TikTok CEO testifies before Congress, Trump argues he deserves immunity: 5 Things podcast

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On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: TikTok CEO grilled by lawmakers

USA TODAY Politics Reporter Ken Tran explains why TikTok's CEO was grilled by U.S. lawmakers Thursday. Plus, Former President Donald Trump says he deserves immunity from three Jan. 6 lawsuits, the battle for Bakhmut in Ukraine may be turning, USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub looks at the health effects of sugar substitutes, and much of the country expects severe weather Friday.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Friday, the 24th of March 2023. Today, a look at yesterday's hearings surrounding TikTok data privacy. Plus, Trump says he's immune from civil lawsuits about January 6th, and Ukraine might be turning the corner in a crucial Eastern city.

What does TikTok do with your data? That question has been a popular one among US lawmakers for years, and things boiled over yesterday when the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled the company's CEO Shou Zi Chew for more than four hours. I spoke with USA TODAY Politics Reporter Ken Tran to learn more. Ken, thanks for hopping on the podcast.

Ken Tran:

No problem. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

What was the purpose of Thursday's testimony from TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew?

Ken Tran:

So the hearing went over a lot of things, but the main concern and why the hearing was scheduled was because there's increasing momentum on Capitol Hill over TikTok's national security concerns. Lawmakers specifically have issue with TikTok's parent company, ByteDance and its possible connections to the Chinese government.

Taylor Wilson:

Ken, are a lot of these concerns bipartisan, or is this driven by one party over the other?

Ken Tran:

This was a very bipartisan hearing. There was very little disagreement among Democrats and Republicans. In fact, during the hearing, multiple lawmakers, when they started their questioning, they mentioned that they've never seen something this bipartisan before.

Taylor Wilson:

What did Chew say about how TikTok uses the data of its users?

Ken Tran:

A big part of Chew's defense in the hearing was TikTok's proposed security plan that's yet to be implemented, is Project Texas, basically because there are so many concerns about the possibility of the Chinese government accessing the data that TikTok collects from its users.

The idea is to store that data on American soil and Chew said that this would be done in coordination with a Texas-based software company, Oracle, and overseeing all this data would be an entirely US-based security team, which would also allow the US government to regularly monitor the security plan and make sure, in theory, that there's nothing going on.

So that's what TikTok and Chew hopes would quell any concerns from lawmakers, but when Chew used Project Texas and try to explain to lawmakers that it would theoretically protect user data, lawmakers at the hearing didn't seem to buy into that at all. Their main concern is that the Chinese government, no matter what, will find a way to access the data if they really do want to.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Ken, obviously, now for years, lawmakers have been focused on who owns TikTok, right? This idea of China and the Chinese state being involved. What did Chew say about the possibility of Chinese owners selling their stakes in TikTok?

Ken Tran:

This is where a really big disagreement lies, again with Project Texas. One solution that the White House is really pushing is for Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the company, and that's something that lawmakers asked Chew about as well. What did he think about that possibility? He said that ownership is not the problem and continued to push Project Texas. He pointed to other social media companies, for example, such as Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, where that now defunct political firm had access to a whole swath of sensitive user data. No matter what Chew said, ownership would not change anything. That seemed like something that lawmakers and TikTok can't really come to an agreement on.

Taylor Wilson:

So beyond concerns on data, there are also concerns from lawmakers around content moderation. I found it interesting, Ken, when they talked about some of the content that's not in English on the platform. What did he say about that?

Ken Tran:

One of the members of the committee, a congresswoman from California - Democrat Rep Nanette Barragán, also chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus - asked Chew, not about national security concerns, but moreso how does the app moderate perhaps non-English content such as Spanish content, for example, because a large portion of TikTok's users are Spanish-speaking users. One thing that she asked was what's their priority for TikTok to also monitor this. He didn't offer any specific answer. He had to say that he would come back to her later. He said that there was a very important priority for TikTok to moderate that content, but didn't really give details on what the strategy is or how many staffers are moderating content.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Ken, what's next for US lawmakers when it comes to TikTok?

Ken Tran:

It's sort of unclear. There'll be a lot more talking about how to solve this issue because this doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. It was something that has been growing more and more and up to this hearing, where so many lawmakers grilled Chew at this almost five-and-a-half hour hearing, it was very adversarial.

So there doesn't seem to be any agreement to just let TikTok keep operating at the way it currently is. There likely will be some action proposed on, for example, having the Chinese owners sell its stakes or perhaps an outright ban. But even then, an outright ban would have First Amendment implications and also, the practicality of banning it, is something that still needs to be cleared up. So really unsure now, but if anything, the hearing confirmed that lawmakers are still going to be very zeroed in on this issue.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. USA TODAY Politics Reporter Ken Tran, thanks so much.

Ken Tran:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Former President Donald Trump argued in a federal appeals court filing yesterday that he deserves immunity from three civil lawsuits that seek to blame him for the January 6th Capitol attack. His lawyer told the panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that there was no incitement in Trump's speech near the White House on January 6th, 2021, before a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Trump attorney, Jesse Binnall wrote, "Absolute immunity aims to prevent the President from being subjected to the process of civil litigation." The court filing comes two weeks after the Justice Department said he is not protected from the lawsuits because of the accusation that he incited violence.

The battle for the Eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut once favored Russia, but it may be turning. A day after the British military assessed that Russia was losing its momentum there, Ukraine's top ground force's commander said his country is about to launch a counter-offensive.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported yesterday that the founder of the Russian Wagner mercenary group is preparing to reduce operations in Ukraine. The group has been spearheading much of Russia's offensive in Bakhmut while taking heavy casualties.

Amid concerns about the health effects of sugar, food companies have increasingly turned to sugar substitutes, but as USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub told me, there are also major concerns around these sugar alternatives. Karen, welcome back to 5 Things.

Karen Weintraub:

Hi, thanks so much.

Taylor Wilson:

So you wrote about sugar substitutes. These seem to be popping up more and more from snacks to what people put in their coffee.

Karen Weintraub:

Toothpaste.

Taylor Wilson:

Toothpaste, as you say. But what are some of the concerns about them?

Karen Weintraub:

So we use these sugar substitutes in order to not use sugar because we know the health problems related to sugar - diabetes, metabolic problems, but they're not really health foods either. There's been a lot of research that shows they're not toxic, they're not dangerous. Drinking a diet soda is fine, but drinking a lot of diet soda over a long period of time, we really don't know what the health effects are. Also, each one of these, and there are dozens of different sweeteners, has a different chemical composition and might have a different effect on the body. So it's hard to say these sweeteners do X as a group.

Taylor Wilson:

So I'm wondering, can sugar substitutes be useful, then, as a kind of reverse gateway to getting away from sugar à la nicotine patches for folks that are trying to get off of cigarettes?

Karen Weintraub:

That's what one of our sources suggested, that it's good as a transitional activity. But really, you don't want these as a heavy part of your daily diet. It's sometimes hard to know how much of this stuff you're eating because some of the natural substitutes may be listed at the end of an ingredient list and just say natural flavorings, and may not even identify them specifically, or they might be incomprehensible scientific names that you don't know what it is.

Taylor Wilson:

So does all of this mean that sugar itself is actually healthier than its substitutes?

Karen Weintraub:

No. I had that question, too, and asked that and I got a very clear no from everybody I talked to. Again, this stuff is not toxic. If you need a teaspoon of sugar every once in a while, it's fine. What you shouldn't do is eat baked goods every day or twice a day. You shouldn't eat probably these substitutes that often, either. When I was a teenager, I drank a ton of diet soda. I would not do that today.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, you wrote a lot about drinks and sodas in your piece. I think a lot of people forget how unhealthy these can be. Why are things like sodas so unhealthy and are there solid alternatives or is it just better to stick with water?

Karen Weintraub:

I'm holding up my water bottle. Yes, water. Tea and coffee maybe, but not with a lot of added sugar. Soda is the bane of nutritionists, especially sugar-sweetened soda, but also, these low-calorie substitutes are not necessarily great for you either.

Sugared sodas are empty calories. You're drinking 150 calories in a can of Coke and you're getting no nutritional value for them, but your body doesn't necessarily count those calories. It doesn't know that you've just consumed that amount of calories, and so it's added on to what you would normally eat.

For the sugar-free ones, it sets you up for wanting sweet things, and so everything else maybe tastes less sweet because you're so used to the sweetness of a diet soda and then you're craving sugar all day long.

Taylor Wilson:

A lot of these sugar substitutes label themselves as natural sweeteners. Are these better than other types?

Karen Weintraub:

So natural just means it's found in nature, usually in much smaller quantities than we're eating them, but they're not necessarily better. Often, researchers think that some of the way both natural and artificial sweeteners affect the body is that they change the microbes, the things that are living in your gut. A healthy balance is a big mix of these good, bad, and neutral microbes, and that sometimes these sweeteners can throw off that balance, and that can set you up for health problems down the road.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Karen Weintraub, thanks as always.

Karen Weintraub:

Thanks.

Taylor Wilson:

Much of the country will be hit with severe weather today. A late-season snowstorm is blanketing the Great Lakes, including up to eight inches of snow in Traverse City, Michigan, and five inches in Madison, Wisconsin. The system will next move into the Northeast tonight, hitting upstate New York and upper New England. Further south, much of the Midwest will get hit with rain today, and the National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for much of Missouri and Illinois. Elsewhere, parts of the Deep South are expecting severe thunderstorms.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning of the year right here, wherever you get your audio. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: TikTok CEO grilled by lawmakers, Trump argues for immunity: 5 Things podcast