In rare show of force, senators enlist U.S. marshals to subpoena tech CEOs

A Senate panel announced Monday it subpoenaed the CEOs of Elon Musk’s X, Discord and Snap to testify at a hearing on children’s online safety next month after “repeated refusals” by the tech companies to cooperate with its investigation into the matter. The move marks a major escalation by lawmakers probing how social media platforms may harm children’s mental health, an area of broad bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill. The committee announced that it also expects Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to appear voluntarily. Meta and TikTok declined to comment. While top tech executives such as Zuckerberg have repeatedly testified in Congress on an array of issues in recent years, they have typically appeared voluntarily. The committee said that in a “remarkable departure from typical practice,” it had to “enlist the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Service to personally serve the subpoenas” to the CEOs of Discord and X, formerly Twitter, after their chief executives “further refused to cooperate.”