Government and Policy Sector

Meta Platforms agreed to pay up to $18 billion to resolve a sweeping lawsuit brought by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general accusing the tech giant of designing its platforms to addict children. Under the terms of the consent judgment approved by a federal court in Oakland, California, participating states will receive roughly $12.7 billion of that total over a 10-year period. The remaining $5.3 billion is contingent on rival platforms such as Google's YouTube and TikTok accepting comparable obligations and settlement terms. Beyond the financial penalty, Meta must implement new product changes across Facebook and Instagram, including enhanced age-assurance measures, default daily usage limits, and nighttime blocks for teenage accounts. The settlement allows Meta to avoid a potentially lengthy trial that could have exposed more internal documents and left the company exposed to broader legal liabilities.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed eliminating a Clean Air Act requirement that forces states to publicly disclose air pollution permit applications and hold extended public comment periods for minor industrial polluters. The rule change shifts authority over public participation entirely to state regulators, removing mandatory federal notice standards that communities have historically used to challenge or delay heavy emissions projects. The shift directly targets facilities emitting up to 250 tons of pollutants annually, a category that encompasses steel mills, laundromats, and the on-site diesel generators and gas turbines increasingly relied on by high-density data centers. With power grids straining under the demands of artificial intelligence infrastructure, tech operators frequently build behind-the-meter fossil fuel plants or deploy massive fleets of backup generators to maintain continuous uptime. Stripping federal notice mandates leaves residents with fewer legal pathways to contest local air pollution permits, short-circuiting administrative hurdles that require documented public participation before filing lawsuits. Fourteen states and hundreds of advocacy groups have pushed back against the proposal, warning it will shroud industrial power development in secrecy while fast-tracking AI infrastructure at the expense of local health.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declared a major cybersecurity incident after the Qilin ransomware gang claimed responsibility for hacking a standalone computer system containing information about targets of ATF investigations. ATF officials stated that the breached environment operates separately from the agency enterprise network and the eForms system, and that connections to the affected system were immediately terminated upon discovery. The Department of Justice is coordinating closely with the bureau to investigate the breach, which senior officials formally classified under federal guidelines for incidents likely to cause demonstrable harm to national security. While the agency maintained that its operations remain unaffected, Qilin added the ATF to its dark web leak site without providing data samples or evidence to substantiate the claim. The incident follows a series of recent federal cyber breaches involving systems at the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Revolution Medicines' oral therapy daraxonrasib under the brand name Rasonque for advanced pancreatic cancer, clearing the first targeted treatment for a malignancy with one of the highest mortality rates in medicine. In a late-stage clinical trial of 500 patients, those who took the daily pill achieved a median overall survival time of 13.2 months, compared to 6.7 months for patients treated with standard chemotherapy. The drug targets and shuts down mutations in the KRAS gene, which drives tumor growth in more than 90 percent of pancreatic tumors and has long resisted therapeutic intervention. Revolution Medicines priced the treatment at $39,800 for a 30-day supply in the US. The regulatory agency reviewed the drug under an expedited pathway that shortened evaluation timelines to roughly a month, granting clearance six months ahead of its official deadline. The speed of the approval triggers a commercial launch for a drug that analysts project could generate $11.5 billion in peak annual sales, while pushing Revolution Medicines stock up 166 percent this year. While the therapy nearly doubles survival, it carries severe side effects including skin toxicity, diarrhea, and fatigue, with roughly 44 percent of trial participants experiencing severe adverse events compared to 57.5 percent on chemotherapy.

A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration from enforcing rules that cut off artificial intelligence startup Anthropic from federal agencies. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled in San Francisco that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acted unlawfully when he designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk earlier this year. The dispute began after Anthropic refused to allow the military to use its Claude models for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens. In response, the administration ordered federal agencies to stop working with the company and blocked private defense contractors from utilizing its technology. Judge Lin wrote that the designation violated the First Amendment as unlawful retaliation against government critics and breached due process under the Fifth Amendment. The ruling hands Anthropic a major victory, though a separate legal challenge brought by the company in Washington, D.C. remains ongoing.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America. The executive action follows the collapse of trade talks between Washington and Ottawa and the imposition of 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. The order instructs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the new designation on U.S. maps and databases. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed the directive, stating that Canada will continue to use the historical name. The measure mirrors a similar order signed on the first day of Trump's second term that renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

americanbanker.com reports that the Small Business Administration has introduced a proposed rule to overhaul its size standards, making 114,500 additional companies eligible for government-backed loans and contracting set-asides. The plan shifts the SBA's classification system from more than 1,000 six-digit NAICS designations to 338 four- and five-digit categories, while replacing annual sales metrics with employee-count thresholds in most cases. Under the new guidelines, a meat retailer with 500 employees or a fuel dealer with 1,900 workers would qualify as a small business. Lenders view the shift as an opportunity to book lucrative loans with established borrowers, though small-business owners contend the influx of larger competitors will crowd out the smallest firms. The federal government spent $793 billion on contracts in fiscal 2025, with a statutory goal of setting aside roughly 23 percent of those dollars for small businesses. Hundreds of comment letters have been filed in opposition to the redefinition, while lenders weigh whether to allocate more resources to the 7(a) loan program.

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