An Ohio House Panel has passed the state operating budget including a $1 billion tax cut, higher income limits for school vouchers, and a ban on TikTok from government devices.
On Tuesday, the plan to spend more than $86 billion over the subsequent two fiscal years contained in the 5,300-page proposal known as House Bill (HB) 33 passed the House Finance Committee with bipartisan support.
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The Ohio House introduced its version of the state budget on Tuesday, including a $1 billion tax cut, higher income limits for school vouchers, and a ban on TikTok from government devices.
The second iteration of a plan to spend more than $86 billion over the subsequent two fiscal years is contained in the 5,300-page proposal known as House Bill (HB) 33.
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Two Republican Ohio House Representatives have introduced legislation that would ban TikTok from government devices.
The introduction of this legislation follows a state executive order issued by Governor Mike DeWine in January 2023, forbidding the use of TikTok or other platforms and applications held by an entity located in China from state devices citing that the Chinese Communist Party employs the apps as an “intelligence gathering mechanism.”
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A bill to ban TikTok and WeChat on public college internet networks in Tennessee passed the Senate by a 28-1 vote Thursday.
During committee, Sen. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, said many in the United States have been concerned about Chinese spy balloons over the past month. But he said that, during his work in the Navy, he dealt with a lot of secrets and the biggest secret was how the military gets its secrets.
“What we have at our fingertips is thousands of balloons,” he said, pointing to his phone.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin banned TikToK and WeChat on state devices and WiFi on Friday, the same day Attorney General Jason Miyares signed on to a letter asking Google and Apple to change TikTok age ratings to reflect content on the platform.
“TikTok and WeChat data are a channel to the Chinese Communist Party, and their continued presence represents a threat to national security, the intelligence community, and the personal privacy of every single American,” Youngkin said in a press release announcing his executive order.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp banned TikTok, WeChat, and Telegram on state-issued devices in a memo sent to state agency heads on Thursday.
“The TikTok software platform has the capability to track and store its users’ highly detailed public and non-public personal information, and the Chinese government is able to access this information under national security laws that require Chinese companies to assist in intelligence work through data sharing and other means. This requirement has already resulted in the CCP [Communist Party of China] influencing TikTok’s content and censorship algorithms to further its own political interests and poses an ongoing threat to the data of all users,” Kemp explained in the memo obtained by 11AliveNews reporter Nick Wooten.
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has had his personal account on Chinese-owned social messaging service WeChat taken over by a Chinese tech company and shut down Monday, Reuters reported.
Fuzhou 985 Technology, a China-based technology firm, managed to take control of Morrison’s WeChat account, which currently has 76,000 followers, several months ago, Reuters reported. Morrison reportedly used the account to communicate with Australians of Chinese origin.
Fuzhou rebranded the account as “Australian Chinese New Life” and redirected users visiting the account to Fuzhou’s website, according to a CNN translation.
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President Joe Biden revoked an executive order that sought to ban downloads of Chinese-owned apps like TikTok and WeChat in the United States, the White House announced Wednesday.
Instead, Biden directed the Commerce Department to evaluate software applications connected with foreign adversaries like China, and “take action, as appropriate,” according to the fact sheet the administration released. The previous slate of executive orders were signed by former President Donald Trump, one of which sought to ban TikTok completely in the U.S.
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he approved a transaction between Oracle and TikTok that allows the Chinese application to stay in the United States.
Part of the arrangement requires the newly U.S.-based TikTok company to direct $5 billion toward teaching American children “the real history of our country,” Trump told reporters at the White House, Bloomberg reported Saturday. The president later told rally attendees in North Carolina Saturday that he is establishing a “large fund for the education of American youth.”
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A judge blocked the Department of Commerce’s ban on Chinese social messaging app WeChat over First Amendment concerns early Sunday morning before it could go into effect.
Judge Laurel Beeler of San Francisco issued the decision more than a month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning both WeChat and social media app TikTok over national security concerns, The Associated Press reported. The executive order signed on Aug. 6 was set to go into effect Sunday.
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The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it will ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores on Sunday and will saddle the apps with technical restrictions that could seriously limit their functionality in the U.S.
The order, which cited national security and data privacy concerns, follows weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. President Donald Trump has pressured the app’s Chinese owner to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a domestic company. It is not clear how the latest prohibitions will affect a deal recently struck by California tech giant Oracle aimed at satisfying U.S. concerns over TikTok’s data collection and related issues.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered a sweeping but unspecified ban on dealings with the Chinese owners of consumer apps TikTok and WeChat, although it remains unclear if he has the legal authority to actually ban the apps from the U.S.
The twin executive orders — one for each app — take effect in 45 days. They call on the Commerce Secretary to define the banned dealings by that time. While the wording of the orders is vague, some experts said it appears intended to bar the popular apps from the Apple and Google app stores, which could effectively remove them from distribution in the U.S.
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Two days after President Trump told reporters that he plans to ban TikTok from the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in an interview with Fox News that executive action may soon be taken against many other apps owned by Chinese firms.
Trump remarked to journalists aboard Air Force One on Friday that he could ban TikTok “with an executive order,” suggesting that the president has made up his mind about the popular short video platform. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech conglomerate ByteDance, has been at the center of a months-long debate over whether the data that it collects from American users could be exploited by China’s government.
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