government. There are no adults in the room. And so we’re left to fend for ourselves, discerning whether each new report is true or false and what it means we need to do about it. 

I haven’t eaten a salad in the last month that wasn’t made with lettuce I didn’t grow myself and I’ve abandoned my beloved blueberry muffins. But for many Americans, it’s about more than giving up favorite foods. 

It’s about being sick because Taylor Farms wanted to make more money, and the Trump administration was okay with that.

I write Civil Discourse because of stories like this. Contaminated lettuce turns out to be a story about so much more in the time of Trump, when the corruption gives us an abject lesson in why we need the rule of law and what happens to ordinary people when our institutions work for the rich and powerful instead of for us. 

More outbreaks and more illness lie ahead. Instead of covering them as individual breaking-news items, our lens is on the institutional failures, the grift that fueled them, and the laws that aren’t being enforced. Because we are entitled to a government that works for us, which means it’s essential to understand what’s happening when it isn’t.

Paid subscribers make my work on issues like this possible and help me keep Civil Discourse free for everyone, so this kind of information and analysis is available whether people can afford to pay for it or not. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you. And thanks to all of you for being here with me.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

29 US States vs Meta

 

The sight of Mark Zuckerberg testifying in defense of his tech platforms has become so familiar in recent years, it feels like a social media meme in itself. But when Meta’s chief executive takes the stand in the coming weeks, as part of a landmark trial that began in California on Tuesday, he won’t be able to brush it off as just another legal or congressional inconvenience. As our global technology reporter Aisha Down wrote, the case could prove as consequential for big tech as the settlement that brought big tobacco to heel in the 1990s.

This is partly because of the sheer size of the damages being sought. The 29 US states that brought this week’s case against Meta are seeking up to $200bn (£146bn), alleging that the owner of Facebook and Instagram deliberately designed addictive products that led to young people being harmed, as well as violating child privacy laws. Meta denies all allegations.

More fundamentally, the case reflects a broader shift in efforts to hold social media companies to account, with the focus on addictiveness by design and young people’s wellbeing proving a gamechanger. It comes as countries including the UK and France have followed Australia’s lead in moving to ban social media for children under 16. Last month, the EU pledged its own ban.

Tech companies have so far managed to largely avoid responsibility for the content posted on their social networks by claiming that they are platforms rather than publishers. 

This distinction hasn’t just sheltered them from legal liabilities, it has arguably helped shape the world we live in today, with its crises of disinformation, social division and toxic discourse. But by focusing on the addictiveness of those platforms rather than the content, this week’s federal lawsuit helps to flip the script.

As Dara Kerr reported for us on Wednesday, the trial’s first witness, former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, discussed potentially addictive features such as infinite scrolling.

The case is just one of many the Guardian has been reporting on. In March, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and Google-owned YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that had affected the mental health of a single young claimant. 

A New Mexico court recently ordered Meta to pay a total of $942bn after a jury found it was aware of child sexual exploitation on its platforms and failed to prevent it. That lawsuit cited a 2023 Guardian investigation that exposed child sex trafficking on Facebook and Instagram. 

The reporter Katie McQue has recounted how it took a lot of perseverance before the full impact of our investigation became clear. Meta says it plans to appeal against the ruling. Meanwhile, thousands of coordinated cases have been filed in a California state court against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap.

This week, Johana Bhuiyan reported on how Meta has tapped an army of influencers to promote its safety tools for teens. Some of its other defensive strategies have felt less benevolent. For instance, we have been following allegations that Meta has sought to punish the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the memoir Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, which contains claims about its platforms’ negative impacts on teenagers. An order secured by Meta prevents Wynn-Williams from speaking about her book and she risks a fine every time if she breaches it.

Another Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, was behind the 2021 leak of a cache of damaging internal documents that contained revelations about Instagram’s impact on the mental health and wellbeing of teenage girls. Aaron Sorkin’s forthcoming film is partly based on the leak, starring Jeremy Strong as Zuckerberg. Its title, The Social Reckoning, certainly speaks to the moment.

-Owen Gibson, The Guardian

 

Name the Aircraft Carrier after a Real Hero!

What Do We Know About Doris Miller?

Miller served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War and is famous for using an anti-aircraft gun to defend against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite not being trained to use the weapon, Miller is believed to have shot down at least one Japanese plane and carried several wounded soldiers to safety. The citation for his Navy Cross medal notes he is receiving the award for “distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces.” The citation notes that Miller assisted in moving his mortally wounded captain to safety despite facing serious fire and he continued firing the machine gun at Japanese planes until he was ordered to leave the bridge.