Senate pushes child online safety bill as Democrats head to Houston

The Senate is here this week, the House is out. The President Joe Biden is traveling to Texas today with stops in Austin and Houston, where he will pay tribute to the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat-Texas). Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Atlanta on Tuesday and then in Houston on Thursday for Jackson Lee’s funeral. The former president Donald Trump will hold a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.

Were going to focus on the Senate, which is poised to pass a major social media security and privacy bill in the final days before senators leave for the August recess.

But first, Let’s talk about the funeral of Jackson Lee, who passed away on July 19. Jackson Lee, 74, recently revealed that she was being treated for pancreatic cancer.

An unforgettable figure Jackson Lee served in Congress for 29 years, serving on the Judiciary, Budget and Homeland Security committees. Lee ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Houston last year. However, she managed to win the Democratic primary in the 18th District in March and was on track for re-election in November.

Memorial services For Jackson Lee this Thursday in Houston will be a major event.

Harris delivers a eulogy, according to her office. Former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi will all be present. President of the CBC Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) is also expected to be present.

A military plane will depart from Washington to transport lawmakers to the funeral, although it is unclear how many members will travel from Washington given that the House is in recess.

Jackson Lee will lie in state at Houston City Hall for 10 hours Monday, the AP reported.

Harris and Jackson Lee were both members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first black college sorority. It has more than 360,000 members in 12 countries.

Back to the Senate: If you’ve been following big tech companies in Congress closely, you know that Congress has struggled for years to pass legislation to regulate social media companies.

But this week, The Senate is taking a big step in that direction. While it’s not yet clear what the House will do, the Senate will vote Tuesday afternoon on — and overwhelmingly pass — two long-stalled bills aimed at protecting children on social media platforms and strengthening privacy protections.

The packet The bill includes the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It is being hailed as a groundbreaking effort to hold big tech companies accountable for the harms their platforms may inflict on minors. The bill represents a major overhaul of how the federal government regulates the platforms that millions of Americans use every day.

Under KOSA, Social media platforms would be required to take steps to protect underage users from potentially harmful content. This includes limiting the platforms’ most addictive features. COPPA would effectively prohibit these companies from handing over minors’ personal data that would otherwise be used for targeted advertising.

With the house Already on hold until September, it will be some time before the measure could possibly reach Biden’s desk. Mike Johnson He told us last week that he would like to “get it done,” but he made no commitments. Still, a large bipartisan victory in the Senate would put strong pressure on the House of Representatives to act.

Supporters of the package could face opposition from radical conservatives and progressives concerned about civil liberties issues.

In the Senate, Sense. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have expressed objections to KOSA, particularly on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment and gives too much power to the executive branch to determine what types of content should be censored.

Paul and Wyden The senators’ objections are not expected to have a major impact on the Senate vote margin Tuesday afternoon. However, their views are likely shared by a much larger number of members of the House, making passage of the bill more complicated.

There could be an effort by big tech companies to water down or even block this legislation, although there are of course enormous political sensitivities around the issue.

We will note A sweeping bipartisan data privacy bill died in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month. Opposition from big tech companies has also killed antitrust laws in the House and Senate in the past. But Congress overwhelmingly passed a forced divestment bill targeting social media giant TikTok in April.

One more thing : The Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees will hold a joint hearing tomorrow morning on the assassination attempt against Trump.

It is the Senate’s first public hearing on the issue, coming a week after the former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle She was roundly criticized by both parties for her uncommunicative testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Cheatle resigned the next day.

Gasket The Senate Judiciary Committee and HSGAC hearing will include testimony from Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director of the secret service, and Paul Abbate, the deputy director of the FBI.

— Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman