House GOP Privacy Group to Focus on Comprehensive Bill
The House Commerce Committee’s new Republican working group will focus solely on comprehensive privacy legislation, and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., will remain the lead on kids privacy, Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., told us Thursday.
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House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., on Wednesday announced Joyce would lead the nine-member group. Joyce said the working group is an opportunity to gather stakeholder feedback and assess where the committee might succeed in 2025. More than 25 privacy-related stakeholders have reached out since the announcement, he said.
House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., told us the working group is “ridiculous,” given Elon Musk’s data-collection activities at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “What kind of a joke is this task force?” Pallone asked. Musk and DOGE have already seized Treasury Department payment system data, he said: “There’s no point in having [a working group] because they have already given all the data to everyone.”
Pallone in 2024 negotiated a bipartisan privacy bill with then-House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. The bill stalled due to opposition from House Republican leadership. Cantwell had little to say when reached Thursday about the Republican working group. “Go ahead,” she said.
Joyce said group members will meet during the Feb. 17-21 district work period. Ultimately, they want to deliver a framework for a comprehensive bill that will be an “endpoint,” he said: The group wants to align with Republicans before Democrats and Senate counterparts get involved.
Bilirakis said he plans to be involved in the working group, though he’s not a formal member. His office will provide the legislative feedback it gathered in 2024, he added. Bilirakis introduced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) with Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., last year. Joyce said he met with Bilirakis after the working group announcement, and Bilirakis will remain the point on kids' privacy.
Castor was previously noncommittal about signing onto the measure with Bilirakis in 2025 (see 2501150064). She told us Republicans should extend the working group’s scope to include Musk’s “unabated entry into federal agencies and our personal private data.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is preparing to reintroduce KOSA in the Senate with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. She believes they have resolved a lot of the free speech concerns from House Republicans, the lawmaker told us Tuesday. She doesn’t anticipate major changes to the version of the bill introduced in 2024.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told us they haven’t held substantive discussions with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.C., about getting floor time for their committee-passed Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) (S. 278) (see 2502050043).
“It has just come out of committee, so it is my intention to move it and pass it into law,” said Cruz. Schatz deferred to Cruz on discussions with Thune about floor time.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., was the only committee member to vote in opposition to KOSMA at the Feb. 5 markup. He told us Tuesday he wanted to put down a “place marker” to ensure there’s a broader discussion about the FCC’s E-Rate program, an affordable broadband initiative for schools and libraries. KOSMA would expand the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), an FCC-enforced statute aimed at protecting children’s data in schools and preventing access to harmful online content.
“I just wanted to put down my place marker because I am very concerned about E-Rate,” said Markey. He has concerns about the current administration’s approach to the subsidy program, and wants to have a discussion that deals with the “totality” of E-Rate.