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.

Kristi Noem, the face of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, has been ousted as secretary of Homeland Security — but it’s not changing the calculus for Democrats when it comes to the agency shutdown.

The news that President Donald Trump was firing Noem and nominating Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) in her place broke as senators filed into the chamber to vote on advancing legislation that would reopen DHS — the GOP’s latest bid to pressure Democrats into dropping their demands for more guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol.

That procedural vote still failed, 51-45.

“The problems at ICE transcend any one individual … It goes beyond any one person,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. “You need to straighten out the whole agency. The rot there is deep.”

Democrats in the House are taking a similar stance ahead of a vote on their side of the Capitol to reopen DHS, which is scheduled for later Thursday afternoon.

“Of course this change in personnel is welcome. Kristi Noem was a disgrace, and we made clear what was going to happen one way or the other,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) at a news conference. “But let me also make clear, a change in personnel is not sufficient. We need a change in policy, and that has to be bold, dramatic, transformational and meaningful.”

Democrats have refused to shore up the votes to fund DHS following the fatal shootings in January of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota at the hands of federal immigration enforcement agents. Noem sought to cast the people killed, Renee Goode and Alex Pretti, as “domestic terrorists,” and refused to hold the officers accountable.

In the nearly three weeks since funding lapsed for DHS, Democrats and the White House have been trading proposals on possible changes to ICE and CBP operations, but there have so far been no breakthroughs in negotiations. Democrats are demanding new policies that would prohibit federal immigration agents from wearing masks, require officers to display identification and limit places where agents can seek to detain undocumented immigrants.

Democrats have also been insisting that ICE agents must use warrants signed by judges, which Republicans say is a nonstarter.

Just as the Noem exit was announced by Trump, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, sought unanimous consent to pass a separate bill from Democrats. It would fund parts of DHS — including the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the nation’s cybersecurity agency — but not the agency’s immigration enforcement operations.

ICE and CPB are still conducting operations during the shutdown using billions in funding from the megabill Republicans passed last summer.

“If Republicans keep refusing to ensure ICE and Border Patrol follow the same basic standards that police departments across America already follow, then we should at least fund TSA and FEMA while we press on with negotiations to protect Americans from violence at the hands of untrained, unidentifiable federal agents,” Murray said in a statement Thursday.

“TSA agents should not go without pay because Republicans are dragging their feet on basic reforms and insisting on cutting another blank check for Kristi Noem and [deputy White House chief of staff] Stephen Miller to terrorize Americans.”

Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, chair of the appropriations panel that oversees DHS funding, objected to Murray’s request.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune early in the day Thursday accused Democrats of “flatly rejecting any chance to sit down and actually talk about it.” Following news of Noem’s departure, he predicted it could be a gamechanger in shutdown-ending negotiations.

“Democrats have been complaining about that forever,” Thune said of Noem. “So this, to me is a huge development, I would think, in the funding conversation and hopefully they’ll get more earnest about coming to the table and trying to get a deal”

Schumer signaled that wouldn’t be the case.

“They’ve been stonewalling us on the most important issues, and those have to change, and they have to change them,” he said, referring to Republicans. “We have to change them by legislation, because any one person — I don’t trust any one person being in charge of this agency as long as Trump is president, given the policies he’s espoused, given how ICE has been structured.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, also said Republicans couldn’t be trusted.

“Oh God, it is not serious. I think that’s the best way for me to describe. It is not serious,” she said in an interview. “It is because [Republicans] don’t want to do this. They don’t want to make the kind of reforms that are necessary for this agency, which is out of control and killing American citizens.”

Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders asked Rep. Tony Gonzales to end his reelection bid, they said Thursday, after the Texas lawmaker admitted to an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.

The announcement comes a day after the House Ethics Committee launched an probe into Gonzales and Blue Light News reported that independent House investigators found a “substantial reason to believe” that he had a sexual relationship with the subordinate.

“The Ethics Committee has announced an investigation into Congressman Tony Gonzales’s conduct, and we urge them to act expeditiously,” Johnson and the three other highest-ranking House Republicans said in a statement. “In the meantime, Leadership has asked Congressman Gonzales to withdraw from his race for re-election.”

A Gonzales spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Gonzales has advanced to a May 26 runoff against GOP challenger Brandon Herrera, who narrowly outpolled him in Tuesday’s primary. He previously denied the accusations as “rumors” that “are completely untruthful” before admitting to the affair with Regina Santos-Aviles earlier this month.

“I made a mistake, and I had a lapse in judgment, and there was a lack of faith, and I take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales told radio host Joe Pagliarulo shortly after the primary.

He said the affair had “absolutely nothing to do with” Santos-Aviles’ death.

Gonzales has insisted he will not resign from Congress, as some of his GOP colleages have suggested. Notably, Johnson and the other GOP leaders did not call for Gonzales to resign — which would create a vacancy lasting months as they struggle to manage a narrow Republican majority.