The bill
KIDS Act
HR. 7757, 119th Congress — read as touching Big Tech Platforms.
KIDS Act
Download PDFBill ID: 119/hr/7757
Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Sponsored by
Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2]
ID: G000558
Follow the money
The sponsor
Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2]
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
$78,800 raised
21 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
95% match to Project 2025
This bill's text tracks the "Federal Trade Commission" section, p. 908-910 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
July 12, 2026
Introduced
Committee Review
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
📍 Current Status
Next: Both chambers must agree on the same version of the bill.
🎉
Passed Congress
🖊️
Presidential Action
⚖️
Became Law
📚 How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the geniuses in Congress. The KIDS Act, because who doesn't love a good acronym? Let's dissect this mess, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill claims to protect children and teens online, empower parents, and strengthen families. How noble. In reality, it's just another attempt to regulate the internet while pretending to care about kids' safety. Think of it as a Band-Aid on a bullet wound – it might look nice, but it won't actually fix anything.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill is a laundry list of vague definitions, toothless regulations, and feel-good provisions that will do little to nothing to address the actual issues. Some highlights include:
* Section 103: Technology verification measures, because who needs encryption when you can have "verification"? * Section 213: Addressing harms to minors, which is just a fancy way of saying "we'll try to do something, maybe, if we feel like it." * Section 602: Online collection, use, disclosure, and deletion of personal information of children and teens. Sounds great, until you realize it's just a rehashing of existing laws with some minor tweaks.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects:
* Tech companies, who will pretend to comply while finding ways to exploit loopholes. * Parents, who will be placated by the illusion of protection for their kids. * Kids themselves, who will continue to find ways to circumvent any attempts at regulation. * Lobbyists, who will make bank from "advising" lawmakers on how to "improve" the bill.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a classic case of legislative placebo effect. It might make some people feel better, but it won't actually cure the disease. The real impact will be:
* More bureaucratic red tape for tech companies, which will lead to more lobbying and campaign contributions. * A false sense of security for parents, who will think they're doing something to protect their kids when in reality, they're just enabling the status quo. * Continued exploitation of kids' personal data by corporations, because let's be real, that's what this is all about – money.
In conclusion, the KIDS Act is a farce, a Potemkin village of legislation designed to make lawmakers look good while doing nothing to address the actual problems. It's a symptom of a deeper disease: the corruption, cowardice, and stupidity that plagues our political system. So, go ahead and pass this bill, Congress. It'll be just another drop in the ocean of meaningless legislation that will continue to fail our children.
Generated using Llama 3.1 70B (Dr. Haus personality)
💰 Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
Total Contributions
$78,800
19 donors
PACs
$0
Organizations
$1,000
Committees
$0
Individuals
$77,800
No PAC contributions found
1
BL PARTNERS GROUP, LLC
$1,000
No committee contributions found
1
SMITH, BRAD
$6,600
2
ERGEN, CANTEY MRS.
$6,600
3
ERGEN, CHARLES MR.
$6,600
4
DUNN, TIMOTHY M. MR.
$5,000
5
WALK, CLAIRE MRS.
$5,000
6
TREXLER, ALLISON
$5,000
7
OSGOOD, STEVEN
$5,000
8
FOSTER, JEFF
$5,000
9
ARNOLD, JOHN
$3,300
10
ARNOLD, LAURA
$3,300
11
BERTA, VINCE
$3,300
12
CHANDLER, DAVID
$3,300
13
GLASS, LARRY
$3,300
14
NATCHER, JOE
$3,300
15
PIERCE, DARRELL
$3,300
16
SIMPSON, MICHAEL
$3,300
17
BATES, HUNTER
$3,300
18
RICKS, DAVID MR.
$3,300
Cosponsors & Their Campaign Finance
This bill has 1 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
Rep. Pallone, Frank [D-NJ-6]
ID: P000034
Top Contributors
30
1
PUYALLUP TRIBE OF INDIANS
OrganizationTACOMA, WA
$3,300
May 22, 2024
2
PUYALLUP TRIBE OF INDIANS
OrganizationTACOMA, WA
$2,900
Jun 6, 2023
3
SHAKOPEE MDEWAKANTON SIOUX COMMUNITY
OrganizationPRIOR LAKE, MN
$1,650
Jun 18, 2024
4
SHAKOPEE MDEWAKANTON SIOUX COMMUNITY
OrganizationPRIOR LAKE, MN
$1,650
Jun 1, 2023
5
CHOCTAW NATION OF OKLAHOMA
OrganizationDURANT, OK
$1,000
Oct 16, 2024
6
CHOCTAW NATION OF OKLAHOMA
OrganizationDURANT, OK
$825
Sep 29, 2023
7
HOLMDEL FUNERAL HOME
OrganizationHOLMDEL, NJ
$500
Dec 1, 2023
8
MISSISSIPPI BAND OF CHOCTAW INDIANS
OrganizationCHOCTAW, MS
$500
Dec 27, 2023
9
HIGHLANDS DEMOCRATIC CLUB
OrganizationHIGHLANDS, NJ
$500
Sep 10, 2024
10
PUYALLUP TRIBE OF INDIANS
OrganizationTACOMA, WA
$400
May 22, 2024
Donor Network - Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2]
PACs
Organizations
Individuals
Politicians
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Loading...
Showing 41 nodes and 44 connections
Total contributions: $44
Top Donors - Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2]
Showing top 19 donors by contribution amount
1 Org18 Individuals
Industry Impact
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 2 helped, 3 harmed.
- −Big Tech Platformsconfidence 0.80
Section 213 and Section 214 impose new requirements on covered platforms to address harms to minors, which may increase costs for big tech companies like Meta/Facebook and Google/Alphabet.
- +Hospitals & Health Systemsconfidence 0.80
Section 522 mentions online safety education for minors, which could be beneficial for hospitals and health systems in promoting healthy internet habits among young patients.
- −Telecommunicationsconfidence 0.60
Section 303 requires online video game providers to provide safeguards to parents, which may also apply to telecommunications companies that offer gaming services.
- −Pharmaceuticalsconfidence 0.60
Section 514 discusses the prevalence of fentanyl access on social media platforms, which could negatively impact pharmaceutical companies' reputation and sales if they are perceived as not doing enough to prevent opioid misuse.
- +Long-Term Care & Nursing Homesconfidence 0.50
The bill's focus on protecting minors' online safety and privacy may also benefit long-term care providers by reducing the risk of cyber attacks and data breaches, which could compromise sensitive patient information.
Who funds the sponsor on these industries
For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-KY-2])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.
Industries this bill HELPS
- from 17 contributions
- TARR, MARK$1,561
- DARBY, JOHN$1,500
- COLTHARP, DOUGLAS$1,000
- BAIRD, ANDREW$520
- BRUNER, KRISTY$500
- from 2 contributions
- POLLACK, RICHARD$1,000
- LEVIN, MICHAEL DR.$1,000
Industries this bill HARMS
- Telecommunications$13,700from 5 contributions
- ERGEN, CANTEY MRS.$6,600
- ERGEN, CHARLES MR.$6,600
- BARLOON, WILLIAM$500
- Pharmaceuticals$9,300from 8 contributions
- RICKS, DAVID MR.$3,300
- HAKIM, ANAT$1,000
- CHASE, KIP$1,000
- ASAY, DEREK MR.$1,000
- PERETTIE, CINDY$1,000
- from 1 contribution
- ROSSI, NICHOLAS$500
Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
Federal Trade Commission
Very Strong
Vector: 68%Pages: 908-910AI Enhanced
AI Analysis:
"The KIDS Act directly enacts the Project 2025 FTC policy’s goals by strengthening COPPA, mandating parental consent and tools, regulating platform contracts and advertising with minors, and addressing online harms through safeguards and oversight."
Key themes:child online protectionCOPPA reformparental consent/toolsplatform safeguardsunfair trade practices
— 875 — Federal Trade Commission Protecting Children Online. The FTC has long protected children in a variety of different contexts. Internet platforms profit from obtaining information from children without parents’ knowledge or consent—and social media’s effect on the well-being of American children is well-documented. Around 2012, American teens experienced a dramatic decline in wellness. Depression, self-harm, suicide attempts, and suicide all increased sharply among U.S. adolescents between 2011 and 2019,16 with similar trends worldwide.17 The increase occurred at the same time that social media use moved from rare to ubiquitous among teens,18 making social media a prime suspect for the sudden rise in mental health issues among teens. In addition, excessive social media use is strongly linked to mental health issues among individuals. Several studies strongly support the notion that social media use is a cause, not just a correlation, of subjective well-being and poor mental health.19 Social media and other large platforms form millions of contracts every year with American children. And even though a minor can void most contracts into which he or she enters, most jurisdictions have laws that hold minors accountable for the benefits received under the contract. Thus, children can make enforceable contracts for which parents could end up bearing responsibility. Targeting chil- dren to create potentially harmful contracts or making parents responsible for such contractual relationships is an unfair trade practice. The FTC, therefore, has the authority, interest, and duty to protect children online from such contractual relationships. l The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract- making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent. Currently, the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)20 regulates the information internet firms can obtain from children. COPPA fails because it (1) only protects children under the age of 13, leaving older teenagers completely unprotected and (2) only prohibits platforms from collecting information from a child using “actual knowledge” rather than abiding by the “constructive knowledge” standard, which prohibits collecting information from a user reasonably assumed to be underage. The FTC has rulemaking authority under this statute but has done little with this authority, nor can it—given the statutory constraints. However, l The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority.
Federal Trade Commission
Strong
Vector: 67%Pages: 908-910AI Enhanced
AI Analysis:
"The KIDS Act strongly aligns with Project 2025's FTC policy objective of protecting children online by updating COPPA, requiring parental consent mechanisms, addressing harmful platform practices, and empowering parents—directly supporting the FTC's role in regulating unfair or deceptive practices involving minors."
Key themes:child online protectionCOPPA reformparental consentFTC enforcementharmful platform practices
— 875 — Federal Trade Commission Protecting Children Online. The FTC has long protected children in a variety of different contexts. Internet platforms profit from obtaining information from children without parents’ knowledge or consent—and social media’s effect on the well-being of American children is well-documented. Around 2012, American teens experienced a dramatic decline in wellness. Depression, self-harm, suicide attempts, and suicide all increased sharply among U.S. adolescents between 2011 and 2019,16 with similar trends worldwide.17 The increase occurred at the same time that social media use moved from rare to ubiquitous among teens,18 making social media a prime suspect for the sudden rise in mental health issues among teens. In addition, excessive social media use is strongly linked to mental health issues among individuals. Several studies strongly support the notion that social media use is a cause, not just a correlation, of subjective well-being and poor mental health.19 Social media and other large platforms form millions of contracts every year with American children. And even though a minor can void most contracts into which he or she enters, most jurisdictions have laws that hold minors accountable for the benefits received under the contract. Thus, children can make enforceable contracts for which parents could end up bearing responsibility. Targeting chil- dren to create potentially harmful contracts or making parents responsible for such contractual relationships is an unfair trade practice. The FTC, therefore, has the authority, interest, and duty to protect children online from such contractual relationships. l The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract- making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent. Currently, the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)20 regulates the information internet firms can obtain from children. COPPA fails because it (1) only protects children under the age of 13, leaving older teenagers completely unprotected and (2) only prohibits platforms from collecting information from a child using “actual knowledge” rather than abiding by the “constructive knowledge” standard, which prohibits collecting information from a user reasonably assumed to be underage. The FTC has rulemaking authority under this statute but has done little with this authority, nor can it—given the statutory constraints. However, l The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority. — 876 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Other conservatives are more skeptical concerning the effect of online expe- rience on the young, comparing the concern about social media to concern about video games, television, and bicycle safety. They point out, as does Cato fellow Jeffrey A. Singer, that the psychiatric profession has yet to designate “internet addiction” or “social media addiction” as a mental disorder in the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR).21 These con- servatives also maintain that calling for regulation undermines conservatives’ calls for parental empowerment on education or vaccines as well as personal parenting responsibility. In addition, some of the methods used to regulate children’s internet access pose the risk of unintended harms. For instance, age verification regulations would inevitably increase the amount of data collection involved, increasing privacy con- cerns. Users would have to submit to platforms proof of their age, which raises the risks of data breach or illegitimate data usage by the platforms or bad actors. Limited-government conservatives would prefer the FTC play an educational role instead. That might include best practices or educational programs to empower parents online. Antitrust Enforcement. As is evidenced by a relentless focus on bringing Big Tech lawsuits, state attorneys general (AGs) are far more responsive to their con- stituents than is the FTC. Such a “boots on the ground” approach would benefit the FTC enormously. Practically, this would mean establishing a distinct role in the FTC Chairman’s office focused on state AG cooperation and inviting state AGs to Washington, D.C., to discuss enforcement policy in key sectors under the FTC’s jurisdiction: Big Tech, hospital mergers, supermarket mergers, and so forth. FTC regional offices are substantially more in touch with local issues. Over the past few decades, the reach and influence of regional offices has shrunk dramati- cally. The FTC should consider returning authority to these offices. Some conservatives however are less supportive of this idea. Conservative enthusiasm for the idea of adding regional FTC offices to the states is a break from the majority conservative position. Endorsing the federal government as a pre- mier job creator runs counter to decades of conservative opinion that holds that New Deal agencies and subsequent government bodies should never have been created in the first place, and that their red tape and interference is a dominant cause of economic inefficiency. Republicans used to seethe when Democrats tried to move federal offices into the states. In the early 1990s, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich fumed about Senator Robert Byrd’s campaign to transfer certain national intelligence facilities to West Virginia, calling it a “pure abuse of power.” Some contributors to this chapter would remind conservatives that the unseen mechanics of redistribution—by which taxpayer money paid to state employees is taken from taxpayers nationwide—is a drag on the economy of the entire country. Many conservatives fear that it would be impossible to uproot or even prune back
Foreword
Strong
Vector: 61%Pages: 37-39AI Enhanced
AI Analysis:
"The KIDS Act aligns closely with Project 2025's goal of protecting children and empowering parents by targeting online obscenity, enhancing parental controls, and strengthening privacy protections for minors, reflecting shared priorities of family safety and parental authority."
Key themes:child online safetyparental empowermentobscenity/pornography restrictionsdata privacy for minorsfamily protection
— 4 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN. The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics—the well-being of the American family. In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu- ral ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family. Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of Ameri- can poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve—but can’t—are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents. If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion. Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using gov- ernment alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies to accomplish this existential task. Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family. Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent. The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion — 5 — Foreword (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and con- servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, princi- pals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women. Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end. For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitu- tion and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country. But the pro-family promises expressed in this book, and central to the next conservative President’s agenda, must go much further than the traditional, narrow definition of “family issues.” Every threat to family stability must be confronted. This resolve should color each of our policies. Consider our approach to Big Tech. The worst of these companies prey on children, like drug dealers, to get them addicted to their mobile apps. Many Silicon Valley executives famously don’t let their own kids have smart phones.2 They nevertheless make billions of dollars addicting other people’s children to theirs. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create the digital
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.