Cathy McMorris Rodgers

Inside the surprise effort to force TikTok’s divestiture

“I will kill you if you fucking shut down TikTok,” a teenage boy warned to a member of Congress in a voicemail reviewed by The Spectator. “I will really really fuck you up. So don’t shut down TikTok. Bye bye!”  This week, Capitol Hill was inundated with a series of unusual callers — children, some as young as six years old. They had been enlisted by TikTok to forcibly push back against a bill that’s on track to sail through the House next week which forces the divestiture of a series of companies owned by foreign adversaries, like China in the case of the globally popular video app.

tiktok

FTC chair Lina Khan accused of résumé inflation and lying to Congress

Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission was supposed to be the next great trustbuster. But on the course of her rise to the nation's top antitrust law office, Khan allegedly misrepresented her credentials throughout her career and stands accused of lying to Congress. Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, levied a series of accusations to Khan in a barrage of Questions for the Record obtained by The Spectator. Hageman’s most sensational claims are that Khan lied to Congress, lied by omission to Congress and misrepresented herself as a lawyer while lacking the appropriate law license.

lina khan

Republicans say Fauci-authorized grants may have been illegal

Anthony Fauci’s final months in office, in which he opposed a federal judge striking down a federal travel mask mandate and unilaterally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a scandal-plagued NGO, were most likely illegal, according to findings from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee claims that his term was never legally renewed. According to the findings, the Department of Health and Human Services “repeatedly misled” Congress and tried to cover its tracks in order to dismiss allegations that Fauci and his allies were unlawfully working for months, during which they handed out tens of billions of dollars of government contracts, many of which are now in legal jeopardy.

anthony fauci

TikTok’s powerful friends in DC

TikTok’s CEO is gearing up for a grilling in Congress, but he’s got some new, powerful allies in his corner: a political consulting firm whose founder lavished praise on Mao Zedong and is now one of Biden’s top aides — and a socialist congressman who thinks banning the Chinese spyware is racist. Shou Zi Chew, the company’s CEO, is headed for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where Republicans are planning to press him on the national security concerns posed by the video app’s parent company ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Chew is an odd person to push back against claims by Republicans — and, increasingly, some Democrats — that TikTok is inextricably linked to the CCP.

jamaal bowman tiktok anita dunn