Latest version of House TikTok bill gets crucial support in Senate
CBSN
Washington — Sen. Maria Cantwell, a key senator who has held up legislation regulating TikTok endorsed the House's latest version of a measure that could lead to a ban of the social media app in the U.S.
Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, announced her support late Wednesday for an updated measure that would force TikTok's Chinese parent company to divest of the widely popular short-form video platform within one year.
The legislation is included in House Speaker Mike Johnson's four-part foreign aid plan, which also involves wartime assistance for Ukraine and Israel. The updated version extends the six-month window ByteDance would have to sell its stake in the company or lose access to app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S. to nine months, with the possibility of a three-month extension.
More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.