Convenience Big Store: Full steam ahead on anti-TikTok legislation

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Battle over TikTok ramps up

Despite a deluge of phone calls and emails from angry TikTok users, key members of Congress from Texas are holding firm in their push to ban the popular social media platform from app stores unless the parent company in China sells it.

On Wednesday morning, the House is scheduled to vote on House Bill 7521, which last week unanimously cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw is among those standing by the legislation that he co-sponsored. And he is pushing back hard against TikTok for "manipulating users and scaring them into thinking they're about to lose TikTok." He said as long as ByteDance, the parent company based in China, sells the company, TikTok users will still have their app.

Members of Congress are worried that ByteDance is required to give the Chinese government access to user data that can then be used for espionage.

Crenshaw said people who think they are defending TikTok as a form of First Amendment free speech have it all wrong.

"You are not protecting the First Amendment," he said in a social media video on Instagram. "The First Amendment is not designed to protect our adversaries or their ability to collect American data and then potentially weaponize it in the most massive propaganda information warfare scheme our country has ever seen."

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, is also standing firm, even after former President Donald Trump jumped into the fray and came out against the bill. Roy said he's been at odds with Trump before and isn't afraid to do it again because of his concerns over TikTok.

"It's not even about TikTok, it's about ensuring and protecting the data from the American people; making sure our foreign adversaries can't be targeting our people and using that data against them," he told reporters in Washington on Monday.

If the bill clears the House on Wednesday, as expected, it then goes to the U.S. Senate.

More about the legislation here.

Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter

jeremy.wallace@houstonchronicle.com

Who's up, who's down

Up: Ted Cruz.

After a much closer-than-expected re-election battle in 2018 during his last re-election, the Republican U.S. Senator is giving off a much more serious vibe as he prepares for Democrat Colin Allred this November. This week, he had his campaign team calling supporters and warning them about public polling that shows the race is a tie despite Allred's lack of name identification. And just before that, he was telling a national television audience last month that "my race here in Texas is a battleground race." In short, Cruz sounds like he's taking the race more seriously earlier than he did in 2018.

Down: TikTok.

The U.S. House is moving ahead with a bill that would require Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States even as former President Donald Trump is voicing opposition to the effort. That vote is set for Wednesday, but the bill is far from guaranteed to pass the U.S. Senate.

What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.

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Pick of the day

Photo by: Jeremy Wallace

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What else I'm reading

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