Summary: Massachusetts House to ban social media for children under 14 Attorney General Andrea Campbell supports original Senate bill Bill requires social media age verification and parental consent The Massachusetts House of Representatives is planning on passing a bill April 8 that would ban social media use for children under 14 in the state. The ban would be “among the most restrictive in the entire country,” Speaker Ron Mariano, D-Quincy, and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, D-Boston, said in a statement April 6. “The simple reality is that Massachusetts must do more to ensure that our laws keep pace with modern challenges – especially when it comes to protecting our children, and to setting students up for success in the classroom and beyond,” they continued. The measure was added to a bill passed by the Senate in July 2025 that would ban cellphones for students throughout the school day. What to know about the social media, cell phone ban bill The bill creates restrictions on both social media and cell phone use for minors, according to a bill summary provided by the House. It would require social media platforms to implement an age-verification system that would prohibit minors under the age of 14 from using their site; and 14- and 15-year-olds could use social media platforms, but only if given verifiable consent from the parent. Social media platform is defined as “a public website, online service, online application or mobile application that displays content primarily generated by users and allows users to create, share and view user-generated content with other users,” according to the bill summary. It doesn’t include text messaging services like email or SMS. The bill directs the attorney general to create regulations for implementation by Sept. 1 and the policy would go into effect Oct. 1. The bill would also require school districts to create policies to prohibit students from using personal electronic devices like cellphones during the school day including during school-sponsored activities during the school day. Ten districts would participate in a pilot program that renders students’ personal electronic devices inoperable on school grounds during the school day. Will the bill pass? The bill was expected to pass the Democratic-controlled House Wednesday, April 8. Then, since the House changed the bill from its original Senate version, the House is expected to set up a six-person conference committee to create consensus legislation that will then have to go back to both chambers for approval before heading to the governor’s desk. There’s a lot of support for this type of bill at the state level. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who has filed several lawsuits against social media companies such as TikTok and Meta for harming young users, filed the original version of the Senate bill, which was dubbed the STUDY Act. Massachusetts Gov. Maura T. Healey has also voiced support for stronger social media protections for users under 18 years old: In her 2026 State of the Commonwealth address, Healey proposed mandatory age-verification systems, requiring parental consent and disabling features like continuous scrolling and notifications between certain hours. Additionally, many high schools in the state already ban cell phone use including Barnstable High School, Newton Public Schools and Gardner Public Schools.

Summary: El Paso County files FOIA lawsuit against ICE County attorney Christina Sanchez leads legal action Three Socorro warehouses sold to DHS for $123 million The El Paso County Commissioners Court has approved a request to file a lawsuit related to immigration detention centers against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawsuit approved by the commissions on Monday, April 6, is related to ICE and DHS failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for information pertaining to planned immigrant detention centers in El Paso. The federal lawsuit will be filed in the Western District of Texas on behalf of the county alleging the violation of the FOIA. County Attorney Christina Sanchez is seeking information including site maps, applicable permitting requirements and processes, public notice, public comment periods and meeting or discussion related to the proposed site of a massive immigration detention center in Socorro, Texas. The County Attorney's Office also is investigating whether ICE had followed an environmental assessment. But to date, county officials had not received a response to its requests for public information, Sanchez said. The commissioners had directed Sanchez to produce a report detailing what was known about the planned immigration detention centers in the county. Her office had filed the Freedom of Information Act request for documents as part of this report. The report was prepared following a resolution adopted by the court on Feb. 3 over plans to transform three warehouses into a massive immigration detention center in Socorro. Over 200 El Pasoans turned out to voice their opposition to the planned detention center during public comment in the commissioners court on Jan. 26 The three massive warehouses in Socorro had been sold by the company El Paso Logistics 2 LLC on Jan. 27 to the DHS for $123 million. The site is proposed to hold 8,500 people. DHS moving forward with Socorro detention center While the purchasing of new warehouses was paused by the Department of Homeland Security, plans are advancing for the transformation of the massive warehouses in Socorro into immigration detention centers. DHS has not provided a full timeline for how it will proceed with converting the three warehouses in Socorro into detention centers. If completed, El Paso County would have around 13,500 beds for immigrants detained under the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations. The controversial Camp East Montana in East El Paso is the current largest immigration detention center in the United States, holding up to 5,000 people. Jeff Abbott covers the border for the El Paso Times and can be reached at:[email protected]; @palabrasdeabajo on Twitter or @palabrasdeabajo.bsky.social on Bluesky. This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso County sues ICE over detention center plans Reporting by Jeff Abbott, El Paso Times / El Paso Times USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Summary: Supreme Court vacates Steve Bannon contempt conviction Case remanded to U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Justice Department supports dismissal of Bannon's conviction The Supreme Court on Monday cleared a path for Stephen K. Bannon’s effort, backed by the Justice Department, to dismiss his conviction for defying a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. In a brief, unsigned order Monday morning, the court vacated a judgment by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholding Bannon’s conviction. The high court sent the case back to the appeals court for reconsideration in light of a motion to dismiss that the Justice Department filed two months ago. Bannon, an influential right-wing podcaster and former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, spent four months in prison in 2024 after a jury found him guilty on two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon had refused to respond to demands for testimony and documents by a House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, the jury found. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2024 upheld the convictions, and the full appeals court later declined to rehear the case. In October, Bannon appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court had previously denied his request to postpone his prison sentence pending his appeal. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the Justice Department has sought to undo a number of criminal cases brought by prosecutors in prior administrations, employing sweeping orders as well as smaller-scale interventions. In one of his first acts in office, Trump issued a blanket pardon to more than 1,500 people who had been convicted or charged in connection with Jan. 6 — a series of cases that had emerged from the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history. Trump has directed a purge of prosecutors and federal investigators who worked on those cases. More akin to its intervention in the Bannon case, the department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September that it would no longer defend the conviction of Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser during his first administration, who served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. The department also recently agreed to give former national security adviser Michael Flynn a payout to settle claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted as part of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Bannon’s most recent petition to the Supreme Court argued that he was following the advice of his attorney in refusing to cooperate with the congressional subpoena. He also says he believed that records the committee sought were protected by executive privilege, a constitutional principle that shields the internal communications of presidents’ top aides. The trial judge did not allow him to use those arguments as a defense in court. This time, the Justice Department — which had prosecuted Bannon’s case under the Biden administration — is supporting his bid to reverse his convictions. In a February filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to reverse the appeals court ruling and send the case back to trial court for dismissal. Such an outcome “is in the interests of justice,” Sauer wrote. The Justice Department has concurrently laid the groundwork for that dismissal in lower court. In another sign of shifting priorities, Justice Department attorneys moved last month to dismiss charges against two former Louisville police officers accused of wrongdoing related to the 2020 raid that led to Breonna Taylor’s death. And officials have taken other steps to walk back consent decrees with police departments across the country secured during the Biden administration. Salvador Rizzo contributed to this report.