The Senate Homeland Security Committee unanimously advanced a bill Wednesday to ban TikTok from government devices.<\/p>\n
The legislation, introduced by Sens.\u00a0Josh Hawley<\/a>\u00a0(R-Mo.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), would bar federal employees from downloading the short-form video app onto government-issued devices.<\/p>\n The legislation will now be considered by the full Senate.<\/p>\n The successful approval from the committee comes amid rising scrutiny of TikTok as a national security threat because of its ties to China. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in and operates out of Beijing.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has suggested\u00a0it will ban TikTok outright<\/a>\u00a0because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party, although no specific timeline or mechanism has been provided.<\/p>\n TikTok has maintained that it does not transfer data to the Chinese government, arguing that it is being targeted by the U.S. because of America’s economic rivalry with China.<\/p>\n