First he asked colleagues like Jeff Jackson to log off TikTok. Now Thom Tillis wants a ban.

The congressional war on TikTok resumed Monday.

Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from Charlotte, continues to find stardom on the social media platform amassing 1.6 million followers. But Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville, says members of Congress are risking not only congressional information but the personal information of their constituents by continuing to use the platform.

U.S. officials have growing concerns that the Chinese government is using the social media platform and its parent company, ByteDance, to spy on Americans.

On Monday morning, Tillis and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, led 15 other Republican members of Congress in writing a letter to leaders of the Senate Rules Committee and the Committee on House Administration to prevent their colleagues from continuing to use the social media platform. The letter was first published Monday by Politico.

Concerns about TikTok use

The lawmakers’ main point of concern stemmed from information that came out of a March 23 House committee hearing with TikTok‘s CEO.

“It is clear from the testimony and comments from TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, that all members of Congress must lead by example and immediately stop using the platform for official communications,” the Republicans wrote in their letter. “As such, we urge you to amend the House and Senate rules to bar members of Congress from continued use of TikTok and take any other appropriate measure to mitigate the risks of this de-facto, spyware app.”

More than half the states, including North Carolina, have already banned TikTok from government devices. There are also bills before Congress to ban the platform from American devices. Montana could soon become the first state with a full ban on its residents’ devices.

And while Republicans have been growing louder in the movement to censor the platform altogether, the topic is a bipartisan one.

When Chew met with lawmakers last month, he faced backlash from both parties about potential Chinese surveillance of Americans through the app.

Chew told them he was working to take U.S. data out of China so that he would not have to comply with a Chinese law that requires him to hand over his company’s data to the Chinese government without notification to its users.

But he was unwilling to discuss what resources were shared between TikTok, ByteDance and TikTok’s Chinese counterpart, Douyin, and whether the latter two helped him prepare his testimony.

North Carolina and TikTok

Jackson has defended his use of TikTok against criticism from Tillis and other Republicans.

“I used my presence on TikTok to explain exactly why there is a national security risk and how we could address it,” Jackson told McClatchy last month. “It was watched by millions. That’s a lot more than any senator will accomplish by throwing a little rock at me.”

It appears only one other member of North Carolina’s congressional delegation uses TikTok: Rep. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat from Cary, who hasn’t posted since February and hasn’t reached the level of followers that Jackson has.

Jackson’s TikTok success largely came after he posted a video shot at 2 a.m. explaining to his constituents in the most basic terms what led to the crash of Silicon Valley Bank.

But Jackson’s use of TikTok led to the ire of Tillis, who sharply criticized members of Congress for using the social media app in a news release, and while he didn’t name Jackson directly, he did link to an article about Jackson’s success on the app.

“China is one of the biggest geopolitical threats America has ever faced,” Tillis said then. “It’s beyond reckless for members of Congress to still be encouraging their constituents to use TikTok despite knowing the Chinese Communist Party is mining all their personal info. Protecting Americans from the CCP is more important than getting views.”

And Jackson and Nickel both found themselves the subject of ethics complaints after a conservative organization noticed that both had used the same accounts to campaign for their election and then continued to use the same account in Congress. Among other complaints were the use of videos and photographs shot in the Capitol, which violates their rules.

Jackson seems undeterred about using the app, posting a video Monday morning about the fake outrage his colleagues display in Congress to draw media coverage.

Ban the app, letter says

“Even after the March 23, 2023, hearing in which it became blatantly clear to the public that the China-based app is mining data and potentially spying on American citizens, members of Congress continue to utilize the app to communicate with their constituents,” lawmakers’ letter reads.

“Some members of Congress who regularly use the app have minimized the security threat to our nation, and their defense is not compelling, considering there are several popular social media apps that are not at the same risk for the potential transfer of sensitive, private information to an adversarial foreign government.”

The lawmakers listed warnings members of Congress have received about TikTok going back to March 2020.

“It is troublesome that some members continue to disregard these clear warnings and even encouraging their constituents to use TikTok to interface with their elected representatives — especially since some of these users are minors,” the letter wrote. “We feel this situation warrants further action to protect the privacy of both sensitive congressional information and the personal information of our constituents.”