WSJ What’s News - A Landmark Child Safety Verdict Against Meta Just Got More Expensive

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

A.M. Edition for Aug. 7. A New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay more than $900 million—upping the cost of a landmark child safety verdict. Plus, new U.S. intelligence finds Russia could try to launch a limited assault on a NATO ally in coming years. WSJ national security reporter Lara Seligman says that comes amid a shortfall in critical munitions the military would need in a potential future war. And WSJ’s Bertrand Benoit reports that while most of Europe has embraced seven-day retail, Germany has largely stuck to its longtime ban—until now. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

U.S. intelligence finds that Russia's war in Ukraine might not stop Vladimir Putin from directly provoking NATO in the coming years. Plus, a New Mexico judge orders MEDA to pay up to address social media's harm to kids. And we'll look at why President Trump's days-old deal to disarm Hamas is already in danger. Israel is suspicious. It doesn't believe that Hamas really intends to disarm and Hamas doesn't believe that Israel's actually going to withdraw. It's Friday, August 7th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

Russia could try to test NATO by launching a limited assault on an allied country within the next few years. That is the conclusion of new U.S. intelligence reports. And as national security reporter, Laura Seligman explains, marks a shift from earlier in year when U.S. intelligence believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn't provoke NATO while he's still fighting in Ukraine. Those assessments have recently changed as U.S. officials believe Putin is becoming more desperate due to this war. This fear is compounded by concerns in the past couple of months related to lower than comfortable levels of munitions stockpiles in the U.S. Some of these stockpiles were reduced after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2021 when the Biden administration began rushing arms to Ukraine.

But the recent expenditures in the Middle East of things like Patriot missiles, other air defense interceptors have contributed to extremely low stockpiles, particularly of long-range weapons such as the PRISM missiles and Attackams. The U.S. would likely rely heavily on those sorts of weapons should Russia stage an actual land invasion along NATO's eastern flank. U.S. intelligence ranks the likelihood of that most extreme scenario as low, though the risk gets higher with time. Spokesman for the Pentagon and NATO declined to discuss sensitive intelligence. A spokesperson for the office of the Director of National Intelligence didn't respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, President Trump has ordered new investigations into the disclosure of information about the Pentagon 's munitions stockpiles in an escalation of his effort to battle damaging revelations about the Iran war. The White House has maintained that the U.S. has enough munitions to fight Tehran and

world powers like Russia and China, but at the same time is threatening anyone leaking information on the issue. We report that Trump has privately vented about reports on munitions levels to aides and cabinet officials believing they would emboldened Iran. Trump has tapped Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg to increase munitions production. including by dangling incentives before the weapons industry. However, many recent agreements still require Congress to approve funding, requests that have remained in limbo on Capitol Hill since April. And Trump signed a pair of executive orders yesterday that he says will crack down on birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court recently voided an order from the first day of

his second term to end it outright. One of the new orders directs the State Department to not issue citizenship documents to babies born to several categories of parents, while the second called for state and DHS to take steps to limit so-called birth tourism, a practice that Trump spoke about in the Oval Office. Wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship. That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's a disgrace. They're buying their way in, and we're not going to let it happen. According to the second order, foreigners suspected of coming to the U.S. for birth tourism could have their visas canceled and face lifetime bans on returning. The new orders are

likely to be challenged in court. Last week, the Board of Peace, the invitation-only coalition launched by President Trump this year, laid out a roadmap to disarm Hamas and get Israel out of Gaza. American officials then went on to announce that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups had signed off on the plan. But as the journal's Anat Pellet is here to discuss, that a days old deal is already in danger. Anad, walk us through what's going on here. We have seen in the last few days Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. We've heard also from Israel's prime minister saying they had never signed off on any of this.

Was there ever really a deal here? So it's been quite a whirlwind of events. Last Thursday, President Trump announced that a deal had been reached, that Hamas had agreed to disarm its weapons, that Israel was going to withdraw from Gaza. this was a much anticipated part of his Gaza peace plan, which he launched in October 2025. And since then, there's been a few issues. So the first issue is that over the weekend, Israel actually increased its strikes. So there was an uptick in strikes. There were many Gazans killed. The plan does state that hostilities are supposed to stop in order to allow the disarmament process

to move forward. And we didn't have a response from the Israeli government, an official public one. Trump said Israel was very happy with it. But then on Tuesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the agreement for the first time. And he said that Israel had not signed on to this, that Israel would not withdraw its troops from Gaza until Hamas fully disarms and said that they didn't really agree to this. So that left the agreement a bit in limbo. Yeah. And that Netanyahu comment, we should say, was pretty unequivocal. He said, quote, they sent us a draft. We didn't agree to it. It's not our draft. We sent our comments. end quote. I mean, that's kind of a surprising amount of daylight to see between Jerusalem and Washington. And I wonder if that suggests that the Board of Peace or President Trump maybe sort of jump the gun on all of this. So this was always going to be a very difficult process. The first phase of this plan was just a prisoner swap, basically. So we had Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners swapped and an end to the major hostilities in Gaza.

But the future of Gaza's governance, Israel's withdrawal from the enclave, disarming Hamas. These are very complicated issues. And mediators at the time decided to move forward, kind of pushing them aside to the future. And fast forward, and now we're at that moment. And it's possible that Trump jumped the gun here a little bit. There was always understanding that it was going to be very difficult and there were ongoing negotiations. However, this kind of pressure did work for Trump in the past. He did pressure both Israel and Hamas back in October 2025 to reach a deal by announcing it earlier than it was ready, basically, the, negotiators were taken by surprise in the room when he announced it. So he may have been trying to do that

again here. And especially with Israeli elections coming up in October, I wonder if there's any way either Hamas or Israel is likely to be able to come around on this proposal or whether things just need to go back to the drafting room. Mediators are pushing forward. They are trying to convince both sides to move forward with the process. This process also has to move forward because a lot of Gazans are left in limbo in a devastated war zone. So it does have a huge cost. The problem is that there is a lack of trust, and I would say a lot of lack of trust between Israel and Hamas. Israel is suspicious. It doesn't believe that Hamas really intends to disarm, and Hamas doesn't believe that Israel is actually going to withdraw. One thing that's important

to note is that back in October 2025, Israel controlled 53% of Gaza, as laid out in the ceasefire plan, but it has slowly expanded that area, and now it controls 70%. So we're not even in the same lines as before. But mediators are pushing ahead. There were meetings in Jerusalem between Netanyahu and the convoy of the Board of Peace, and they are still trying to reach agreements. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Pellad. Anad. Thank you so much for bringing us this story. Thanks for having me. Coming up, a New Mexico judge orders META to create a new more than half a billion dollar fund to address social media's harm to kids, and could letting stores open on Sundays provide the boost that Germany's economy needs. We'll take a look after the break.

A New Mexico judge has ordered META to pay more than $900 million and limit the time that young people in the state spend on its apps. That ruling significantly increases the cost of a landmark child safety verdict against the social media company. In addition to the increased payment, META will also need to hide the number of likes on photos by default on Facebook and Instagram, and disclose the risks of its platforms to users. META said it disagreed with the ruling and planned to appeal, and said the company remains confident in its record of protecting young people online. The New Mexico case is one of thousands of lawsuits META is facing, and in the next trial brought by four state attorneys general, META said the states are asking for more

than a trillion dollars in damages. Airbnb has raised its full-year revenue forecast, citing an expansion in global demand, fueled by a surge in bookings in the U.S. and across key markets, including France, Australia, and the UK. Chief Executive Brian Chesky credited AI and said the plan is to rebuild Airbnb from the ground up as an AI-native company. AI is transforming how we execute and build products. Said simply AI is the best thing to ever happen to Airbnb. The platform has rolled out a number of AI tools to automate customer surface and help hosts to improve their listings. and increase their earnings potential.

It's shaping up to be a quiet earnings day, but investors will nonetheless have plenty to process when the Labor Department releases July's jobs report at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. The result could help to tip whether the Fed moves on interest rates next month. That says traders are roughly divided on the likelihood of a quarter-point hike when the Fed convenes in mid-September. And finally, many of us take for granted that with the work week approaching, it's always possible to run some errands on a Sunday. For many Germans, though, that's out of the question.

Provisions of the country's 1949 Constitution proclaims Sundays to be days of rest from work, a rule that's strictly applied to retailers, even as other sectors enjoy exemptions. With Europe's largest economy battered by U.S. tariffs and Chinese competition, Chancellor Friedrich Merz unveiled measures recently that would allow libraries to open up on Sundays and bakers to trade for longer hours. So far from pacifying critics that sparked a backlash from retail groups who want the Sunday restrictions scrapped altogether. Shoppers, who spoke to our Berlin bureau chief Bertrand Benoit, were split on the idea. I do enjoy my Sundays free of shopping.

And it's a day when the city gets a bit more quiet. And even if you need something, you have like this free day that you can get around and do some hobbies or meet your friends. without like this urge to spend money. I think it's very good for the customers that the shops have open on Sunday, but it's very bad for the people who have to work there. Bertrand told us that for others, breaking the rules was a necessity. I was talking to a shop owner here who said he opens illegally on Sundays and he pays fines for this, but he was saying he makes 40% of his revenues.

on Sundays, and so cannot afford not to do it. But if reforming the Sunday rule sounds like a common-sense proposal to juice Germany's flatlining economy, Bertrand says it's not so simple. For a long time, there wasn't a huge amount of opposition to the Sunday ban. Now it's moving and it's more 50-50, and you also have a generational split. So older people would prefer things to stay the way they are. Younger people, about two-thirds are more in favor of. opening things up. So the government is very cautious. It is a coalition. The conservatives don't want to

anger the churches, the social democrats don't want to anger the trade unions. Germany is among the strictest in Europe. And the countries that have liberalized and the shopping like France and Italy have a higher share of consumption in their GDP. And so consumption plays a bigger role in their economy. And that maybe is something that the Germans would be looking to as an example of why it might be be a good idea to do this. And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer was Daniel Bach, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal.

We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great, restful or shopping-filled weekend. And as always, thanks for listening.