Op-Ed: With KOSA, Elizabeth Warren is Betraying the Trans Youth She Claims to Protect

Evan Greer writes for EITM: "KOSA’s re-emergence comes during a moment of existential crisis for the Democratic party."

Elizabeth Warren // Wikimedia Commons

Editors Note: This is a submitted Op-Ed from Evan Greer and Janus Rose. Evan Greer is the director of Fight for the Future. Janus Rose is a writer and editor.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is well known in Massachusetts’ LGBTQ community for showing up at Pride events and dancing around in a feather boa. But when her queer and trans constituents asked her to meet with us about legislation that could harm the most vulnerable members of our community, she wouldn’t even look us in the eye.

The first time Sen. Elizabeth Warren threw her support behind the Kids Online Privacy Act (KOSA), the deceptively-named censorship bill once again making its way through Congress, LGBTQ+ and human rights groups warned her that the poorly written bill would be used to erase queer and trans communities from the internet. Now, despite the Trump administration using every tool at its disposal to eliminate LGBTQ+ people from public life, the Senator from Massachusetts has once again signed on to co-sponsor the dangerous bill.

In September of 2025, Fight For The Future joined a coalition of local LGBTQ+ orgs to deliver petitions opposing KOSA to Sen. Warren’s office. The coalition, which represents thousands of queer and trans people across Massachusetts, formally requested to meet with the Senator to discuss KOSA and other bills threatening our LGBTQ+ neighbors.

Instead, Warren ghosted us. And now, she has once again announced her co-sponsorship of KOSA — this time under the looming threat of the Trump administration and its obsessive anti-LGBTQ agenda.

KOSA’s supporters have pitched it as a much-needed measure to rein in Big Tech and protect kids. But Warren and other Democrats should know by now that the bill would be a gift to Trump and his anti-LGBTQ+ allies. In its current form, the Senate version of KOSA that Warren endorsed would empower the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to purge online content sought out by trans youth, abortion-seekers, and other vulnerable communities. In the name of “protecting children” online, the bill would establish a “duty of care” that gives the agency the ability to censor anything that it determines could make kids “anxious” or “depressed” — including health resources for LGBTQ+ youth and information on abortion.

There’s no longer any doubt that this is exactly how KOSA would be used. Earlier this year, the Trump-controlled FTC held a sham “workshop” to spin up ideas on how to use the agency’s authority to terrorize LGBTQ+ communities, including targeting doctors and medical providers of trans healthcare. It follows the blueprint outlined in Project 2025, which proposes labeling all queer and trans online content as “pornographic” and targeting any website or app that promotes “trans ideology” — the MAGA catchphrase for anything that supports trans peoples’ right to live dignified lives in peace.

KOSA would be a major step in seeing this agenda realized. Yet Democrats like Warren and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have continued to carry water for the bill despite widespread support from far-right bigots. Republican proponents like Marsha Blackburn have openly stated the law would be used to remove trans content online. The anti-LGBTQ+ Heritage Foundation has also said the quiet part out loud, stating explicitly that its goal with bills like KOSA is “keeping trans content away from kids” and removing abortion resources from the internet.

Warren’s co-sponsorship of KOSA is a shocking betrayal at a time when anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry is ascendant and self-described “allies” in Congress are abandoning our communities to the MAGA wolves. Since taking office, the Trump administration has used every lever of power available to crush queer and trans people under its boot—removing access to healthcare, banning them from sports and public bathrooms, and preventing them from obtaining IDs with correct gender markers that match their lived realities. Rather than rise in defense, some Democrats have joined with the extreme right in pushing censorship legislation like KOSA.

Bills like KOSA are a major part of a multi-pronged effort to purge queer and trans communities from the internet. 25 states have already passed draconian age verification laws, which require people to submit to invasive ID checks before accessing porn or any website or app the state has deemed “harmful to minors.” Politicians on both sides of the aisle are also reviving a multi-year campaign to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the “Internet’s First Amendment” which prevents companies from being sued for hosting user content that the government finds objectionable.

Criticism of KOSA within Congress has grown since the last time it was introduced. Sen. Edward Markey said he did not support the bill when confronted at a recent event, placing Warren completely out of alignment with one of her closest Democratic allies. Other progressives like AOC and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) have also vocally opposed KOSA, echoing concerns raised by LGBTQ youth and human rights experts.

Warren’s betrayal on KOSA is even more heartbreaking because she has shown in the past that she understands how legislation like this can harm our community. Warren cosponsored the Safe Sex Worker Study Act, which would study the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA, an anti sex trafficking law that led to widespread censorship of LGBTQ resources and profound harm to sex workers’ safety. KOSA raises the exact same concerns. Warren is asking the government to learn from its last deadly mistake while encouraging it to make the same mistake again. It’s clear her support for KOSA is political and opportunistic, not rooted in the rigorous analysis she is known for.

Big Tech and the surveillance capitalist business model employed by giants like Meta and Google is doing real harm, especially to young people. Doing nothing is not an option. But there are ways lawmakers can take on Big Tech without throwing trans people under the bus, like by passing strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation. Human rights advocates have been calling for this for years.

Democrats like Warren seem to be following the advice of an elite class of pundits and political operatives, who have repeatedly insisted that the only way forward for the Democratic party is to abandon LGBTQ+ voters and shift further to the right. But recent election victories by left-progressive and democratic socialist candidates like Zohran Mamdani have completely disproven this tired theory. More than ever before, voters are saying loud and clear that they want Democrats who will fight back against the Trump agenda and refuse to sacrifice the rights of marginalized people on the altar of bipartisanship.

KOSA’s re-emergence comes during a moment of existential crisis for the Democratic party. Warren’s LGBTQ+ constituents want to know: are principled Democrats going to listen to queer people and stand up for trans youth? Or will they throw us under the bus so they can say they’re “protecting the kids,” by advancing legislation that actually hurts kids?

Janus Rose contributed this piece.