Farewell, Dolly: Meta’s $16.68B settlement, a measles alarm and the end of two cultural eras — Week in review
When the week began, the big stories looked scattered — a court filing in California, a virus spreading in Pennsylvania, a costume pulled from Target shelves. By the weekend, a clear throughline had emerged: institutions are being held accountable, and America is saying goodbye to some of its most familiar faces.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay as much as $16.68 billion to resolve a lawsuit brought by dozens of states. The states accused the tech giant of designing its platforms to be addictive for minors, misleading consumers about the risks, and collecting children’s personal data without proper consent. Meta denied wrongdoing but accepted new obligations, including daily screen-time limits and nighttime blocks on young users’ accounts. The settlement, hammered out in a California federal court, spares the company from a high-stakes trial over its liability for teenage users. It does not, however, make the legal pressure disappear: thousands of additional lawsuits accusing social platforms of fueling a youth mental-health crisis are still working their way through courts around the country.
Health officials are also watching a familiar threat return. Pennsylvania reported two measles deaths this week — the first in the United States this year — and both patients were unvaccinated, according to the state health department. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says measles cases nationally are now at their highest level since the disease was declared eliminated from the U.S. nearly 30 years ago. The numbers are stark: 93% of cases have been in unvaccinated people, and nearly seven in 10 have been in people age 19 or younger.
Target, hit with another wave of online criticism, pulled a Halloween costume after social media users compared it to the blackface imagery of 19th-century minstrel shows. The costume, called Kids' Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown, was removed from stores and the company issued an apology. “We know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” Target said. It was another stumble for a retailer that has spent recent years navigating political and cultural minefields — from backlash over its Pride Collection in 2023 to its rollback of diversity and inclusion initiatives in 2024.
Country music lost one of its towering figures with the death of Dolly Parton. She was 80 and had been fighting cancer. Parton’s voice and songwriting made her a star, but her range made her an empire: 49 studio albums, 25 No. 1 hits and classics like “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5.” Her philanthropy, including a book-giving program that reaches millions of children, became as much a part of her legacy as her music. In 2023, she brushed off her own legend. “I’m like a favorite aunt,” she told USA TODAY. “I just hope I never let anybody down. I ain’t as important as some of you make me sound.”
The arts world lost another icon with the death of Tim Curry, who was 80 and had been in poor health. Curry’s performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” turned a low-budget B-movie into a generation-defining ritual. Audiences kept coming back to midnight screenings for the music, the costumes, the call-and-response and the message of liberation and individuality. Curry saw the lasting impact clearly. “It’s given a lot of people permission to be themselves,” he told USA TODAY in 2025. “To not dream it, be it. I would like to be remembered for that.”
And in Washington, the noise wasn’t coming from Congress for once. The city’s first motorsport event, the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, rumbled through the capital with President Donald Trump waving the green flag. Twenty-five drivers raced 147 laps past the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol and some of the country’s most famous museums. Kyle Kirkwood, 27, took the checkered flag. “This is a big moment,” he said. “It’s fitting that an American won, right?”