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California Attorney General Rob Bonta took a victory lap following a proposed settlement of up to $17 billion for claims brought by 51 attorneys general against Meta, suggesting that the parent of Instagram and Facebook realized that a trial was not going well for their side.

As Bonta went through details of the settlement, including remedies designed to limit mental health harms and social media addiction among children and teens, he told reporters, “It’s also telling that Meta settled midway through Instagram President Adam Mosseri‘s testimony and before CEO Mark Zuckerberg could take the stand.”

The company was defending itself in a trial that started on Aug. 18 in California.

On the stand on Tuesday, Mosseri at one point was questioned by prosecutors about a feature, called Take a Break, a pop-up message suggesting to young users that they the give the app a rest after a fixed period of use. An internal document showed that only 1.8% of teens actually used the feature. A blog post by Mosseri around when it was introduced said “more than 90%” of users of the feature kept it on. But, the state AGs noted, the executive did not indicate that a very small number of people actually used it in the first place.

“The trial was not going well for Meta. Having Instagram President Adam Mosseri giving testimony as we settled, it was not random … I think they were dying to have him get off the stand. It was not going well for him,” Bonta said.

The settlement agreement still has to be approved by a federal judge.

It includes a set of new restrictions that Meta will place on social media for users under 18, including a default daily time limit of two hours that can only be lifted by a parent. Other defaults are designed to limit use overnight and during school hours, and a ban on displaying numbers of likes or reactions for users under 18.

Bonta also talked of the next step in their litigation: TikTok.

“As big as Meta is, it doesn’t stand alone,” Bonta said. “We’re continuing our fight across social media, including our litigation against TikTok, and we’ll continue to demand better from all parts of this industry through our ongoing work with the legislature.” Bonta and other state attorneys general filed the TikTok lawsuit in 2024.

Bonta also vowed to defend SB 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, a new California law that is being challenged by tech giants on First Amendment grounds.

Bonta said that, with the Meta settlement, his “hope and my belief is that we will see commitments across the industry.” In addition to TikTok, he called out Snap and YouTube.

Bonta later said that although YouTube is not the “same in its model as Meta and TikTok,” there are “similar features and products that YouTube uses that are along the same lines that … are designed to create excessive compulsive use that lead to mental health harms, and most importantly that hurt our children, and can and should be changed.”

He added, “I think this …constellation of solutions in terms in injunctive relief that we’ve delivered here that apply to Meta, I really think that YouTube and Snap and TikTok should be thinking very closely about them and their commitment to adopt the same.”

Several of the changes Meta agreed too are partly contingent on other social media players signing on. For instance, a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent, under the settlement, would drop to one hour If other social media platforms agree to similar terms.

And a default nighttime block between midnight and 6 a.m. for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent would expand to cover 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. if other social media platforms follow.

This case and others lodged against social media giants have been compared to transformative litigation against big tobacco companies in the 1990s. Asked if he agress, Bonta said: “I think there are some similarities. There are also some limits to those similarities … Regardless, this is a major moment to clean up an industry that has been hurting our kids.”
 
“So, in the way that the impact of the solutions delivered in [big] tobacco were good for health, good for kids, good for Californians and Americans, this is similar … It’s similar in that fact that it’s a number of AGs banding together, asserting ourselves, exerting our authority, demanding better, requiring accountability, and enforcing the law and delivering results. It’s similar in that way that Congress hasn’t been delivering and has left a vacuum and a gap, so that the state AGs stepped in.”
 
He added, “It deals with public health. Different issues, but public health issues broadly … But I think the most important thing to focus on here, whether it’s similar tobacco or not, is this is transformative. This is momentous. This is a major step forward in the ongoing quest and journey to make sure that our children are safe everywhere, including online.”

The settlement involved attorneys general from 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

A federal judge is holding a hearing on Thursday on another challenge to the Kennedy Center‘s plans to add Donald Trump‘s name to the complex.

On Wednesday evening, attorneys for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) reacted to the most recent filing by the center, in which they suggested that the complex may have to be torn down if Trump’s name was not restored.

Beatty’s attorney wrote, “In plain English, Defendants have not-so-subtly said: ‘What a nice Kennedy Center you have here. What a shame should something happen to it.’ This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop.”

The board of the Kennedy Center voted earlier this month to add “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the front facade below the inscription, “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Once a $100 million threshold is met for an endowment, another inscription would be placed below that one to read, “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

The board also voted to rename “the physical site and grounds upon which the center sits” as the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

Beatty claims that the addition of Trump’s name in those locations violates a judge’s order prohibiting a previous effort by the board to add POTUS’s to the name of the center.

From December until June, the center was rebranded as the “Trump Kennedy Center.” On the front facade, the words, “The Donald J. Trump and” were placed above “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” But a judge ruled that only Congress could approve such changes, not the Trump-controlled board. The POTUS designation was removed in June, and part of the front facade is now covered by a tarp.

In a filing earlier this week, center attorneys wrote that “undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral.”

They added that Trump has “marshalled a new donor base to finance an endowment for the Center. These efforts promise to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund desperately needed structural improvements, thereby making the Center physically and financially secure for generations to come and, perhaps most importantly, to make the Center structurally safe from collapse or calamity.”

They added, “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years. Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain.”

Beatty’s legal team also wrote that the center was “actively misleading” the judge and the public in claiming that “‘undisputed evidence demonstrates’ that ‘the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral’ unless President Trump’s name is added to the building, and that ‘President Trump’s efforts promise to stem the Center’s tremendous financial losses.’” They pointed to a report in The Washington Post that, after the board’s vote to add Trump’s name to the center, ticket sales and donations collapsed.

“This doublespeak is unconscionable,” Beatty’s legal team wrote. “Moreover, to the extent Defendants cannot fundraise, the solution is to ask Congress to appropriate needed funds and hire professional management with expertise in the performing arts to supplement appropriations as needed—not to violate the law on the ridiculous conceit that putting ‘Trump’ all over the place will open a spigot of contributions.”

The center has not yet commented on the new filing. But in a statement earlier this week, the spokesperson said, “Center leadership remains committed to demonstrating, by all legal means, the soundness of the Board’s decision to recognize Chairman President Donald Trump’s unprecedented support for restoring and revitalizing America’s Cultural Center.”

Beatty, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, also denied that she gave her approval to the proposal to rename the grounds of the center for Trump. In its filing earlier this week, the center’s attorneys wrote that at the board meeting earlier this month, Beatty “explicitly stated that she had ‘no objection’ to one component of it—re-naming the Center’s grounds after President Trump to honor the work he is doing to save the Kennedy Center.”

In a declaration to the court, Beatty wrote that at the board meeting, she “tried to explain that I was not categorically opposed to recognizing Trump in some very limited way, for example, inside the building or with a modest bench or plaza.”

She wrote, “My stated willingness, in that moment, to consider a more limited alternative was a good-faith effort to steer the Board away from actions I strongly suspected to be unlawful. And as I made clear at the time, any willingness on my part was conditioned on the lawfulness of the final action.”

Donald Trump reported more than 1,000 purchases and sales of corporate securities in June, including those of Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast.

The White House has previously said that the president’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed.

According to the president’s latest financial report, released by the Office of Government Ethics, he sold between $50,001 and $100,000 of Netflix on June 12, another $500,001 to $1 million on June 18, between $15,001 and $50,000 on June 16, and between $50,001 and $100,000 on June 24. He bought between $1,001 and $15,000 on June 3, and between $1,001 and $15,000 on June 23.

Per the filing, the president also purchased between $50,001 and $100,000 in The Walt Disney Co. on June 18, and between $1,001 and $15,000 on June 3. He purchased between $1,001 and $15,000 in Warner Bros. Discovery on June 16. The form also showed the sale of $1,001 to $15,000 in Comcast securities on June 16, $1,001 to $15,000 on June 23, $1,001 to $15,000 on June 3, and between $100,001 and $250,000 on June 24.

The report also showed the sale of $100,001 to $250,000 shares of Amazon on June 12 and the sale of $100,001 to $250,000 on June 24. It showed the purchase of $15,001 to $50,000 of Amazon on June 15, the purchase of $1,001 to $15,000 on June 23, the purchase of $1,001 to $15,000 on June 3.

The OGE report does not require specific amounts of sales or purchases, but ranges.

A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the administration has previously said that “all holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.”

The official said that Trump does not have the ability to “direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”

Some of the companies have regulatory business before the Trump administration. The Justice Department approved Paramount’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery on June 12. Disney, meanwhile, is challenging the FCC over its order that it submit the licenses of its eight owned stations for early renewal. Disney filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the agency earlier this month.