Congress
House committee advances kids’ online safety and privacy proposals
The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a package of bills Thursday that would establish national age verification requirements and create new online safety and privacy protections for children.
Lawmakers voted 28-24, along party lines, to send the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act to the House floor for a full vote.
Republicans brushed aside Democratic opposition during the markup. Democrats argued the bill was too lenient on tech companies and would preempt any state regulations.
Senate versions of the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA 2.0, have bipartisan support, in contrast with the Republican-led House effort.
The committee spent more than two hours debating amendments that Democrats said were needed to strengthen the bill, none of which passed.
“In the past, we have shown that when the stakes are high enough, we can put politics aside and work together, and that is why it is unfortunate the slate of bills today before us is not bipartisan,” Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in his opening remarks. “But at the end of the day, members of Congress, our responsibility is to our constituents, especially our children.”
Guthrie’s KIDS Act combines about a dozen bills focused on product design standards intended to protect children online, as well as requiring age verification for adult content. It includes the latest version of KOSA.
Democrats and kids’ safety advocates argue the House version of KOSA is weaker than its Senate counterpart because it omits “duty of care” language that would require companies to design products with kids’ safety in mind.
“We want something better, stronger, something that is really relevant to the children that have been lost,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
The package would create new safety settings for children’s accounts, mandatory disclosure for AI chatbots, age verification requirements for sexual material, and directs federal agencies to study social media’s mental health impact.
The Senate on Monday overwhelmingly passed a long-awaited bipartisan housing bill, which is expected to set the legislation on a glide path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature as soon as this week.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed 85-5 and contains almost 60 individual provisions, aims to tackle housing affordability and boost housing supply and homeownership. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) voted “no.”
The legislation now moves on to the House, which could take up the bill for final passage as soon as Tuesday.
The legislation has become a pillar of Congress’ overall response to affordability concerns that have emerged as a key issue this midterm election year.
Despite broad, bipartisan support for the bill in both the House and Senate, the two chambers went back and forth on the legislation for months. Primary friction points developed over language establishing new restrictions on large Wall Street investors purchasing single-family homes, a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency and a slate of community banking deregulation initiatives, among other measures.
The bill was able to move forward last week after the four lawmakers leading the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement. The White House also announced support for the final version of the bill, which contains Trump’s top priority of limiting Wall Street’s footprint in the housing market.
Sen. Mitch McConnell will not return to the Senate this week, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Republican said Monday.
“Senator McConnell is still working closely with staff on Senate business and Kentucky matters as he continues his recovery. However, he will not be voting this week,” said the spokesperson, David Popp.
McConnell’s ongoing absence means planned Senate Appropriations Committee markups scheduled for later this week will be canceled, according to a committee aide who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of a formal announcement.
The former GOP leader was hospitalized earlier this month for undisclosed reasons and missed votes last week. The Senate is set to start a two-week recess later this week.
House Republican appropriators are publicly rebuking the Trump administration for seeking must-have military cash through a party-line reconciliation bill that’s not guaranteed to clear Congress.
In a report they plan to release later this week, obtained by Blue Light News, House appropriators warn that the White House is trying to fund “critical efforts” like weapons and military equipment through the party-line process, rather than using it to “scale up” military dollars beyond Congress’ regular government funding bills.
“This approach is risky and uncoordinated,” reads the report, an official addendum that goes along with the chamber’s defense funding bill for the fiscal year that starts in October.
In particular, appropriators criticized President Donald Trump’s budget request for splitting funding for the F-35 fighter, the most expensive program in Pentagon history, between the two bills.
The annual government funding bills and the reconciliation process are “entirely separate tracks, with different timelines, committees of jurisdiction, and approval processes,” the report notes.
Many Republican lawmakers are also doubtful GOP leaders will succeed in enacting another party-line package this year.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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