Sen. Josh Hawley’s Bill Calls For ‘No TikTok on United States Devices’

Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ken Buck picked up the TikTok ban torch not long after the ANTI-SOCIAL act failed with their own successor called, wait for it, The No TikTok on United States Devices Act. Seriously, someone needs to help lawmakers out with these name choices. Regardless, the bill, if passed, would prohibit Americans from downloading TikTok and prevent US companies from making transactions with the app’s parent company ByteDance. That wide net means the bill would impact far more than just TikTok since ByteDance already had other popular apps available to US users.

Hawley believes his legislation is necessary to prevent TikTok from sharing sensitive US user data like keystrokes and location data to the Chinese government. In a statement, the senator said the bill was a natural extension of already passed federal laws banning TikTok on government devices.

“Banning it on government devices was a step in the right direction, but now is the time to ban it nationwide to protect the American people,” Hawley said in a statement.

The Hawley bill faced a major setback in late March when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul blocked the bill over First Amendment concerns. Speaking to lawmakers, Paul said TikTok had “bent over backwards” to work with the US government and assuage Chinese government surveillance concerns. Hawley’s bill, he added, curb freedom of expression.

Florida Sen. and former 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio came running to Hawley’s aid.

“This is not a First Amendment issue, because we’re not trying to ban booty videos,” Rubio said according to The Hill. “This is not about the content of the videos that are online. It is about the dangers to the national security that are presented by the way that this company functions.”