‘we are prepared to do this again’
Page F127From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 25 October 2026
Attorney general behind historic Meta fine says, "we are prepared to do this again."
As it ran on the front
On August 26, a coalition of 51 state and territorial attorneys general announced a proposed settlement requiring Meta to pay up to $17.1 billion over claims that its platforms were built to addict children. One of the attorneys general in that coalition called it a deal that would make social media "less dangerous for our kids."
By October 21, a federal judge in California was still arguing with Meta over something smaller than seventeen billion dollars: paper. The judge rejected the company's request to let artificial intelligence review its own internal files and criticized Meta for stamping "attorney-client privilege" on documents tied to the same child-safety claims — printed, according to the court record, on branded swag hats. The policy changes promised in August had not reached the files by October.…
…(cont) That same Wednesday, a New Mexico judge delivered a second number: $25 billion, in a data-privacy case the state filed back in 2021 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The state's attorney general called the order "one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in U.S. history." The same office noted the number still covers only a fraction of the $219.5 billion the underlying law allowed.
Add the two figures, from one company, inside eight weeks, and the running total is forty-two billion dollars.
On October 25, the Daily Caller profiled "the attorney general behind the historic Meta fine." The piece does not say which of the two cases earns that label. It quotes the office directly: "we are prepared to do this again."
Reconciled against the record, the sentence names a transaction, not a redesign order. Forty-two billion dollars has moved out of Meta and into settlement accounts across two dockets this year. The feed that was sued over in August is the feed still running in October.
The word is a forecast, and a forecast is already a line item in next year's enforcement budget. That is not enforcement. That is a subscription, and Meta is the one paying the invoice on time.
“This is the oldest script in the book, pal: write a number big enough to put on television, call it historic, and nobody checks whether a single setting on your kid's phone actually moved. Forty-two billion dollars came out of one company in eight weeks and none of it bought a redesign — the app just keeps running the way it ran before the first check cleared. The state collects, the feed stays the same, and "we'll do it again" means the collecting is the whole plan.”
“Look — a $17 billion settlement, a $25 billion judgment, that's accountability working exactly as designed, that's the system functioning — wait, the judge said they're still hiding documents under attorney-client privilege printed on swag hats? Forget I said "as designed."”
The receipts
A New Mexico judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for misleading users about data privacy—and while state Attorney General Raúl Torrez's office touted it as "one of the largest financial penalties against a corporation in US history," it's also just a fraction of the $219.5 billion warranted under the law. The case stems…
· $17 Billion Meta Settlement 'Will Make Social Media Less Dangerous for Our Kids,' Says California AG from the morgue, 26 Aug 2026
· Cali judge blasts Meta’s ‘attorney-client privilege’ swag hats, rejects company’s request to use AI for document review from the morgue, 21 Oct 2026
· I’m the attorney general of Washington state. Here’s how we’re protecting the midterm elections from the morgue, 8 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.