A trio of bipartisan lawmakers have teamed up on legislation targeting TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app whose powerful algorithm has raised concerns about data security and privacy. Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a bill Tuesday that would “block and prohibit all transactions” by TikTok and any other social media platforms operating “under the influence” of China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. Likewise, a pair of bipartisan congressmen, GOP Representative Mike Gallagher and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, have sponsored a companion bill in the House, Reuters reports. 

Rubio and Gallagher first announced the legislation in a Washington Post Opinion piece last month, criticizing President Joe Biden’s use of the platform to reach voters. In a press release Tuesday, Gallagher painted TikTok as “digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news,” while Rubio claimed “the federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok.” The US government and TikTok have been working to reach a security agreement for years—President Donald Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to ban TikTok from operating in the US unless it was put under American ownership—an order that Biden later rescinded while vowing to address potential security risks from TikTok and other foreign-owned apps.

Now, the bipartisan trio of lawmakers is looking to enact a national ban on TikTok as protracted talks between the US and TikTok continue to hit snags. Administration officials are specifically concerned with TikTok’s “access to consumer data and its potential use for influence operations,” the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in November that the bureau has “national-security concerns about the app.” 

For its part, TikTok has claimed that it does not share information with the Chinese government, CNN notes. And in a statement to Reuters this week, a TikTok spokesperson called it “troubling that rather than encouraging the administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok, some members of Congress have decided to push for a politically-motivated ban that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States.” Still, the company acknowledged over the summer that its non-US employees have access to data on US users, and said that it’s working to protect that information. 

In any case, Rubio and Gallagher’s TikTok crusade is likely to earn both lawmakers brownie points among their constituents, as CNN’s Oliver Darcy noted. “It’s playing to the Fox News crowd,” a person close to TikTok told Darcy, who noted that that the legislation “reflects a new trend” of Republicans showcasing “how hawkish they are on China by taking a hardline stance on TikTok with proposals…that do little to actually limit its broad reach.” Governor Spencer Cox of Utah on Tuesday became the latest GOP governor to issue an executive order banning usage of the app on state-owned electronic devices, citing its ties to China. “China’s access to data collected by TikTok presents a threat to our cybersecurity,” Cox said, vowing to “make sure that the people of Utah can trust the state’s security systems.” Meanwhile, South Dakota’s Kristi Noem and Maryland’s Larry Hogan have limited the use of TikTok on government devices.