Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin released the following statement today:

“This is a watershed moment for the growing movement to protect children from addictive and dangerously designed social media. In addition to a significant financial penalty, the state attorneys general have secured the most significant injunctive relief yet from Meta, including a number of measures to protect young people’s sleep, such as disabling Instagram overnight for minors’ accounts. The settlement also requires disabling addictive and harmful features like displays of like counts and plastic surgery filters and new guardrails to protect children from predatory adults. We also greatly appreciate that Meta will be required to identify both under-13 and under-18 users without infringing on the privacy of adults. We thank the state attorneys general for their historic leadership in fighting for our children’s safety and well-being online.

“This settlement also underscores the need for KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. As internal documents have shown over and over, Meta and other social media companies deliberately design their products to addict kids, and that is the root cause of so many mental health difficulties and serious online harms for minors. While it’s gratifying to see state attorneys general take action to hold companies like Meta accountable, we also need our federal government to step in to force these companies to make their products safe for kids by design so that every child on every platform will be protected, both now and in the future. KOSA has robust, bipartisan support from over three-quarters of the US Senate. We call on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Charles Schumer to bring the bill to the floor for a vote next month.”

Climate change has reduced snowpack by 36 percent and streamflow by 13 percent across the western United States, and more than half of those impacts have been triggered by emissions from fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers, according to a new report released today by University of California, Merced and Union of Concerned Scientists. Additionally, the report ties one-tenth of the observed groundwater loss in California’s Central Valley directly to emissions from these companies. In response, Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, issued the following statement:

“Millions of Americans are experiencing historic water scarcity. We now know that a small number of fossil fuel companies are responsible for a significant portion of this disaster. And they knew full well what they were doing. Already in 1988, companies like Shell were issuing internal reports predicting that climate change—caused by the burning of their fossil fuel products—would create ‘significant changes’ in ‘precipitation patterns’ that ‘would impact on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies’ and could have ‘major social, economic, and political consequences.’ Yet fossil fuel companies lied to the public about this reality for decades, and continue to block the climate action we need to address this crisis. These companies need to face accountability.”

Teachers earned 25.2 percent less than comparable college graduates in other professions in 2025, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The relative teacher pay penalty — which is adjusted for education, experience, and demographic characteristics — was a slight improvement from 2024’s record high of 26.9 percent, but still more than four times the 6.1 percent penalty recorded in 1996.

In other words, teachers earned on average 74.8 cents on the dollar in 2025 compared with other college graduates — much less than the relative 93.9 cents on the dollar that teachers earned in 1996. When broken down by gender, the relative teacher pay penalty was 34.5 percent for men and 20.0 percent for women.

Overall, simple inflation-adjusted weekly wages for public school teachers fell 6.2 percent over the last three decades, while wages for other college graduates rose 28.8 percent over the same period.

Teachers were paid less than other college graduates in every state, with relative teacher pay gaps ranging from 10.4 percent in Rhode Island to 40.7 percent in Colorado. The teacher pay penalty was at least 25 percent in 25 states.

While teachers typically receive better benefits packages than other professionals, this only partially offsets the growing wage penalty that teachers face. After accounting for the difference in benefits, teachers’ total compensation penalty was 14.5 percent in 2025.

As the report explains, providing teachers with competitive pay is necessary to retain and attract qualified workers. While there are many important factors impacting teacher retention and recruitment, pay consistently lands near the top of any list.

Reversing these trends will require targeted, sustained investment in public education at the local, state, and federal levels. It will also require stronger support for public-sector collective bargaining, which has long been a driver of better pay and job quality for teachers.

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