Ukraine's Deadliest Week, Tariff Standoff, and TikTok's $400 Million Bill

MayaMorning, everybody. Welcome back to The Morning Rundown.

DavidGlad you're here with us. Heavy show today, but a full one.

MayaYeah. So overseas, there's a strike in Ukraine we've got to talk about, and honestly-

DavidMm-hmm.

Maya... it's brutal. We'll look at what the EU's threatening in response.

DavidAnd Iran's out there claiming victory while the White House shifts to squeezing them financially instead. We'll look at what that actually means.

MayaThen closer to home, the Canada trade talks just collapsed. Tariffs are already moving.

DavidFollow the money on that one. There's a beef exemption tucked in there too, right before the midterms.

MayaSuspicious timing?

DavidMaybe just a coincidence.

MayaOkay, okay. We'll also touch on the ballroom fight at the Supreme Court and mail ballot rules getting tighter.

DavidAnd later, TikTok's writing a four hundred million dollar check to settle a kid's privacy case. We'll ask if that number even changes anything.

MayaPlus, a quick note on the Clancy trial, and apparently Meghan Markle's headed back to acting.

DavidLots on deck.

MayaYeah. Let's start with Kryvyi Rih. Start with this one detail because it needs to sit for a second. In Kryvyi Rih yesterday, Russian drones hit a shopping center, and while rescue workers were still pulling people out, a second wave of drones hit the same spot.

DavidTimed for the responders.

MayaThat's Zelenskyy's own description, a double tap. Reuters has the toll at sixteen dead, about a hundred and thirty wounded. AP reported the regional military chief-

DavidBGHOST1mhm.

MayaOleksandr Hanzha saying twenty-three of the injured are children.

DavidTwenty-three kids among a hundred and thirty hurt. That's not a stat. That's a school bus.

MayaAnd that's Zelenskyy's own hometown, Kryvyi Rih, central Ukraine, nowhere near the front line.

DavidSo this wasn't a stray hit near military infrastructure. It's a mall full of civilians struck twice.

MayaThe Guardian quoted the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas. She called the pattern terror by design and said she wants the harshest sanctions package the EU's put together yet.

DavidI've heard harshest sanctions yet a lot of times out of Brussels at this point.

MayaSure. But the violence didn't pause for the outrage either. AP reported the next day brought at least five more deaths. A ballistic missile hit Kyiv, killed one person. Russia's defense ministry claims it hit a rail depot. Four dead in Zaporizhzhia, two more in the Kyiv region.

DavidAnd on the other side, Russian officials say a Ukrainian drone killed two children in Krasnodar.

MayaRight. So nobody's hands are clean day to day, but hitting the same civilian target twice on purpose to catch first responders, that's a different category of thing.

DavidMeanwhile, Iran is out there taking a victory lap over its war with us.

MayaBold move.

DavidCBS reported Iran's president said the world has approved of Iran's win against the US. And in the same breath, Vice President Vance is calling economic pressure the most effective tool that we have.

MayaSo Tehran says it won the fight, and Washington just changed which fight it's fighting.

DavidThat's about right. And sanctions aren't symbolic slaps. Every round chokes off a bank, a buyer, a tanker route.

MayaRight.

DavidFollow where the oil actually gets sold, and you'll see how much room Tehran has left to maneuver.

MayaBut does that pressure change what the regime does, or does it just squeeze regular Iranians while the leadership digs in? Probably some of both, if I'm honest. Sanctions are slow, and the wrong people usually feel it first. But Washington's reaching for the economic lever instead of a military one for a reason. Tehran just went through a war with Israel and the US, and reopening that isn't something either side is racing toward. It's slow, unglamorous pressure. It doesn't lead the news the way another airstrike would. So it's pressure without another round of missiles.

DavidExactly the trade, and you'll hear that same lever, pressure without missiles, pulled again in a few minutes on a country we usually get along just fine.

MayaThat's a tease.

DavidI'm just saying. Tehran gets sanctions, Ottawa's getting something else entirely, and it kicked off at midnight.

MayaA neighbor's a very different thing to squeeze than a country we're not even speaking to. Speaking of pressure without troops on the ground, Canada's next. Talks just collapsed.

DavidWait, collapsed? Like done, done? The New York Times is reporting Washington's already put new tariffs in place, and the Canadian PM pulled himself out of the room.

MayaSo there's still a clock running on this.

DavidThere was a midnight deadline, and by The Times' own reporting, some of the numbers on the table are running as high as fifty percent on Canadian goods.

MayaFifty percent.

DavidMm-hmm.

MayaOkay, that's not an abstract policy thing. That's your grocery cart.

DavidThink of it like refinancing at a worse rate you didn't ask for. Somebody's paying the spread, and it's not the government.

MayaRight. It's whoever's buying lumber or produce or a car with Canadian parts in it.

DavidAnd here's the twist. Politico's reporting the administration just paused a quota tariff on three hundred thousand tons of imported beef.

MayaWait, they're tightening on one side and loosening on the other?

DavidRight before the midterms, according to Politico. Cheaper beef at the register while other prices climb elsewhere.

MayaSo it's tariffs à la carte.

DavidPretty much. Domestic ranchers aren't thrilled. Politico notes they're expecting pushback from farm states over that flood of imported product.

MayaMakes sense. You can't cut prices for shoppers without somebody upstream taking the hit.

DavidThat's the trade-off nobody puts on a bumper sticker.

MayaOkay. Switching to something that got way less coverage than it should, the mail-in voting rule.

DavidYeah. The Guardian had this. USPS is tightening how mail ballots are handled.

MayaAnd they're doing it even with court orders already blocking parts of the change?

DavidThe rule ties ballot delivery to states handing over voter information to the federal government, according to The Guardian.

MayaI mean, chain of custody on ballots isn't a crazy thing to want.

DavidIt isn't. Every state audits ballots differently, and if you're the postal service, you want a clean paper trail before you're the one blamed for a lost batch.

MayaSure, but if courts already said hold off and they're moving anyway

DavidThat's the actual fight, not whether people can vote, whether an agency can outrun an injunction.

MayaGot it. That's a legal fight worth watching, not a doom story.

DavidSpeaking of courts moving slow, the Supreme Court just weighed in on the White House ballroom.

MayaOh, this again.

DavidThe Washington Post reported the court issued a stay letting construction keep going while it considers the actual lawsuit.

MayaSo the wrecking crew wins today, the lawyers argue tomorrow.

DavidBasically, building first, ruling later.

MayaAt least somebody's getting something built this week.

DavidBetween Canada, the ballot rule, and the ballroom, money, paperwork, or the courts, government's using all three to move its agenda.

MayaAnd that thread doesn't stop with governments. Coming up, it's a company writing the check. Switching gears, TikTok just wrote a check nobody wants to write.

DavidHow big are we talking?

MayaFour hundred million. The DOJ settled with TikTok and ByteDance over scooping up data on kids under thirteen.

DavidFour hundred million?

MayaThe BBC reported it's one of the largest child privacy settlements on record, tied to a lawsuit that goes back to twenty twenty-four. The Biden administration originally filed it.

DavidOkay, but does a fine that size actually change anything in a company this big, or is it just a line item?

MayaRight. Lesson learned or rounding error?

DavidTikTok's parent is valued in the hundreds of billions. Four hundred million is a Tuesday.

MayaAs a parent, I want it to sting. I want somebody there to actually feel it.

DavidI hear you, but when the penalty's smaller than the profit from doing the thing wrong, you haven't stopped the behavior, you've priced it.

MayaYeah, that's the part that bugs me.

DavidThe math still checks out for them, penalty included.

MayaQuick note before we move on, the Lindsay Clancy trial. The New York Times reports the defense rested Friday, and CBS says prosecutors are calling rebuttal witnesses now.

DavidYeah.

MayaWe'll leave it there. It's a hard case, and it's not over.

DavidYeah. No need to go further into that one right now.

MayaOkay. Palate cleanser. The Hollywood Reporter says Meghan Markle is eyeing a return to acting.

DavidAfter how many years away?

MayaShe stepped back in twenty seventeen when she got engaged to Harry, and now the reporter says he and Harry are moving back to the UK.

DavidFull circle, from Suits to Windsor and maybe back to a script.

MayaI mean, come on. That's a comeback story.

DavidOne more clock worth watching before we go, that Canada tariff deadline. Worth checking where those rates land by tonight.

MayaDefinitely one to keep an eye on. That mall strike in Kryvyi Rih is sticking with me. Twenty-three kids-

DavidMm-hmm

Maya... among the wounded, and Brussels already talking sanctions.

DavidYeah, and that Iran-Canada parallel we walked through, pressure without missiles, showing up twice in one show, and probably not the last time.

MayaPlus those fifty percent tariffs hit grocery carts, not just spreadsheets.

DavidAnd four hundred million barely dents TikTok's pocket, if we're being honest.

MayaFair point. Anyway, that's the rundown for today.

DavidSubscribe, drop us a review, and send us to a friend who needs their news fast.

MayaThanks for starting your morning with us.

DavidWe'll get you tomorrow.