Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called to ‘open the courtroom doors’ so parents can sue Meta, accusing founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of misleading Congress after whistleblowers detailed child safety failures on the company’s virtual reality (VR) platforms.

Two former Meta researchers told a Senate panel Tuesday that the company buried child harm evidence in VR, killed age-verification studies and let AI chatbots flirt with kids, prompting a bipartisan push to pass measures protecting minors online.

‘The claims at the heart of this hearing are nonsense; they’re based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative,’ a Meta spokesperson said. 

‘The truth is there was never any blanket prohibition on conducting research with young people and, since the start of 2022, Meta approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on issues including youth safety and well-being.’

Testifying before the Senate were Cayce Savage and Jason Sattizahn, both former Meta researchers.

Sattizahn alleged Meta routinely prioritized engagement and profit over safety — especially for kids — and manipulated or erased research showing harm.

He said despite attempts to curb data collection, the studies researchers could run still showed the company’s products endangered users.

Germany once banned Meta’s VR sales over data treatment concerns; after sales resumed in 2022, Sattizahn was sent to conduct research there.

He said he understood Meta was trying to show its VR headsets were safe for Germans.

But when research uncovered that underage children using Meta VR in Germany were subjected to demands for sex acts, nude photos and other acts children should never be exposed to, Sattizahn alleged Meta demanded all evidence be erased.

‘My research still revealed emotional and psychological damage, particularly to women who were sexually solicited, molested or worse,’ he testified. ‘In response, Meta demanded I change my research in the future to not gather this data on emotional and psychological harm.’

Savage testified she led youth safety research in VR and likewise said Meta prioritized engagement over child safety.

She said the company employed suppression tactics, including editing reports, demanding deletions and threatening jobs.

Hawley asked Savage why it was important for Meta to have children under 13 using VR. She told him kids drive household adoption of gaming devices, which means more money for Meta.

‘So, this is about profits at the end of the day,’ Hawley told Savage while seeking clarification on whether Meta will do anything for a profit, including exposing children to vile sexual abuse.

‘When I was doing research to identify the harms that children were facing in VR, which I had to be sneaky about because legal wouldn’t actually let me do it, I identified that Roblox, the app on in VR, was being used by coordinated pedophile rings,’ Savage said. ‘They set up strip clubs, and they paid children to strip.’

She added that Robux could be converted into real money.

Savage said she flagged the issue to Meta, saying under no circumstances should Meta host the Roblox app on the headset.

‘You can now download it in their app store,’ she said.

Later, under questioning, Savage told the panel she estimates any child in a social VR space will come in contact with, or be directly exposed to, something inappropriate.

‘She said every single child who goes into the platform will 100% be exposed to child sex abuse material. Every single one,’ Hawley told Fox News Digital Tuesday evening. ‘I just come back to the fact that we have got to protect our children. 

‘It can’t be that if you go online as a kid, you are 100% likely to be sexually abused, and that’s what the witnesses said today. If you are online, if you’re on their virtual reality program platform rather, you are going to get sexually abused. That was their testimony.’

Hawley called out Zuckerberg for testifying on Jan. 31, 2024, that Meta does not allow people under the age of 13 on the service.

During his testimony last year, the CEO said anyone under the age of 13 will be removed from the service, and, in response to another question, Zuckerberg said Meta does not want users under the age of 13.

Hawley said Zuckerberg misled Americans with that testimony, pointing to whistleblowers who said under-13 users are rampant on the platform.

‘I don’t see how you can square what he told us under oath last year with what these whistleblowers said today,’ Hawley told Fox News Digital. ‘But that’s true of a lot of his statements. I mean, he said over and over, whether it’s the safety protocols Facebook has put into place, that’s not true. 

‘Whether it’s regarding their work in China, he said, ‘Oh, we don’t do work in China.’ That is not true. He said, ‘We don’t have any contacts with the Chinese government.’ That’s not true. So, I mean, we’re really piling up a long list here.’

Hawley said he has called for Zuckerberg to testify again under oath, though he’s heard Meta isn’t interested.

Ultimately, Hawley said, it was time to ‘open the courtroom doors’ so victims and families can sue Meta for failing to protect children.

‘It is abundantly clear to me that it is time to allow parents and victims to sue this company,’ he said. ‘They have got to be able to get into court and to get in front of a jury and hold this company accountable, and that begins with Mark Zuckerberg. There has to be accountability. We have to open the courtroom doors and allow victims to have their day in court.’

Earlier this year, Hawley said he advanced legislation through the Judiciary Committee that would allow victims of child sex abuse online to sue Facebook or any Big Tech company where harm happens.

‘I don’t think we’re going to see real change at these companies until this becomes law and parents and victims can get into court and hold these people accountable,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is we’ve got to protect our kids. I mean, they’re making money by stealing the innocence of our children.’

Meta told Fox News Digital the company is training its artificial intelligence bots to not respond to teenagers on self-harm, suicide, disorder eating and potentially inappropriate romantic conversations, regardless of content. The company is also working to limit teen access to a select group of AI characters, ‘for now.’

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., closed the meeting by inviting anyone from Meta to testify or challenge what was said.

‘I think that they see there is truly bipartisan anger, not only with Meta, but with these other social media platforms and virtual reality platforms and chatbots that are intentionally, knowingly harming our children,’ she said. ‘This has got to stop. Enough is enough.’

House Republicans are having early talks about cracking down on crime nationwide, the No. 2 GOP lawmaker suggested on Tuesday.

‘There are discussions about addressing some of these problems at a more federal level, but right now, we’re focused on D.C.,’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital.

‘The president’s been very effectively reducing crime in D.C., and he’s got some limitations right now with a lot of these ordinances, and that’s what we’re focused on cleaning up.’

He added, however, ‘But we’re not done.’

It comes after President Donald Trump federalized the Washington, D.C., police force and deployed federal troops to the capital city in a bid to end violent crime. He’s now eyeing National Guard deployments in other cities across the country, though the idea has been met with criticism by Democrats.

The House Oversight Committee is slated to advance several bills dealing with D.C. criminal sentencing this week, which will likely get full House votes in the coming months.

Scalise’s comments suggest that while lawmakers are currently focused on overhauling Washington, D.C.’s criminal policies, it’s possible they could turn to the rest of the country at some point as well.

Trump similarly signaled last month that he wanted to see a bill dealing with crime across the U.S.

‘Speaker Mike Johnson, and Leader John Thune, are working with me, and other Republicans, on a Comprehensive Crime Bill. It’s what our Country needs,’ he wrote on Truth Social.

House GOP leaders also railed against crime in Democrat-run cities and states during their weekly press briefing on Tuesday – specifically their leaders’ opposition to National Guard deployments.

Such moves by the federal government could risk court battles with Democrat-run states and cities, as was the case when Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles earlier this year over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

‘I mean, these mayors in these big blue cities have to ask this question – and I think their voters and the residents and the law-abiding citizens in all these cities should be asking local leadership, ‘How long are you going to put up with this? When are you going to put your foot down and do the right thing?’’ Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posed.

‘This is common sense. And I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the Democrats think this is some sort of winning political message. Yield, man. Let the troops come into your city, and show how crime can be reduced.’

Scalise, meanwhile, said at the press conference that Democrats ‘want crime to continue.’

‘They want to continue defunding the police and try to have it both ways. And President Trump is tired of that game, because he’s tired of watching people be hurt. There’s no reason for this violent crime wave that we see in so many cities,’ Scalise said. 

‘So we’re going to continue to have the president’s back and, frankly, have the American people’s back, regardless of their party, regardless of what city they live in. Everybody deserves to be safe, and Republicans are going to continue to push policies to help put that in place.’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris admits that former President Joe Biden got ‘tired’ while in office, but she insists there was no ‘big conspiracy’ to cover up his decline.

Harris made the claims in a newly released excerpt from her upcoming book, ‘107 Days,’ which details her experience running for president with frequent throwbacks to her time as number two in the White House. The excerpt, published by The Atlantic, focuses on her relationship with Biden and her frustration with how she was treated in the Biden-Harris administration.

‘Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president,’ Harris wrote. ‘On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired.’

‘That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,’ she added.

Harris went on to complain that Biden’s staff didn’t give her the support she felt was necessary as vice president, on issues from foreign policy to illegal immigration.

She complained that getting the White House press office, including then-press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, to defend her was ‘almost impossible.’

‘Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me. One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a ‘chaotic’ office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year,’ Harris wrote, going on to say that some people just can’t hack it in a White House role.

‘Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,’  she added regarding Biden’s staff. ‘That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him.

The former vice president also said Democrats across the board should have been more aggressive in pushing Biden not to run, saying it was ‘reckless’ to leave the decision in his hands for so long.

”It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,’ Harris wrote.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett pushed back against partisan portrayals of the Supreme Court, telling Fox News’ Bret Baier that justices ‘wear black, not red or blue’ and follow the Constitution, not politics.

She appeared on Fox to promote her new book, ‘Listening to the Law,’ and to address public perceptions of the Court’s work and independence.

Barrett stressed that the Court is not divided into partisan teams. She also defended its approach to presidential power, clarified misconceptions about the Dobbs decision, and reflected on her originalist judicial philosophy.

Her book touches on details such as assigned seating, courtroom traditions, and the gap between outside perception and inside reality.

‘You know, we don’t wear red and blue, we all wear black because judges are nonpartisan. And the idea is that we are all listening to the law. We’re all trying to get it right. We’re not playing for a team,’ she told Baier. ‘We don’t sit on specific sides of the bench, left and right. You know, we sit in order of seniority.’

Barrett underscored the disconnect between public perception and the Court’s inner workings, noting:

‘I often ask new law clerks what surprised you most when you started? And one of the most common answers is the difference between what’s happening on the inside and what people think is happening on the inside.’

Critics on the left argue the Court is shielding former President Donald Trump, a view reflected in headlines from outlets such as The New York Times and NBC.

Barrett responded by placing the Court’s work in historical context, stressing that cases on presidential power extend beyond any one occupant of the office.

‘We’re not deciding cases just for today, and we’re not deciding cases based on the president,’ Barrett said. ‘As the current occupant of the office, we’re deciding cases about the presidency. So we’re taking each case, and we’re looking at the question of presidential power as it comes. And the cases that we decide today are going to matter.

‘Four presidencies from now, six presidencies from now, and so on. Each of these cases that we’re getting, you know, well, I mean, some of them overlap, but many present different constitutional issues,’ she added.

She stressed the Court rules on the presidency as an institution, with decisions that resonate across administrations.

Turning to the Dobbs decision, Barrett said the ruling did not outlaw abortion but returned the issue to the political process—a point she argued has been widely misunderstood.

‘Dobbs did not say that abortion is illegal. Dobbs said it belongs to the political process,’ Barrett said.

Barrett acknowledged growing threats to judges, stressing violence should not be ‘the cost of public service.’

Returning to public perception, she said the Court must follow the law even when rulings are unpopular, stressing integrity over public opinion.

‘The court… can’t take into account public opinion in making individual decisions… you have to follow the law where it leads, even if it leads in a place where the majority of people don’t want you to go,’ she said.