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WASHINGTON -- Last week's testimony from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew "increased the likelihood that Congress will take some action" on the hugely popular and controversial social media app after his remarks on Capitol Hill failed to allay bipartisan worries over potential data privacy issues and Chinese government intrusion, Rep. Mike Gallagher said Sunday.

"They've actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the [Chinese Communist Party] to control the most dominant media platform in America," he told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz of TikTok, which has 150 million monthly active American users.

Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House select committee on U.S. competition with China, touted legislation he and his committee's ranking member, Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, co-sponsored to either ban the app or force its sale to an American firm from Chinese parent company ByteDance.

Chinese officials have called such proposals overreach and unfair -- though China heavily restricts the use of the internet in its country -- and said they would resist a sale. Critics of the scrutiny say it hasn't applied to similar social media platforms.

MORE: TikTok CEO faces off with Congress, hoping to stave off possible ban over security fears

But Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi, appearing together on "This Week," told Raddatz that the risks warranted such moves.

Separately, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Sunday that the chamber would be "moving forward with legislation" on TikTok.

Krishnamoorthi pointed to Chew's inability to call out "spying" by some ByteDance employees on American journalists last year or to "acknowledge that there's a genocide going on with regard to the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province, in the northeast corner of China. Again, bowing to pressure from this Chinese Communist Party," he told Raddatz.

Both he and Gallagher also sounded skeptical of "Project Texas," an endeavor TikTok says will keep U.S. data stored in Texas and prevent access by Beijing but that lawmakers say is insufficient.

"There are whistleblowers coming forward saying that whatever the TikTok management is saying about Project Texas is a pack of lies," Krishnamoorthi said, while Gallagher said protections for Americans' data are only part of the larger issue.

"The key part that's missing from Project Texas' mitigation strategy is control of the algorithm. That's really what we need to address," Gallagher said. "It's not just exfiltrating data from an American phone, it's what they're able to push to Americans through the algorithm -- control our sense of reality, control the news, meddle in future elections."

SEE ALSO: Gap grows between TikTok users, lawmakers on potential ban

Chew's lengthy testimony on Thursday in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sought to satisfy concerns that TikTok would be forced to hand over data on U.S. users if the Chinese government requested it.

"I think a lot of risks that are pointed out are hypothetical and theoretical risks," Chew insisted at one point. "I have not seen any evidence."

He also pushed back against worries that TikTok's algorithm could be used to sway public opinion, including with pro-China content and election misinformation.

But lawmakers on the panel were less than impressed, with Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., telling Chew, "Your platform should be banned."

"I think that it created more concerns, quite frankly," Krishnamoorthi told Raddatz on Sunday of Thursday's hearing. "I don't think that he did TikTok any favors."

Raddatz pressed Krishnamoorthi on his response to the potential political fallout from a TikTok ban, given its popularity with younger people.

"I think that good policy makes good politics," he said. "And in this particular case, we have to recognize that while TikTok is another social media app, and we have a generalized concern about these social media apps, it's different in kind from any other social media app because its parent company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party."

Beyond TikTok, Raddatz also asked Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi -- who sit on the House Intelligence Committee -- about strikes on U.S. bases in Syria last week, which killed an American contractor and wounded several others, including service members and a contractor.

Iran-backed militias are thought to be responsible, and the U.S. has retaliated with airstrikes.

Gallagher said the attacks stemmed from a "crumbling" of "our deterrent posture vis--vis Iran" and said that "we can't afford another failure of deterrence like that, which we saw in Ukraine."

"Some practical steps going forward in my opinion would be to reimpose a policy of maximum economic pressure, abandon an attempt to resuscitate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal] as well as force the Pentagon to deliver" a report on U.S.-Israeli cooperation on technology to boost both countries' capabilities, Gallagher said.

"We need to have a clear-eyed view of the regime we're facing in Tehran," he said.

Krishnamoorthi said that the U.S. would not back away from the region and would continue counter-terrorism work there, despite the danger.

"[W]e're kind of targets of opportunity for these Iranian-backed militias. But we're not going anywhere. We have to stay in northern Syria, and work with our partners in Iraq as well in fighting ISIS [the Islamic State]," he said. "Unfortunately, we're going to have to deal with them appropriately, but we're not leaving that part of the world as we deal with ISIS."

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Congress closer to a TikTok ban or forced sale after CEO's ... - WLS-TV

As HBOs award-winning drama series Succession returns for its fourth and final season on Sunday, you may not realize that the show was inspired by families behind some of the biggest media empires.

The series follows aging patriarch Logan Roy, a mogul at the helm of the worlds largest media and entertainment conglomerate, and his four adult children, who are fighting for control over his empire as his health declines.

In an interview with HBO, Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong said he and the writers thought of media moguls and their families such as Rupert Murdoch, William Hearst, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer of Breitbart, among others while working on the show.

Here's a look at the billionaire media families who were the inspiration behind this Emmy Award-winning series.

Rupert Murdoch is co-chairman of Fox Corporation and executive chairman of News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, and the New York Post. As of 2023, Rupert Murdoch has a net worth of $17.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Originally from Australia, Murdoch inherited a chain of newspapers at the age of 22 after his father died. Murdoch eventually expanded into the UK and the United States, acquiring newspapers including the San Antonio News, New York Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2007, Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journals parent company, Dow Jones for $6 billion from the Bancroft family, which had owned the company for a century.

Like Succession patriarch Roy, Murdoch, 92, still runs his empire, where he has helmed News Corp. since 2013. In March 2019, Murdoch sold most of 21st Century Foxs TV and movie assets to Disney for $71.3 billion.

Successions Waystar Royco owns a conservative-leaning television network, ATN, similar to Fox News, as well as various tabloids. The shows fictional media conglomerate also owns a website called Vaulter, similar to Vice. One of Murdochs sons, James Murdoch, is a board member of Vice Media and has owned a minority stake in the company since 2019.

Murdochs eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, is the executive chair and CEO of Fox, running the companys news, sports, and entertainment divisions. Murdoch has six children and has been married four times (and recently got engaged), while Successions Logan Roy has four children and has been married three times.

Named one of Americas richest families by Forbes in 2020, legacy medias Hearst family has a net worth of $21 billion. Hearst Corp., founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1887, owns magazines and newspapers such as Harpers Bazaar, Esquire, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Hearst also owns 33 television stations, stakes in several major networks such as Lifetime, ESPN, and A&E, and almost 260 magazines around the world. William Hearsts five sons followed in their fathers footsteps. Hearsts grandson, William R. Hearst III, is now chair of Hearst.

Much like the Roys in Succession, the Sulzbergers also kept their publishing legacy in the family. Arther G. Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times Co., is the sixth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to serve as the publisher of the New York Times. In season two of Succession, patriarch Logan Roy wanted to acquire a media company controlled by the Pierce family, which Vanity Fair said was inspired by the Sulzbergers.

Millionaire hedge-fund manager and political donor Robert Mercer has an estimated net worth of $125 million, according to Forbes. He and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, have invested millions of dollars into the conservative site Breitbart News. The Mercer family is known for their influence in media and politicsRobert Mercer spent $25 million on Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign.

Sumner Redstoneanother legacy media family like the Roys of Successioncontrolled ViacomCBS, which he acquired in 1987. The late media mogul had a net worth of $2.6 billion as of April 2020 before his death in August of that year, according to Forbes.

He also owned a private theater chain, National Amusements, which he inherited from his father. Sumners Viacom bought CBS in 1999 for $37.3 billionone of the largest media deals at the timeand it became ViacomCBS in December 2019. Redstones daughter, Shari, is the non-executive chair of ViacomCBS.

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Meet the Billionaire Media Families Who Inspired the Hit TV Series ... - Investopedia

Jeff Jackson (D-N.C. 14th) is a member of Congress, a member of the National Guard and a father of three. He's also a TikTok star.

Jackson has about 1.4 million followers on the platform, where he posts informational videos about Congress and its function and current issues including information about emergency Zoom calls and the traditional freshman Congress office lottery.

In an email statement, Jackson said trust in political leadership has never been lower, and that transparency is key to earning that trust.

To me, it feels like part of the job of being a representative," he said in the email. "If we believe in transparency, then social media is a tool for accomplishing that. I just see it as an extension of my job."

Jackson had a strong media presence prior to his recent election, garnering over 500,000 views on his second-ever TikTok, a video that shows him addressing corruption as a state representative.

He used the platform, along with Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, as a tool in the race for North Carolina's U.S. Senate seat and later the 14th District seat. Jackson promoted campaign initiatives such as 100 Counties in 100 Days where he held 100 different town halls in 100 days as well as his policies, such as expanding reproductive health care access and legalizing marijuana.

One of his recent videos, covering the Silicon Valley Bank failure, has over 26 million views on TikTok, as well as 6 million on Instagram and 6,500 on YouTube.

Jackson is also continuing to expand his online presence by sending out blog updates to subscribers emails.

He's a very adept user of a medium that just not a lot of other people in politics are using regularly, Daniel Kreiss, a professor in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, said.

But Kreiss also said Jacksons success can be attributed to his authentic presence online.

People who have used social media really well in the political space tend to be people who are unscripted, who can appear as being authentic who can communicate in a way that doesn't read like a press release, Kreiss said.

Jackson is authentic both on- and off-camera, according to Tyler Smith, who served as the co-captain of the UNC for Jeff Jackson campaign.

It's a testament to how effective he is as a speaker and as a good person, Smith said.

Jackson went to high school in Chapel Hill and attended Emory University. He returned to North Carolina to attend UNCs School of Law, and served as Gaston County Assistant District Attorney before becoming the second-youngest North Carolina state senator in 2014.

In 2022, after an unsuccessful run in the Democratic primary for the North Carolina U.S. Senate seat, Jackson announced his candidacy for North Carolinas new 14th Congressional district.

Sally Curme, a former communications and finance intern on Jacksons Senate campaign, said Jackson has a strong commitment to informing his constituents.

He was willing to be there. He wanted to talk about everything from education to voters rights to gun control to LGBTQ+ rights and everything in between, Curme said.

She said other politicians will start "taking a page out of his book," and that his social media presence helps to connect with voters of all demographics.

"I think he is setting the framework for the future of politics," Curme said.

@DTHCityState | city@dailytarheel.com

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'Setting the framework': Rep. Jeff Jackson uses social media to ... - The Daily Tar Heel

St. Jude deliberately designed its campus and culture to spark connections between clinicians and scientists, giving drug discovery projects the greatest chance of real-world success. Scientists and clinicians translate laboratory breakthroughs into novel treatment options for patients at St. Judeand around the world.

Small molecule discovery: From high-throughput screening to tailored molecular design, investigators in the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics pursue the full spectrum of approaches to identify small molecules with excellent therapeutic potential.

Vaccines, gene therapy and other biologics: Many effective therapies involve biological products. To serve our patients and investigators, St. Jude was the first pediatric cancer research center in the United States to open an on-site Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility. This facility plays a critical role in moving promising discoveries fromSt. Judelaboratories into the hospital's clinics, ensuring that biopharmaceuticals and other biological products for patient use are manufactured in accordance with strict federal regulations.

Pharmacogenomics: Scientists and clinicians at St. Jude have pioneered pharmacogenomics discovery research and clinical implementation since the early 1990s. Research has uncovered pharmacogenetic variants influencing common anti-cancer drugs. These efforts have enabled the clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics, shifting the precision medicine paradigm in pediatric oncology.

The following drug discovery experts are available to offer hands-on expertise in developing therapeutics and biopharmaceuticals.

To schedule an interview, emailmedia@stjude.org.

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Drug Development Experts and Information for Media - St. Jude ... - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Rice University bioscientist and synthetic biologist James Chappell has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop RNA programming methods to improve human health and the environment.

Synthetic biology has progressed a lot in the past decade, and weve gotten really good at genetically programming microbes in confined laboratory environments where conditions are ideal, said Chappell, an assistant professor both of biosciences and of bioengineering. But, of course, most microbes on the planet don't live in pure cultures where the temperature is always 37 degrees (Celsius).

With the CAREER, were trying to think about programming in more complex environments, he said. The question is, Can we use the engineered RNA systems weve developed to start programming communities of microbes in more messy environments?

CAREER awards, the NSFs most prestigious early-career honors, recognize young scientists who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. Only about 500 CAREER Awards are given across all academic disciplines each year, and Chappell is one of nine Rice faculty to garner one in 2023.

Chappell, who joined Rice in 2017, researches RNA systems and biotechnologies. RNA, like DNA, are molecules made of long chains of nucleotides. Both DNA and RNA encode information based upon the sequence of nucleotides in their chains, but DNA is the medium cells use to store genetic information, and RNA is the medium for accessing and acting on that stored information. Cells also use RNA to turn genes on and off, catalyze chemical reactions, and sense molecular and environmental cues.

As a discipline, synthetic biology has frameworks to genetically program model microbes in the laboratory, he said. We need analogous frameworks to program the native microbial communities that are all around us in soils, rivers, our built environment and even our own bodies.

Microbial communities are groups of microbes, like bacteria, that share a common living space and either coexist peacefully or and work together in symbiotic partnership.

Microbial communities are found almost everywhere, and they underlie processes that are critical for humans, Chappell said.

For example, microbial communities in our intestines help digest food. Microbial communities called biofilms can damage surfaces like the enamel on our teeth or the finishes on our buildings. And on a larger scale, Chappell said microbial communities play critical roles in agriculture, sewage treatment and ecosystem health.

Having the ability to genetically manipulate such communities will allow us to study and better understand them, he said. We could also program them with new or improved functions that improve human health, crop yields and global sustainability.

For example, Chappell and Rice Biosciences colleague Joff Silberg recently won a three-year grant from the Kleberg Foundation to create RNA programs that will act as genetically encoded antibiotics. The idea is for individual bacteria to readily copy and share the antibiotic programs, which will selectively kill disease-causing bacteria thanks to a triggering mechanism that recognizes virulence genes or other pathogen-specific biomarkers.

In the CAREER research, Chappells lab will focus on creating a new method for genetically programming microbial communities that live in soil, wastewater and other messy environments.

Engineered RNA systems will be used in the laboratory to study how various genetic programs propagate through undomesticated microbial communities in such complex media. Chappells team will work to implement spatiotemporal control in these environments, creating genetic programs that can be selectively activated at specific times or in specific places.

After we develop these methods, we plan to combine and apply them in a proof-of-concept demonstration where well use RNA programming to enhance the ability of a microbial community to harvest clean energy directly from human or animal waste, Chappell said.

The project research will be integrated with an educational plan that will bring community college students into the lab to take an active role in the research so they can decide if they are interested in pursuing an advanced degree or career in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

Chappell said there are advantages to developing an RNA-based technology for programming microbial communities.

RNA is a very versatile molecule in terms of functionality, he said. If we invest time and figure out how to program with it, its likely well be able to write programs that do a lot of different things. We also expect RNA programming to be functionally portable, meaning it can work in a lot of diverse contexts. Thats big for us, because were thinking about how to program complex communities of microbes, and functional portability means an RNA program that works in one messy environment has a good chance of working in another.

Chappell said theres also a good chance the team could eventually use artificial intelligence or other computational techniques to automate the design of microbial programming.

The design rules for RNA are pretty simple, he said. A lot of the systems we work with depend on two RNA molecules coming together. How they interact when they come together is based on the simple rules of Watson-Crick base-pairing, where A (adenine) pairs with T (thymine) and G (guanine) pairs with C (cytosine). Its super simple, which means theres a good chance we can learn it well enough to create computational algorithms that predict and design RNA function directly from sequence.

CAREER: Selective activation of catalytic RNA to control energy flow in microbial consortia | NSF Division of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2237512

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/03/0327_CHAPPELL-Fit3-lg.jpg CAPTION: James Chappell (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/03/0327_CHAPPELL-Fit5-lg.jpg CAPTION: James Chappell (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/03/0327_CHAPPELL-Fig-lg.jpg CAPTION: James Chappells research group at Rice University uses RNA technologies to transfer genetic programs between individual microbes in order to control and program communities of microbes that coexist or work together in a common living space. Chappell won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award that includes a five-year research grant for his lab to investigate renewable energy applications of RNA programs that selectively control the flow of energy in microbial consortia.

Rice team eyes cells for sophisticated data storage Aug. 18, 2022https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/rice-team-eyes-cells-sophisticated-data-storage

Rice bioscientist Chappell awarded Sloan Research Fellowship Feb. 15, 2018https://news2.rice.edu/2018/02/15/rice-bioscientist-chappell-awarded-sloan-research-fellowship/

Chappell Lab: https://www.chappell-lab.org

Rice Department of BioSciences: https://biosciences.rice.edu

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: https://naturalsciences.rice.edu/

George R. Brown School of Engineering: https://engineering.rice.edu/

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nations top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rices undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplingers Personal Finance.

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James Chappell wins NSF CAREER Award | Rice News | News and ... - Rice News