With the selection of JD Vance for Trump’s VP, we should be even more worried about KOSA and other censorship bills

On Monday Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate. With polling showing a very real likelihood of a Trump/Vance presidency, Fight for the Future calls on Congress to do everything it can today to minimize the harm such an administration can do to marginalized people. This includes fixing or rejecting KOSA, and voting no on anything that increases the surveillance capabilities of the U.S. Government.

As a member of Congress, Vance has been a champion of hate against LGBTQ people and a crusader against abortion. While we fight for progress, the elevation of Vance shows the real threat of backsliding into the U.S.’s checkered past of adopting policies that target individuals merely for their identity. Fight has, throughout its history, warned of the dangers of surveillance and censorship. This includes opposing the Kids Online Safety Act (“KOSA”) because of its duty of care provision that could be used by an administration to pressure companies to censor LGBTQ content, delist LGBTQ creators, and suppress other politically targeted content like information about abortion. Our Director, Evan Greer, and Anna Bonesteel recently published an op-ed for Them on KOSA’s threat to LGBTQ Youth.

Vance also increases the connections between Trump and The Heritage Foundation. Vance has appeared at Heritage events and even wrote an introduction to one of their reports. The Heritage Foundation has claimed that “Big Tech Turns Kids Trans” and in Project 2025 links being transgender to pornography and the sexualization of children, while calling for the jailing of all pornographers:

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.

The following statement can be attributed to Evan Greer (she/her), Director of Fight for the Future: 

“Bills like KOSA that empower the government to censor speech are always dangerous. But in the hands of a potential Trump/Vance administration it’s clear these bills would be deadly for LGBTQ youth, people seeking abortion, and marginalized people in general. Our biggest fear has always been a Trump administration fueled by policies from the Heritage Foundation and filled with people who want to push on the gas in driving the country towards division and hate. That fear is now made real. We need democrats and everyone that cares about human rights to be hitting the brakes on anything that could be used to further a Trump/Vance campaign of hate. The biggest priority should be to fix KOSA to make sure it cannot be abused by a Trump/Vance FTC. If that cannot be done, then KOSA should not pass.”