Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who led the charge to pass legislation banning TikTok from government devices, is now demanding that Biden’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) expedite the law’s implementation.
“I write to urge the Biden Administration to expeditiously implement the recently enacted No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” he wrote in a letter on Friday to Biden’s OMB director, Shalanda Young, who is responsible for carrying out the law after it passed last year.
Hawley explained that the legislation was first introduced in March 2020 but only became law on December 29, when it was passed through the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Joe Biden after being added to the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill.
“This law requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop standards for executive agencies to remove TikTok and any successor application from government devices within 60 days,” Hawley acknowledged. “Unfortunately, I have yet to see any signs of progress from your agency in developing these standards.”
Hawley, in his letter, also explained that it is “imperative that our information technology systems do not include Chinese malware or applications, such as TikTok” since “government devices often carry sensitive or classified information related to national security.”
“Removing TikTok from government devices is a critical first step to improving U.S. cybersecurity,” he added. “TikTok remains a serious threat to national security.”
Additionally, Hawley also unveiled legislation to ban TikTok nationwide on Wednesday, which would ban the Chinese social media app on American devices and ban commercial activity from TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in the county.
“TikTok poses a threat to all Americans who have the app on their devices,” Hawley said in a statement on Wednesday. “It opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting.”
He noted that banning TikTok on government devices was only the first step in the “right direction” and that banning it nationwide was the next step.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
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