France’s National Assembly on Monday backed legislation to ban children under 15 years old from social media on Monday, amid growing concerns about online bullying and mental health risks.

The bill proposes banning under-15s from social networks and “social networking functionalities” embedded within broader platforms, and reflects rising public angst over the impact of social media on minors.

Lawmakers voted 116 to 23 in favor of the bill. It now passes to the Senate before a final vote in the lower house.

President Emmanuel Macron has pointed to social media as one factor to blame for violence among young people. He is urging France to follow Australia, whose world-first ban for under-16s on social media platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube came into force in December.

Macron wants the ban in place in time for the start of the next academic year in September.

“With this law, we are setting a clear boundary in society and saying social media is not harmless,” centrist lawmaker Laure Miller told the chamber as she presented the bill.

“Our children are reading less, sleeping less, and comparing themselves to one another more,” she continued. “This is a battle for free minds.”

Australia’s social media ban is being studied in countries including Britain, Denmark, Spain and Greece.

The European Parliament has called for the European Union to set minimum ages for children to access social media, although it is up to member states to impose age limits.

There is broad political and public support in France for curbing minors’ access to social media.

Far-right lawmaker Thierry Perez said the bill responded to a “health emergency.”

“Social media has allowed everyone to express themselves, but at what cost to our children?” Perez said.

The French ban would require platforms to block access to young teenagers through age‑verification mechanisms compliant with European Union law.

Enforcing such bans can be difficult. Australia’s government acknowledged the rollout of its ban would be bumpy after children claiming to be under 16 flooded the country’s social media feeds with messages gloating about their continued ability to access networks.

The French legislation also extends an existing ban on smartphones in junior and middle schools to cover high schools.

A Harris Interactive survey in 2024 showed 73% of the public supported a ban on social media access for under-15s.

Teenagers on the streets of Paris were split in their views. Some said they acknowledged the dangers associated with social media. Others felt a ban was excessive.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas and Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Richard Lough, Alex Richardson and Diane Craft)

As Americans debate the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, an even bigger battle is brewing in Washington, as the Trump administration splits over how to handle mass deportation raids.

The dividing lines have been drawn: on one side, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and Corey Lewandowski, a top Trump adviser and temporary government employee. On the other side are Border Czar Tom Homan and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.

Noem’s camp is focused on aggressive and showy tactics — fiery press conferences and Bovino marching through town with a squad of Border Patrol agents in tow — and is fixated on increasing arrest numbers. Homan’s side, however, is focused on the quality of arrests and getting the worst criminals off the streets, which they feel is a job best suited for ICE.

The fractures between the camps only became more evident after a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who officials say was armed while he was interacting with law enforcement on Saturday in Minneapolis. His death comes just weeks after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, igniting a wave of unrest in Minneapolis, the site of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge.

In a press conference after the shooting, Noem asserted that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who appeared to have shown up “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Noem’s claims were met with scorn by Democrats and Republicans alike.

“This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said during a press conference following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti by a federal immigration agent.

“This individual showed up to impede… pic.twitter.com/dt2MtXXtvI

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 25, 2026

Officials inside Noem’s own department slammed her rush to judgment, sources told The Daily Wire.

“It was a horrible response,” said one official. “Many people I’ve heard from say it was unprofessional. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“The people in DHS are frustrated with Secretary Noem and the way DHS is handling the media,” the official added. “The employees want a more professional response, not memes and one-liners.”

One Border Patrol source said it looked like “a really bad shoot.”

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was among the growing number of congressional Republicans to condemn Noem, writing on X, “any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz even offered some advice to the Trump administration, saying they need to “be more measured” in their response.

“What I think the administration could do better is the tone with which they’re describing this,” Cruz said on his podcast Monday. “The problem is particularly for someone not paying attention.”

“If you’re being told this is a mom of three, and there’s no indication, you know she’s not waving an ISIS flag or doesn’t have a suicide vest around her,” Cruz added. “Escalating the rhetoric doesn’t help, and it actually loses credibility.”

Trump dispatched Homan to Minneapolis Monday, saying the ex-ICE chief will report directly to him as he attempts to quell the situation on the ground. That prompted multiple reporters to question the White House during Monday’s briefing whether Trump is losing confidence in Noem.

It’s unclear why Homan, who began as the face of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, was not at the forefront of the Minnesota operations to begin with.

“People who have no business being in charge in law enforcement operations at DHS f***ed up,” said a source, adding that “there’s a lot of us in the patrol that aren’t happy with how things have been handled.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted the commander-in-chief remains confident in Noem’s ability to lead.

“Secretary Noem will continue to lead the Department of Homeland Security with the full trust and confidence of the president,” Leavitt told Reuters Monday. “Tom Homan is uniquely positioned to drop everything and focus solely on Minnesota to solve the problems that have been created by the lack of cooperation from state and local officials.”

Q: “Should the deployment of Mr. Homan to Minneapolis be seen as a sign that the president is dissatisfied with how the officials on the ground have handled the incident?”@PressSec Karoline Leavitt: “No. Mr. Homan is doing an exceptional job…” pic.twitter.com/JnnEinADsi

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 26, 2026

But the decision to send Homan to Minneapolis signals a change in the posture of the Trump administration’s immigration raids. The White House has also decided to pull Bovino, who has become the face of the aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, along with some of his agents, out of Minneapolis.

Homan’s approach is to have ICE make arrests of the worst of the worst illegal immigrant criminals, while Noem and Bovino care more about increasing numbers and putting on a show of force, sources said. Border Patrol isn’t as equipped to operate in urban areas and is used to functioning on the border, where they’re mostly nabbing illegal border crossers and busting smuggling operations.

“Noem lost control and never knew what she was doing,” one source told The Daily Wire. “She hated Homan because he reminded her daily that she knew nothing about law enforcement operations and that pissed her off.”

Another source said “the internal strife between Homan and Noem” has led to “issues between the enforcement and reporting.”

“She wants numbers, and this makes the heads of the components do anything to get those numbers. Homan is about enforcement, but not at any cost,” the source added.

“I don’t think Border Patrol should be here, let ICE do their thing.”

Noem shared her support of Homan’s trip, saying on X Monday that it’s “good news for peace, safety, and accountability in Minneapolis.”

“I have worked closely with Tom over the last year, and he has been a major asset to our team — his experience and insight will help us in our wide-scale fraud investigations, which have robbed Americans, and will help us to remove even more public safety threats and violent criminal illegal aliens off the streets of Minneapolis,” she said. “We continue to call on the leadership in Minnesota to allow for state and local partnership in our public safety mission.”

In response to claims of an internal rift at DHS, the agency told The Daily Wire that “DHS is one team, and we have one fight, to secure the homeland,” adding “DHS has arrested more than 3,500 illegal aliens, including rapists, murderers, and gang members, as part of DHS’s Operation Metro Surge.”