If you've got six on your phone, it is reading your emails, it is looking at your photos,

it is accessing your contact list, and it is making that information available to the

Chinese Communist Party, period.

That Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, he's one of several lawmakers who've

been trying to ban TikTok over possible ties with the Chinese government.

TikTok, for its part, says it doesn't share user data with China.

The social media platform could be banned in the US.

Your phone will have one less social media app, TikTok.

This has to be the sixth or seventh bill that is going after TikTok, so at some point,

one of these you imagine is going to get across the finish line.

US lawmakers stepping out of the push to ban TikTok.

Earlier this year, TikTok didn't have many friends in Washington.

President Biden and members of both parties, in both houses, were calling for restrictions

on the social media platform. But then, there was a shift, and the legislation that seemed

to have momentum started to stall.

Slowly, there was this trickle of Republicans who started making noise about how we shouldn't

ban TikTok, and those Republicans had something in common. They're sort of Libertarian

leaning. Our colleagues, Stu Wu, started looking into what was going on.

And I thought, oh, this is a neat story just about how libertarians have developed this

little power base in Washington. And the more I dug into this, we realized, oh, there's

something else that links them, which is funding from this guy, Jeff Yes.

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power.

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