TikTok bill faces uncertain fate in the Senate as legislation to regulate tech industry has stalled

WASHINGTON (AP) — The young voices in the messages left for North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis were laughing, but the words were ominous.

“OK, listen, if you ban TikTok I will find you and shoot you,” one said, giggling and talking over other young voices in the background. “I’ll shoot you and find you and cut you into pieces.” Another threatened to kill Tillis, and then take their own life.

Tillis’s office says it has received around 1,000 calls about TikTok since the House passed legislation this month that would ban the popular app if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake. TikTok has been urging its users — many of whom are young — to call their representatives, even providing an easy link to the phone numbers. “The government will take away the community that you and millions of other Americans love,” read one pop-up message from the company when users opened the app. Tillis, who supports the House bill, reported the call to the police. “What I hated about that was it demonstrates the enormous influence social media platforms have on young people,” he said in an interview.

While more aggressive than most, TikTok’s extensive lobbying campaign is the latest attempt by the tech industry to head off any new legislation — and it’s a fight the industry usually wins. For years Congress has failed to act on bills that would protect users’ privacy, protect children from online threats, make companies more liable for their content and put loose guardrails around artificial intelligence, among other things. “I mean, it’s almost embarrassing,” says Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., a former tech executive who is also supporting the TikTok bill and has long tried to push his colleagues to regulate the industry. “I would hate for us to maintain our perfect zero batting average on tech legislation.”

Some see the TikTok bill as the best chance for now to regulate the tech industry and set a precedent, if a narrow one focused on just one company. President Joe Biden has said he would sign the House bill, which overwhelmingly passed 362-65 this month after a rare 50-0 committee vote moving it to the floor.

But it’s already running into roadblocks in the Senate, where there is little unanimity on the best approach to ensure that China doesn’t access private data from the app’s 170 million U.S. users or influence them through its algorithms.

Other factors are holding the Senate back. The tech industry is broad and falls under the jurisdiction of several different committees. Plus, the issues at play don’t fall cleanly on partisan lines, making it harder for lawmakers to agree on priorities and how legislation should be written. Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has so far been reluctant to embrace the TikTok bill, for example, calling for hearings first and suggesting that the Senate may want to rewrite it. “We’re going through a process,” Cantwell said. “It’s important to get it right.”

Warner, on the other hand, says the House bill is the best chance to get something done after years of inaction. And he says that the threatening calls from young people are a good example of why the legislation is needed: “It makes the point, do we really want that kind of messaging being able to be manipulated by the Communist Party of China?”

Some lawmakers are worried that blocking TikTok could anger millions of young people who use the app, a crucial segment of voters in November’s election. But Warner says “the debate has shifted” from talk of an outright ban a year ago to the House bill which would force TikTok, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd., to sell its stake for the app to continue operating. Vice President Kamala Harris, in a television interview that aired Sunday, acknowledged the popularity of the app and that it has become an income stream for many people. She said the administration does not intend to ban TikTok but instead deal with its ownership. “We understand its purpose and its utility and the enjoyment that it gives a lot of folks,” Harris told ABC’s ”This Week.” Republicans are divided. While most of them support the TikTok legislation, others are wary of overregulation and the government targeting one specific entity...

Laurent de Brunhoff, ‘Babar’ heir

and author, dies at age 98

NEW YORK (AP) — “Babar” Florida. Just 12 years old when author Laurent de Brunhoff, his father, Jean de Brunhoff, who revived his father’s popular died of tuberculosis, Laurent picture book series about an drew upon his own gifts as a elephant-king, has died at 98 painter and storyteller and as after being in hospice care for an adult released dozens of two weeks. De Brunhoff was books about the elephant who a Paris native who moved to reigns over Celesteville, among the U.S. in the 1980s. He died them “Babar at the Circus” and Friday at his home in Key West, “Babar’s Yoga for Elephants.”

Trump’s New York hush money

case is set for trial April 15

NEW YORK (AP) — A New defense lawyers contended York judge has scheduled an that thousands of pages are April 15 trial date in former potentially important and President Donald Trump’s require a painstaking review. hush money case. Merchan, who earlier this Judge Juan M. Merchan month postponed the trial made the ruling Monday. The until at least mid-April, told judge earlier had scolded the defense lawyers that they former president’s lawyers as should have acted much he weighed when to reschedule sooner if they believed they the trial after a last-minute didn’t have all the records document dump caused a they felt they were entitled to. postponement of the original “That you don’t have a case date. right now is really disconcerting Merchan had bristled at what because the allegation he suggested were baseless that the defense makes in all defense claims of “prosecutorial of your papers is incredibly misconduct,” appearing serious. Unbelievably serious,” unpersuaded by Trump team Merchan said. “You’re arguments that prosecutors accusing the Manhattan district had until recently concealed attorney’s office and the tens of thousands of pages of people involved in this case of records from a previous federal prosecutorial misconduct and investigation. of trying to make me complicit Prosecutors said only a handful in it. And you don’t have of those newly records was a single cite to support that relevant to the case, while position.””