GOP policy leads highlight child safety as key step in national AI legislation
Speaking on various panels during the Hill and Valley Forum, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks reiterated the administration’s chief AI policy priority: avoid a patchwork of regulations through one national standard.
“We have a big challenge ahead of us,” Kratsios said. “We have to find a way to create a bipartisan piece of legislation that can pass both houses of Congress and get to the president's desk. I think David and I are confident that the framework is an amazing starting point, and it touches a lot of points we've seen on both sides of the aisle, and we're optimistic that we can try to get something done this year.”
White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks echoed Kratsios’s comments.
“Probably the most salient area is child safety, or online child safety,” Sacks said. “I think our North Star on that issue has been parental empowerment. We want to ultimately allow parents to decide what's right for their children.”
Later during the conference, House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., also highlighted child safety as a top policy goal for Congress.
“The first thing is we have to deliver a single national framework that protects children, safeguards communities, supports creators and avoids a patchwork of state regulations,” Johnson said, referencing the pillars in the White House’s new policy recommendations. “We recognize that constant shifts in policy don't just confuse the market, they run contrary to our national interest.”
Congress has been working on two major child online protection bills, the Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, an update to the original 2011 law.
The Senate version of KOSA is currently a standalone bill that has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee and is awaiting a vote. The House version looks different, having been packaged with other online safety bills into the KIDS Act sponsored by Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky.
COPPA 2.0 has also been introduced in both chambers of Congress, with the Senate version passed on March 16. It is still pending action in the House.
Along with digital child protections, the administration has consistently pushed for a moratorium on AI laws at the state level to ensure Congress has a chance to pass unifying nationwide regulations. According to The Washington Post, administration officials and Republican lawmakers are trying to determine if existing online child safety legislation would be a suitable vehicle to reintroduce the AI moratorium.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., spearheaded an amendment to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer that would have placed a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state-level AI laws, but it proved widely unpopular and was removed in a 99-1 Senate vote.
Tony Samp, principal and the head of AI Policy at DLA Piper, said that the future of the omnibus kids online safety bill package is more challenging if the moratorium is present.
“There's a possibility that a package becomes an omnibus, but I'm not sure how successful that tactic would be, given everyone starts piling on making it harder to pass, especially if an AI moratorium is included,” Samp told Nextgov/FCW.
A separate industry source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer perspective on ongoing deliberations said they do not think that federal preemption of state AI regulations and AI child safety legislation are inextricably linked, citing individual dynamics of the bill and its popularity dictating its process.
“Federal preemption will certainly be a bargaining chip in negotiations if there is a larger AI package,” they said. “From recent proposals (e.g. the White House AI Framework and the Blackburn bill), it’s clear that there is bipartisan interest in AI safety for kids at a high-level, but there is no consensus around blanket preemption.”
Samp added that, as Congress mulls over acting on the White House AI Framework’s recommendations, time will tell where the AI moratorium will fit.
“Congress will now need to turn these recommendations into legislative text where the devil is in the details and actual negotiations can happen,” Samp said. “Only then will we know what’s in the realm of possible for an AI package, and kids’ safety will certainly be part of that negotiation.”
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