It appears the dam is finally breaking as Republicans in the House advance a package of child safety bills that bereaving and aggrieved parents have waited years for. The House Energy and Commerce Committee revealed 19 bills to be considered in a legislative hearing, among them a version of the Kids Online Safety Act. From a generation-defining mental health crisis, a sexual exploitation pandemic, and now AI chatbots that fuel suicidal ideation, America’s kids have been devastated by Big Tech, aided by a Congress bogged down by excuses. Now, all that seems set to change. Or will it? An AI moratorium was first announced in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s reconciliation package earlier this year. The final version eventually failed 99-1, due in no small part to concerns from child safety advocates. Now, just as pressure from House leadership escalates to force a measure preempting state AI regulation into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), child safety bills are getting the green light. This invites a troubling question: Is Republican leadership attempting to use child safety as leverage to accomplish a greater goal of deregulating the AI industry before any federal safeguards are in place? As Politico Pro has reported, It is widely viewed by insiders on Capitol Hill that the child safety bills are being offered by Republican leadership to get child safety advocates to stand down in their opposition to Congress’ preempting states from regulating AI, despite numerous valid concerns raised by their citizens. Politics can’t wait for pure motives, however. Those who have been involved in campaigns around the country to make the internet safer for kids should welcome Congress’ sudden interest in child safety. But if this is a high-stakes negotiation—using America’s children as hostages—these should be our terms. Release the Kids Lawmakers should disentangle child safety from the pressure cooker of the NDAA and the battle over preemption. Industry lobbyists are using the opaque conditions that they have contrived to slip in poison pills and water down the child safety bills themselves, while also seeking to secure what they ultimately want: the power to strip states of the right to regulate AI systems. This is a raw deal, to put it lightly. But it’s also totally unnecessary. In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump himself said that Congress should use either the NDAA to establish a federal AI standard or, instead, Congress should seek to “pass another bill.” Neither child safety nor preemption of state AI regulation have anything to do with the NDAA. Detach preemption from the NDAA and detach child safety from both. Bills pursued through regular order give every American an opportunity to speak into their objectives and language. This is as true for a federal AI standard as it is for child safety package, which will be perhaps the two most consequential pieces of legislation of this generation. Both deserve care and democratic input. Decoupling these bills is also what Americans want. New polling by the Institute for Family Studies with YouGov finds that voters oppose including preemption in the NDAA by a margin of 3 to 1. Serious Problems Furthermore, several of the bills on offer suffer from serious problems, particularly the House version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0. After years of careful negotiation in the Senate, the House stripped out the duty of care provision from KOSA, which required social media companies to design their platforms with the wellbeing of children in mind. In a statement released Tuesday night, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., herself—who spent years working across the aisle with her senate colleagues to craft KOSA—panned the House version, saying that it “would not ensure Big Tech companies like Meta prioritize the safety of children over profit.” The duty of care must be restored, especially if KOSA is the centerpiece of the Congressional package.  COPPA 2.0 also needs strengthening. It inexplicably maintains 13 as the age of internet adulthood, while adulthood is 18 years of age in every other sphere of life. The upshot is that COPPA 2.0 allows children ages 13 or above to give internet platforms permission to use their personal data without any parental consent required. This fails to safeguard the vast majority of American adolescents from predatory surveillance by social media companies. In Harm’s Way Turning the personal and social lives of children into a source of revenue has helped build up exploitative social media empires, that strategically put millions upon millions of kids in harm’s way just to extract as much data from them as possible. A weakened KOSA and an insufficient COPPA 2.0 won’t do much to help children, and they are certainly not worth handcuffing states that seek to dutifully protect their citizens from abuses of AI. Tying child safety to preemption and the NDAA only gives Big Tech what it wants: leverage over the Republican base. Republican leadership should instead answer President Trump’s call by pursuing federal AI standards through a separate bill, where narrow preemption of state AI laws may be appropriate, while advancing child safety through a standalone legislative package. Our children deserve protection, not to be used as pawns in a grand game that gives Big Tech all the cards. The post Don’t Let Big Tech Hold America’s Kids Hostage appeared first on The Daily Signal.