The White House involvement, which has not been previously reported, illustrates tech giants’ ability to leverage their alliances with President Donald Trump’s administration, even under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and courts about their platforms’ impact on society.

“Chairman Grassley isn’t interested in simply generating clicks and views online like past hearings. He’s working to get lifesaving child safety legislation actually signed into law,” a Grassley spokesperson told POLITICO. “The Grassley-Durbin James T. Woods Act is hugely bipartisan and widely supported because it’s universally recognized this bill will save kids’ lives. Chairman Grassley is committed to being an effective senator, conducting oversight of Big Tech and getting laws passed that will protect America’s children.”

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. A Google spokesperson said the company “did not engage with the White House on the hearing or ask them to intervene.”

A White House official said the administration supports the bipartisan James T. Woods Act because it would strengthen federal law against online child exploitation, create new criminal offenses targeting technology-enabled abuse and direct a review of sentencing guidelines to ensure penalties reflect the seriousness of those crimes. The official said it was normal for the White House to back such a measure, which builds on the Take It Down Act S. 146 (119) and other efforts to combat child sexual abuse material and protect children online.

Grassley previously called on Zuckerberg, Pichai and the chief executives of TikTok and Snap to testify at next month’s hearing, which he billed as exploring the question “Is This Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment?” The hearing is expected to focus on child online safety, according to three of the people.

It comes as social media companies are facing wide-ranging litigation under the same types of product-liability law that states once used to target cigarette makers, a trend that is showing signs of spreading to AI. The string of recent litigation includes a March verdict in which a California jury found that Meta and YouTube had negligently designed addictive platforms that harmed children, and a New Mexico case in which a jury found Meta liable for endangering kids.