Josh Hawley fails to fast track his bill to ban TikTok despite growing support in Congress against the app

Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, the two lone wolves of the Republican Senate party, squared off against one another on Wednesday as Hawley tried to get his TikTok ban bill move forward quickly and Paul thrawted the measure.

With worries that TikTok, a popular social media app used by more than 150 million Americans and owned by the Chinese corporation ByteDance, may be used to spy on US citizens, there is rising bipartisan support to ban the app.

Congress has become dissatisfied with the US President Joe Biden administration's ongoing discussions over TikTok’s security measures, a process that has now lasted years. Since FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a warning about the app's potential for eavesdropping on Americans, there has been a rising push on Capitol Hill to address the matter. Like the former US President Donald Trump’s administration, the Biden administration has also urged ByteDance to sell TikTok or risk being banned.


However, Hawley, a Missouri Republican, rejected a bipartisan Senate bill that would have given the Biden administration the authority to outright prohibit the app and has stuck to his guns that Congress should do the same.



On Wednesday, he sought to get the bill through the Senate through a procedural manoeuvre that is usually only used for non-controversial legislation. It's a strategy that enables a senator to essentially avoid the taxing process of putting together a coalition of support and the typical route a measure goes through committee.

Paul warned that the lawmakers should be wary of those who spread fear. He made a strong case for Citizens' right to watch dancing videos, which eventually led Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to claim that "booty films" were not being attempted to be outlawed. But, Paul also made note of the fact that a lot of US social media platforms gather data akin to TikTok.

He said that if the app were banned, the Republican Party would lose a generation of supporters. Given TikTok's youthful readership, Democrats have also used this justification to argue against the app’s ban.

However, Hawley portrayed the social media company as a national security threat by using language that has become standard in the Capitol. He claimed that because the company is subject to Chinese laws that could be used to compel it to turn over data, the Chinese Communist Party could use the app to gather information on Americans.

Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, gave testimony before a House committee last week to counter the mounting clamour to outlaw the app. Yet both Republicans and Democrats sharply criticized the app, raising issues with the volume of data it gathers.

FAQs:

1. Which countries banned TikTok?
   UK, France, the Netherlands, India, Norway, Belgium and Denmark
2. Why is TikTok getting banned?
   Concerns over how the data of users is handled have put the popular app under strain.