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Today’s Sixpack has a recurring theme: Enormous power meeting uncomfortable scrutiny. Meta is staring at a potentially trillion-dollar courtroom reckoning, Mark Walter’s financial troubles produced one remarkably well-timed Lakers buyer, police officers turned crime-fighting cameras into stalking tools, Luigi Mangione finally admitted killing Brian Thompson, more Epstein records are headed into daylight, and Donald Trump has a new negotiating position for Iran: Surrender.
Twenty-nine states are taking Meta to court over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to keep young people hooked. The states are seeking more than $1 trillion in damages while also demanding fundamental changes to features such as infinite scroll, “likes,” autoplay and recommendation algorithms. Meta denies the allegations and says it has implemented safeguards for younger users. But this trial could put something much bigger before a jury: whether the engagement machinery that made social media fabulously profitable crossed the line when the people being engaged were children.
Federal investigators squeezed Mark Walter’s financial empire just as Josh Kushner and Bob Iger appeared with an unsolicited $12.5 billion offer for the Los Angeles Lakers. There is no evidence the government targeted Walter to force a sale, and the investigation reportedly originated with an unrelated whistleblower complaint. But after investigators uncovered roughly $20 billion in affiliate transactions that Walter’s insurers hadn’t disclosed as such to Delaware regulators, Walter suddenly needed billions. Then Kushner—the brother of President Trump’s son-in-law—and Iger arrived, and Walter agreed to sell the Lakers after negotiations lasting roughly 72 hours. The question worth asking isn’t whether there was a conspiracy. It’s simpler: Who knew Walter needed money, when did they know it, and how?
Flock’s nationwide network of license-plate cameras was built to help police catch criminals, but some officers apparently decided it was also handy for keeping tabs on their exes. A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers charged with or accused of misusing license-plate-reader systems, including cases involving wives, girlfriends and former partners. One Georgia police chief allegedly searched for plates belonging to his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times. Flock says abuse represents a tiny fraction of its users and offers auditing tools. Fair enough. But when you’ve built a system recording 20 billion plate scans every month, “most people behave themselves” isn’t much of a privacy policy.
Luigi Mangione has finally admitted what prosecutors accused him of doing: stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges resulting in Thompson’s death and told the court, “I shot Mr. Thompson and he died. I knew that what I was doing was illegal.” His lawyers are now trying to use that federal plea to knock out New York’s separate murder prosecution under the state’s double-jeopardy protections. Mangione also described posing as an investor to obtain information about UnitedHealthcare’s Manhattan meeting. Whatever people think about America’s health-insurance industry, Mangione has now eliminated any ambiguity about his own actions.
After eight years of litigation, more records from Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell are finally headed into public view. Journalist Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald and McClatchy fought for years to unseal records from the case, which accumulated tens of thousands of pages of discovery involving Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell and people around them. The important point isn’t another celebrity-name scavenger hunt: appearing in an Epstein document does not establish wrongdoing. What matters is getting sworn testimony and underlying evidence into the open so facts can replace internet mythology.
Donald Trump says Iran should surrender, and he has a similarly delicate message for Oman if it interferes: America could bomb it. The 60-day negotiating period envisioned by the failed June agreement has expired without a permanent settlement, and Trump says he isn’t interested in extending it. Meanwhile, disruption surrounding the Strait of Hormuz continues putting pressure on global energy supplies and fuel prices. Trump insists the November midterms aren’t influencing his strategy. Voters paying higher prices at the pump may nevertheless decide the war has something to do with theirs.
That’s today’s Morning Sixpack: Trillion-dollar lawsuits, billionaires under pressure, surveillance technology running ahead of its safeguards, a confessed killer making a constitutional gamble, Epstein records finally seeing daylight, and a Middle East peace strategy featuring the phrase “white flag of surrender.” If this is what Tuesday looks like, somebody might want to check what Wednesday has been drinking.
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