Last week, the Arkansas congressional delegation voted in support of a bill that passed the House that would force Tik Tok, a Chinese company, to sell to an American company, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
In a press release, U.S Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, said he voted for the bill because of concerns he has related to how the data collected from the app is being handled.
“There is no separation between national security and the state when it comes to the CCP. TikTok is using CCP dominated technology that is being leveraged to gather massive amounts of data on American citizens, posing a major national security risk. We must protect Americans from the growing threat of the CCP by requiring the sale of TikTok to an American company. Whether TikTok remains on the phones of Americans or not is now up to TikTok’s owner, Chinese headquartered ByteDance,” Hill said.
The bill has passed the House, but still needs approval from the Senate. U.S Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, said he supports the bill. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said he would sign the legislation into law, if it passed both chambers of Congress.
Compacts of Free Association vote
According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Congress last week approved of an agreement that would allow for Marshallese immigrants to continue living in the U.S as lawful non-immigrants. Arkansas has 8,300 Marshallese residents, mainly in the Northwest region.
In an interview with Arkies in the Beltway, a podcast by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, U.S Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers, said this needed to be done.
“We scared the hell out of some people. The failure to get this agreement across the finish line early, there were a lot of rumors going around and it kind of spooked the Marshallese community about whether or not they were going to be targeted, deported and those sorts of things. You just can’t have that,” he said.
This agreement was part of the Compacts of Free Association that will also allow for the U.S to maintain a military presence in the Marshallese Islands.
