The briefing for Monday, August 17.

U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner held a rare, more than two-hour meeting on Sunday with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt, part of a renewed diplomatic push to salvage a stalled Gaza ceasefire. Kushner was joined by fellow envoys, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Board of Peace director Nickolay Mladenov, along with officials from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. The talks focused on Hamas's commitment to a 15-point U.S.-backed road map that calls for the group to disarm while Israel withdraws from Gaza.

The meeting comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the plan last week, a rare show of defiance against the Trump administration. Netanyahu has said Israeli forces will not withdraw from any Gaza position until Hamas is completely disarmed, while Hamas has linked surrendering its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, a position Israel's government rejects. A Hamas official told reporters the group is committed to the plan and awaiting the start of a 14-day negotiation period, but demanded Israel halt attacks and pull back to a so-called "yellow line" that divides Gaza. Israeli forces have moved well beyond that line and now control roughly 60% of the territory.

Eight regional powers, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, issued a joint statement Sunday condemning Israel's rejection of the road map and calling on the U.S. and the Board of Peace to take "immediate and concrete measures" to prevent any party from obstructing the plan. Kushner, Blair and Mladenov are scheduled to meet with Netanyahu on Monday to press the case for implementation.

At stake are the lives of roughly 2 million people in Gaza and the reconstruction of an enclave largely controlled by Israeli forces more than 10 months after major combat ended. A previous Kushner-brokered meeting with Hamas last year helped produce the initial ceasefire, but progress since then has stalled over the disarmament question, leaving other elements of the deal, including reconstruction and the deployment of international forces, on hold.

A federal trial set to begin Tuesday in Oakland, California, could become the most consequential of the thousands of lawsuits Meta faces over child safety on its platforms. Four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, are leading the case on behalf of dozens of states that sued three years ago, accusing the company of designing features that deliberately get children addicted to Facebook and Instagram and of collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent. The other 25 states involved in the broader litigation are expected to have separate trials later.

States are seeking damages that could theoretically reach $1.4 trillion, an amount nearly equal to Meta's entire market capitalization, along with changes to how the company operates its platforms. Legal experts say such a penalty is exceedingly unlikely in practice. "It's not plausible in the sense that Meta doesn't have that much money and could not get it," said Cornell Law School professor James Grimmelmann, noting that an award of that size would effectively bankrupt the company and hand ownership to the states. Meta has called the potential penalty "untethered to any claimed violation," arguing in a July court filing that "a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement."

The stakes are already high for Meta, which lost two pivotal child-harm cases earlier this year and reported a rare profit decline last month, partly due to $2.4 billion in legal expenses. An earlier bellwether case in Los Angeles resulted in a $6 million award to a single plaintiff who said she became addicted to social media as a child. Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said state attorneys general are "going for the gusto" in trying to set a definitive legal precedent and pursue extraordinary structural remedies.

Meta says it disputes the allegations and that the evidence will demonstrate its commitment to supporting young people. The outcome of the Oakland trial could shape how courts handle similar claims nationwide and set the tone for the dozens of remaining state cases still awaiting trial.

President Trump ordered the Pentagon on Sunday to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea just as the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills, involving about 18,000 South Korean soldiers, were set to begin. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the exercises are costly and "send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile" toward North Korea, citing his "very good relationship" with leader Kim Jong Un. He said it was "too late to cancel" the drills entirely but instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "substantially reduce" them.

Trump also linked the decision to South Korea's refusal to join U.S. efforts to pressure Iran on denuclearization, writing that he had asked Seoul to participate and was told "No thanks!" The move comes days after North Korea conducted its second ballistic missile test in a matter of days, tests banned under United Nations resolutions. North Korea's foreign ministry has called the joint U.S.-South Korean drills "a rehearsal for an aggressive war" and reiterated its right to self-defense.

The decision echoes a similar move during Trump's first term, when he suspended joint exercises with South Korea following his 2018 summit with Kim in Singapore, calling the war games "provocative." Since returning to office, Trump has expressed continued interest in reviving talks with the North Korean leader. U.S. military officials have said their training accounts for the added threat posed by North Korean troops returning from fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine, underscoring the complexity of the security picture even as the drills themselves are pared back.

After more than a year of lethal strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed more than 200 people, the Trump administration is now pursuing agreements to put U.S. forces on the ground in Latin America. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced during a visit to Panama last week that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil, following a similar arrangement with Ecuador launched in March. Guatemala has denied reaching such an agreement.

"It will be like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats," Hegseth said during a military drill in Panama. "Same effect on land." The administration has designated 20 Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations and has already sent forces into Venezuela and involved CIA agents in drug lab raids in Mexico. In Colombia, where Trump-aligned President Abelardo de la Espriella took office this month, Hegseth raised the possibility of U.S. forces joining strikes against the National Liberation Army, an ELN guerrilla group that carried out a drone attack on Colombian troops over the weekend.

Analysts are divided on the implications. Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank described the expansion as an effort to "legitimize the increased use of the U.S. military in the region," calling it "a very asymmetrical relationship" rather than genuine cooperation. William LeoGrande of American University said sustained combat operations alongside local forces would be "new and different," testing longstanding sensitivities over sovereignty and the presence of U.S. troops. Ecuador's government has pressed ahead with joint raids despite voters overwhelmingly rejecting foreign military bases in a November 2025 referendum, illustrating the political tensions the expanding campaign is likely to encounter elsewhere in the region.

Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir, fell to a record-low elevation of 3,519.91 feet on Saturday, dipping just below a previous record set in April 2023. The milestone comes about a week after Lake Mead, the river's other major reservoir, also hit a historic low, intensifying concerns over the Colorado River system that supplies water and power to more than 40 million people across seven states. Lake Powell is now more than 20 feet lower than it was at the start of the year, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation data.

The reservoir sits roughly 30 feet above the threshold at which its turbines would stop generating hydroelectric power, a point federal officials warned in April could be reached by the end of this year without "major intervention." The Bureau of Reclamation proposed a 10-year management plan in July that includes significant water cuts for Arizona, California and Nevada, but the seven states that rely on the river have yet to reach agreement on a long-term solution. Officials attribute the decline to persistent overuse, a record-dry winter and rising temperatures.

Both reservoirs are now at their lowest combined storage levels in nearly seven decades, matching conditions last seen in 1957 during construction of the Glen Canyon Dam that holds back Lake Powell. The falling water has already disrupted the reservoir's tourism industry, forcing marinas to relocate to deeper waters and prompting the closure or relocation of boat ramps, a visible sign of a crisis that continues to strain the region's water and power infrastructure.