The top health official in the US is urging Congress to pass legislation that would stamp social media apps with a surgeon general’s warning “stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents," he wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times yesterday.

Upping the pressure: Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s push for a warning label follows years of alarm-sounding with his strongest appeal to lawmakers yet.

• In his statement, Murthy referenced a 2019 study that found risks of depression doubled among teens who scroll for more than three hours per day, and a 2023 Gallup poll showing that US teens log a daily average of 4.8 hours on social media.
• “Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” Murthy wrote, alluding to driverless car permits getting rescinded, Boeing groundings and listeria-related dairy recalls this year.

Adding a warning label is likely to make some parents think twice about unsupervised scrolling, according to a recent Brookings study. Still, Murthy acknowledged that it wouldn’t be enough to make social media a kid-friendly space. So, he also asked Congress to pass measures that would:

• Protect minors from online abuse and exposure to inappropriate content, bar social media platforms from gathering sensitive data from child users, and set limits on features including push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scrolling.
• Require social media companies to be publicly transparent about their platform’s mental health effects and undergo independent safety audits.

Some states are already grinding. Laws enacted in Florida and Utah since March 2023 have raised the minimum age for social media account ownership. A recently passed New York bill that would ban companies from sharing children’s data and using algorithms in their feeds is awaiting the governor’s signature. More than 40 states have also sued Meta, alleging that it intentionally tries to get kids addicted to its platforms.—ML

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The US sued Adobe for making it too hard to cancel subscriptions. The government slapped the software company that makes Photoshop and Acrobat with a lawsuit yesterday, claiming it deceived consumers by shunting them into expensive annual subscription plans and hiding cancellation fees in the fine print. The suit, filed in California federal court, seeks civil penalties, an injunction, and more. Adobe told TechCrunch it plans to fight back in court, and its general counsel called its subscription terms “transparent” and its cancellation process “simple.”

Biden plans new protections for undocumented spouses of US citizens. President Biden is expected to announce a new immigration program today that would protect people who are in the US illegally and married to citizens from deportation, allow them to get work permits, and provide a path to legal permanent residency. This comes after Biden’s recent move to shut down asylum claims when illegal border crossings are high, as the president tries to thread the needle on an issue that is top of mind for many voters.

Netanyahu dissolved Israel’s war Cabinet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision after two of the five members of the Cabinet, assembled during the war in Gaza’s early days, quit recently over his handling of the war. The move was largely expected after Netanyahu’s rival, centrist politician Benny Gantz, left the Cabinet. Netanyahu now plans to turn to the larger security Cabinet about strategy, while still considering sensitive matters with smaller groups. The change potentially gives right-wing nationalist politicians, who oppose a cease-fire, a greater voice as Israel continues cease-fire negotiations with Hamas and tries to avoid a growing conflict with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border.

If your shell game goes beyond the circuits of Mario Kart, you may want to sit down. The Treasury Department announced a plan on Monday to target a popular tax loophole in an effort to cut down on high-end tax abuse, address the tax gap, and give the IRS some street cred.

What’s the loophole? Basis shifting, or moving assets between different partnerships (read: shell companies) for no economic reason other than to avoid taxes. To crack down on this so-called shell game, the IRS plans to beef up tax audits and regulations—changes that could rake in $50 billion in tax revenue over the next decade, according to Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. It could also help close the $160 billion tax gap (which represents the difference between what’s owed and what’s collected) that the agency blames on the top 1%.

How’d we get here? Congress gave the IRS $80 billion in 2022 to amp up customer service and expand enforcement (though Republicans took back $20 billion of that this year). The agency said the cash infusion gave it the resources to probe basis shifting.

Looking ahead…whether or not the IRS gets more funding to investigate instances of dodgy tax maneuvers will depend on what happens in November. President Biden wants an additional $104 billion for the IRS, while Republicans want to defund it.—CC

The lithium boom. One EV requires 10k smartphone batteries’ worth of lithium, and forecasts expect 350m+ EVs will be on the road by 2030. Well, EnergyX can extract 300% more lithium than today’s methods. That’s earned them $90m+ in investment from GM and others, and a $5m DOE grant for a newly announced US lithium plant. You’re still eligible to invest before their share price changes June 27.

AI drive-thrus are getting sent to the same dingy dungeon where Ronald McDonald has been confined for the past few years. McDonald’s will ax the AI voice ordering system it’s been testing at over 100 drive-thru locations through a partnership with IBM established in 2021, Restaurant Business reported.

The decision could be related to some AI-powered incompetence: TikTok is flooded with videos of McD’s drive-thru AI messing up in ways that a human would never. For example, one customer got nine sweet teas added to her order despite requesting just one after the AI picked up on audio from a neighboring drive-thru station.

Making fast food faster

Despite AI’s recent epic fails and product rollbacks by Big Tech, many fast-food brands are embracing the nascent tech to boost efficiency.

• Wendy’s is looking to expand its AI partnership with Google Cloud after robot cashiers shaved 22 seconds off average order times at one of the locations where they were piloted.
• McDonald’s is teaming up with Google to implement the AI chatbot Ask Pickles to guide employees through tasks, according to Bloomberg.

Looking ahead…McD’s won’t promise that you’ll never have to order from a robot again: It plans to continue exploring voice-activated AI technology.—SK

If you’ve been sniffling through the last several months, you’re not alone: A Bloomberg analysis of data from disease forecaster Airfinity found 13 communicable diseases are way above pre-pandemic levels around the globe. The data shows 44 countries and territories are suffering from at least one infectious disease surge that’s 10x worse (or more) than the pre-pandemic baseline. In the US, flu cases were up 40% in the last two seasons. Experts are still trying to determine why we’re all suddenly so full of mucus but the impact of coming out of lockdowns, disruptions in vaccinations, climate change, inequality, and overburdened healthcare systems are all considered factors.