A TikTok trend

Daniel Desrochers

Last week, Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, teamed up on a letter with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, to urge the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to impose restrictions on a social media app that has become a frequent target for lawmakers — TikTok.

Moran and Blumenthal said they wrote their letter after reports that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, used the app to spy on two journalists who were reporting on it and expressed deeper concerns about how the company was collecting and using data.

“This data collection is deeply concerning, given the threat the company’s collection of data currently poses to Americans privacy and security as detailed in this letter,” they wrote. “As a result, even Americans who are not using the platform are at risk of having their information collected by TikTok.”

They urged the committee to quickly wrap up its investigation of the company and impose restrictions on who gets access to the data.

While some senators, like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, have been loudly railing against against TikTok recently, Moran has quietly been working on tech issues for years.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media companies in the world. It boasts more than 1 billion users and has helped launch the careers of pop stars and online influencers. But government officials worry about the data the company is collecting on American users and what they’ll do with it. FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned that the site might be used to influence Americans and lawmakers have moved to ban the app from state and federal government devices.

The senators’ effort comes as Congress — which has members older than the chocolate chip cookie and canned beer — is once again talking about taking action to regulate social media companies.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, promised to have a meeting where lawmakers would work on unifying behind one proposal that would attempt to hold social media to account on a variety of issues, including the mental health of teens and child sex trafficking.

President Joe Biden, too, has called on Congress to take action. In his State of the Union address, he said he wanted to ban targeted advertising to children and make it harder for internet companies to collect data on Americans.

It may be a difficult legislative push — data collection is a lucrative business that has fundamentally reshaped advertising in the digital age. And there may not be much help from the courts either. The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on a case dealing with the law that protects social media companies from being held legally accountable for posts made by users.

Supreme Court observers said the court did not appear willing to weigh in on the issue.

More from Missouri

As established marijuana businesses in Missouri cash in on full recreational legalization, smaller mom-and-pop shops are still waiting before they can compete for a small batch of micro-licenses. The program was designed to give small businesses a chance to join the lucrative industry, but critics say it gives already established companies a head start.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

A bill is moving through the Kansas Legislature that would limit ballot drop boxes to one per county in the next election. The idea illustrates a schism in the Republican Party as the party navigates the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

Marshall’s Milk

Sen. Roger Marshall brought a prop to the Senate Agriculture Committee meeting last week — a glass of whole milk.

He drank from a Kansas State University glass, calling it the “greatest drink known to mankind,” before asking the panel to emphasize the importance of milk for breastfeeding mothers and raising concerns that whole milk isn’t in schools because he doesn’t believe skim milk has the same good taste as whole milk.

“I just remember my grandma, the greatest nutritionist of all time, saying milk is so important for breastfeeding moms,” Marshall said.

The government is working on the new guidelines for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which provides federal grants to fund programs for low-income families. Marshall said the new guidelines would decrease the milk quota by eight quarts.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, noted that Marshall did not share the milk with the rest of the committee.

Schmitt v. Buttigieg

Early on in his term, Sen. Eric Schmitt, a freshman Missouri Republican, may have found a target in the Biden administration to go after — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Over the past two weeks, Schmitt has commented on Buttigieg several times. He criticized the Transportation secretary for not appearing in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for a hearing about the Federal Aviation Administration’s system failure in January that grounded thousands of planes.

Then he criticized Buttigieg over the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that caused a toxic chemical spill.

Schmitt is part of a wave of politicians that have called on Buttigieg to resign over his handling over the Norfolk Southern train derailment.

Buttigieg told CBS News that he could have commented on the train derailment sooner, but Politico reported that many of the ambitious young Democrats’ allies believe that the criticism is coming because he is seen as someone with his eyes on the presidency.

Buttigieg went to East Palestine Thursday. He was mocked by some Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley’s communications director, for wearing dress boots instead of work boots.

Kelly stays out of it

A group of 20 Democratic governors announced this week that they were forming “The Reproductive Freedom Alliance” in an effort to work together to deal with abortion bans coming out of red states, according to Axios.

But the coalition doesn’t include one notable Democratic governor of a Republican-leaning state — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly.

While Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure in August that would have paved the way for the legislature to implement an abortion ban, Kelly has largely kept the issue at arms length.

During her reelection campaign, Kelly largely avoided talking about the issue. Though she reaffirmed that she believed abortion was between a woman and her doctor after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she didn’t urge Kansans to vote “no” on the abortion ballot measure, unlike other Democrats in the state.

The only member from a state former President Donald Trump won in 2020 was North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. Kelly, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards aren’t on the list. Neither is Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who won a tough election against Republican Kari Lake in November.

Correction

In last week’s newsletter I said Monday marked a year of war in Ukraine. Today marks the one year anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion.

Happy Friday

Read this about the dissidents fleeing to the American West.. Have the Burnt Heaven at Char Bar because Jon said so. Here’s a song from an album that may or may not be named after the House committee chaired by Rep. Jason Smith, R-Missouri.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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