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Congress unanimously passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 in December 2022. The law allows drug companies to find alternative methods of assessing their products, without testing them on animals or human beings.

The bill was sponsored by Sens. Rand Paul (RKy.) and Cory Booker (DNJ)*. Its goal was to speed up the drug approval process, and to let scientists experiment with approaches methods that are more humane than testing on live subjects. Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown aptly summarized the bill's achievements, noting that "previously, all drugs in development were required to undergo animal studies before being tested in human trials. Now, drug companies will still have the option to start testing experimental drugs on animals, but they won't have to."

And yet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not taken action to update the agency's regulations.

"The FDA's regulations related to animal testing no longer fully conform with applicable law," writes Paul in a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf.

Paul's letter, obtained exclusively byReason, was co-signed by Booker and several other senators from both parties. It notes that the FDA has previously spoken positively about moving away from animal testing. But companies currently submitting applications for drug approval still have to deal with FDA requirements that stipulate human or animal testingat least on paper.

"These and other regulatory provisions no longer reflect the full scope of the governing statute and should therefore be updated as expeditiously as possible," writes Paul.

The FDA should swiftly update its written requirements for new drugs. Until it does, this is a powerful reminder that even when the Congress, the president, and the agency itself all agreethat a regulation should be undone, deregulatory efforts can hit a dead end.

There is no reason toforce scientists to experiment on living creatures if better testing methods are available. What's the holdup, bureaucrats?

See the article here:
Rand Paul: Why Is the FDA Still Requiring Human or Animal Testing ... - Reason

Is liking Ayn Rand a personality defect? Before she was the godmother of American libertarianism, Rand was a writer known for insisting on the virtue and beauty of self-interest. To her admirers, her books, including The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, celebrate exceptional men and women who make their own flourishing a moral imperative. To her detractors, Rands novels, as Lisa Duggan writes in her 2019 study Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, glamorize rapacity and violence; they grant happy endings to characters who showcase contempt for lesser beings and a cool indifference to their suffering; and they provide a structure of feelingoptimistic crueltythat... underwrites the form of capitalism on steroids that dominates the present.

Since Rands death, in 1982, she has been embraced by tech billionaires (Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk), free-market politicians (Ronald Reagan, Clarence Thomas, Rand Paul), and their acolytes. Elsewhere, she has become a pop-cultural bogeyman, ridiculous but unkillable. Find her on The Simpsons (Russian weirdo Ayn Rand), Parks and Recreation (a terrible writer), Girls, Watchmen, and The Mindy Project, invariably dressed as a menace or a punch line. The presence of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead on a bedside table or Tinder profile is a waving red flagreliable shorthand for latent sociopathy. A friend, in order to lend me a copy of Atlas Shrugged for this piece, stowed the paperback in a manila folder that she then stapled shut and handed off to my partner at their mutual workplace. He smuggled it down the hall and into his bag. I didnt think Id get fired if anyone saw the book, he explained, but it wouldnt look great.

In The Book of Ayn, a novel by Lexi Freiman, Rand takes on a new role: North Star for the cancelled. Anna, a mid-career writer who comes from money, has just published a contrarian novel about the opioid epidemic, a satire of the rural poor full of bad haircuts, misspelled tattoos, and pants-shitting. I had honestly believed I was writing a book so good it metabolized its own badness, Anna explains, somewhat touchingly. Instead of the acclaim she expects, Anna gets dropped by her publisher and ghosted by her friends; even her old prep school rejects a last-ditch job application. On Twitter, she is enjoined to jump off the balcony of her pied--terre on Madison Avenue and to use her novel as a parachute.

Worst of all, a review in the New York Times suggests that Anna is that current-day bte noire, a narcissist. Devastated, Anna borrows a friends book on narcissism and reads that narcissists are selfish, arrogant, and insecure, grandiose and fragile and incapable of handling any threat to their identity, and that they saw themselves reflected back everywhere, made grand narratives of their lives, but felt at their core that they were empty.

To Annas horror, the descriptions remind her of herself. She is empty, she realizes. She doesnt believe in anything; all she can do is make fun of people. Seeking a counternarrative, Anna gloms on to a tour group discussing Ayn Rand in a coffee shop and, soon after, orders a bundle of her works. Shes immediately enthralled. The books argue that selfishness was a form of care and that wealth was a beautiful thing. They claim that true freedom lived... in the breaking of bonds and severing of ties. As Anna reads, she feels her weaknesses becoming strengths. Her selfishness, she realizes, is radically ethical. She may not get invited to parties anymore, but she wouldnt enjoy them anywayshes too radiantly liberated.

In The Culture of Narcissism, his famous 1979 study, Christopher Lasch writes that the narcissist can only overcome insecurity by seeing his grandiose self reflected in the attentions of others. Freiman slyly casts Rand as Annas grandiose self, the mask she pulls on over her pain and vulnerability. Anna, you might say, has suffered a narcissistic injury and is turning to Rand to preserve her positive self-image.

An elderly millennial in the shitposting era, Anna shrouds her new obsession in layers of self-protective irony. Rands ideas give her solace, and being a Randgirl, in scare quotes, appeals to her contrarianism, her desire to provoke and outrage the commenters who want her to jump off a balcony. When Rand was in her late thirties, she moved from New York to Hollywood to write for the big screen. Anna decides to follow in her footsteps. She decamps for Los Angeles and reinvents herself as a television writer, pitching a sitcom, inspired by Bojack Horseman (although she swears its not), about a farm animal named Ayn Ram. Even as Anna hopes to rehabilitate her hero for a contemporary audience, she places some distance between herself and her subject by wrapping Rand in the soft wool of humora defense mechanism that Freiman suggests originates in a tragedy in her early life. When Anna was three, her infant brother died for no reason in his sleep. Provocation smoothed the edges, she says, a fleece that muffled the sharpness of loss.

With its undercurrent of childhood trauma, The Book of Ayn evokes Mary Gaitskills classic treatment of the Randgirl plot, Two Girls, Fat and Thin, from 1991. That books narrator, Dorothy, imprints on a Rand-like character named Anna Granite after being abused and molested by her father as a teen-ager. By the time I was seventeen, I had a very negative view of life, and a horrific view of sex, Dorothy tells Justine, a journalist writing an article on Granite and her fans. When she discovered Granites books, Dorothy says, suddenly a whole different way of looking at life was presented to me. Ostracized at school, she draws comfort from Granites depictions of proud outcasts... surrounded by the cold glow of their genius and grace. In bed with her father, she clings to a dream of strong, contemptuous beauty... indifferent to anything but itself and its own growth. Dorothy comes to believe in a philosophy called DefinitismGaitskills thinly veiled version of Objectivism, the doctrine developed by Randand it confers on Dorothy the power and value that she believes herself to lack; Granite herself seems to nurture the girl in loco parentis. As a college student, Dorothy buys an interstate bus ticket to attend one of Granites speaking events and imagines her idol, how she would look at me and know everything Id endured. At the lecture, she weeps uncontrollably, convinced at last that she is damn strong, that she is worth something.

The Book of Ayn and Two Girls, Fat and Thin plead for sympathy for the Randgirl. Like Freimans Anna, Gaitskills Dorothy is a case study in vulnerable narcissism and, ultimately, a figure of pity. She retreats from the world and into daydreams about Oz and Never-Never Land, epic tales in which she plays the hero. She hides behind delusions of grandeur, raging when Justine asks her stupid questions. These are broken people to be handled with gentleness, the novels seem to argue.

But, in fact, both books have a more subversive intent: to trouble the distinction between Randians and everyone else. In Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Justine, the freelance journalist who interviews Dorothy, is disgusted by Granites ideas. Shes identified as neurotic and Dorothy is not; the contrast between them conjures Freuds dichotomy between pliable patients who obediently adopt the terminology of their analysts and difficult patients who prove too self-absorbed to undergo transference. But Justine, who, unlike Dorothy, is pretty, thin, and popular, incarnates Rands notion of the beautiful brute more than Dorothy does. As a girl, she picked on schoolmates who had fewer friends; at one point, transported by swelling arrogance and boiling greed, she sexually abused a weaker child with a toothbrush. The more Gaitskill reveals about her characters, the more they blur together, as both selfish and selfless at once.

In her penetrating monograph The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism, Kristin Dombek describes a narcissistic behavior called splitting, wherein the narcissist idealizes that which soothes him and discards that which causes him pain. Splitting is also the main structural mechanism of the two novelsand a mental trap that both their protagonists and their readers must resist. Like Two Girls, The Book of Ayn is built on a seemingly clean division: Part 1 tells the story of Annas intoxication with Rand; in Part 2, Anna, breaking violently with Objectivism, goes to a meditation camp on the Greek island of Lesbos to try to murder her ego. Freimans Los Angeles is a cesspit of superficiality and selfishness, but the Beloveds, as the cultists who run the retreat in Greece call themselves, arent much better. The groups master is known for his collection of three hundred and fifty Harley Davidsons and for releasing a vicious strain of European bee into the hostile neighboring farmland. Other seekers at the commune steal Annas clothes, cheat on their partners, and neglect their children. Anna, unconsciously emulating Rand, begins a love affair with a much younger man, a refugee from an unspecified war-torn country. Life on the commune cant heal the effects of his hard-core trauma, he tells her. Only Hollywood can; he longs to try the acting.

So is everyone a delusional, self-serving, trauma-masking Randian narcissist at heart? You could call that the lesson of the Randgirl novels, although youd be underselling their sweetness. The books mock their characters, but they also argue that egoism can be nourishing and even generative. Gaitskills treatment of Anna Granite, for instance, is unexpectedly sympathetic. When Dorothy first meets her idol, the older woman models kindness and empathy. Dorothy panics, unable to speak; Granite, Dorothy says, stood and gripped my shoulders with both hands... her eyes radiated the gentlest strength I had ever experienced, her tough, hot, callusy hands supported me with the full intensity of her life. Granite tells Dorothy that she can see her suffering but also her resilience and value. She offers her a job. Because Granite has willed herself to believe in her own worth, Gaitskill hints, she is alive to the worth in others. And, in awakening Dorothy to her own inner resources, Granite awakens the young womans sense of her fellow-humans as sovereign selves. In the hours before Granites lecture, Dorothy is transfixed by passing faces: the jowls, the eye wrinkles, the bumpy noses, the flower-petal quality of young female skin. When Dorothy was in college, individuals had streamed together into a monolithic threat. But as I walked among the citizens of Philadelphia, she says, I felt as though I occupied a compartment of personal space that they instinctively respected as I respected theirs.

Freiman finds less to salvage in Rands life or work, but the novel is rightly skeptical of the wellness industrys promises to subdue the demands of selfhood. After failing to make a TV show and then failing to kill her ego, Anna takes stock. She comes to realize that she cant write without self-esteemand that writing, more than being a contrarian or even a good person, is her vocation. There was only one thing that ever helped me, she says. One thing that had always been there, strung up at the threshold of my mind like tiny golden lights, enchanting me into life, dangling its whimsy and warm lozenges of hope. This thing is writingonly writing promised me happiness, or at the very least progressand the type of writing Anna wants to do, voicey and spiky and singular, requires an I.

Unlike the self-aggrandizer, the artist, Freiman implies, uses her I as an alloy, creating a material both durable and porous, blending what she has felt to be true with what she imagines might be true for others. The writing that Anna intuits will save her dangles at the threshold of her mind because it directs her both in and out. Throughout the novel, as she flails around trying to fill her perceived emptiness, what she fills it with are the words, ideas, and lives of roommates, romantic partners, Internet commenters, friends, influencers, yoga instructors, cult members, Antifa activists, and embarrassing conservative philosophers. She reads their books, goes to their events, and stays in their homes. By the end, her I has been vastly expanded: other people live in her head, whether she wants them to or not, shaping the innermost contours of her self. This vision of identity as plural means that self-assertion does not necessarily come at the expense of the rest of the world. It could even be a declaration of life on anothers behalf.

Both Freiman and Gaitskill play up the Mbius-strip aspect to selfishness and selflessnesswhen I stand up for me, they suggest, I am also standing up for you, because we are intertwined. At their most persuasive, though, the Randgirl novels dont applaud the morality of self-interest so much as they paint self-absorption as a useful but transient phase. Freud characterized narcissism as a form of arrested development. The narcissist, instead of sprouting healthy attachments to others, remains stranded in the oceanic self-involvement of infancy. Gaitskill and Freiman rescue this creature from a state of frozen pathology, returning her to her rightful place within a developmental stage. Dorothy and Anna, perhaps, are just passing through necessary bouts of self-infatuation on their way to maturity. Late in Two Girls, Justine comes to appreciate the role that Granite played for Dorothy, even as she believes that Dorothy has outgrown Granite:

When you read Granites work not only did she awaken your sense of beauty and pleasure in life, not only did she illustrate for you a positive use of strength and power, but she provided a springboard for you to create an internal world richer and stronger than the external world which wasnt giving you any support at all. But she was only the departure point.

Instead of a bogeyman or a red flag, maybe Rand is just a set of training wheels, or a trellis on which characters can temporarily support their unfurling selves. Everybody had a moment of loving Ayn Rand, Annas mother tells herits a low point for our Randgirl, but a reassurance to readers, who are happy to welcome this lost sheep back into the herd.

See the original post here:
The Surprising Sweetness of the Ayn Rand Fangirl Novel - The New Yorker

On November 17, the House version of the Medicare Audiology Access Improvement Act (H.R. 6445/S. 2377) was introduced by Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA). This complements the also bipartisan Medicare Audiology Access Improvement Act introduced in the Senate in July by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

This House bill would remove the pre-treatment order requirement for Medicare Part B coverage, authorize the CMS to reimburse audiologists for Medicare-covered diagnostic and treatment services, and reclassify audiologists as practitioners under the Medicare statute, for continued teleaudiology services.

Further Reading:Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Expand Medicare Audiology Assistance

ASHA President Bob Augustine was quoted in Rep. Bilirakiss press release introducing H.R. 6445, noting that ASHA looks forward to continued collaboration with these leaders and our allied partners to enact this bill as soon as possibleand to remove unnecessary bureaucratic barriers that prevent seniors from getting the hearing and balance care they need, when they need it.

The president of the ADA also expressed support for the bill. We applaud Representative Bilirakis and Representative Cartwright for championing the Medicare Audiology Access Improvement Act to reduce treatment delays and out of pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries seeking hearing and balance services that will improve their health, safety, and well-being, said Dawn Heiman, AuD, president of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology. This landmark legislation aligns Medicare Part B policies with evidence-based practices to optimize clinical outcomes, to promote Medicare system efficiencies, and to deploy scarce healthcare workforce resources most judiciously.

H.R. 6445 original co-sponsors include Congress members Bill Johnson (R-OH-6), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-9), Nancy Mace (R-SC-1), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE-At Large), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA-1), David Trone (D-MD-6), Daniel Webster (R-FL-11), Steve Cohen (D-TN-9), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-1), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-7), Bill Foster (D-IL-11), and Mark Pocan (D-WI-2).

The Senate bill already has 10 bipartisan co-sponsors, up from its original six.

Continue reading here:
House Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Expand Medicare Audiology ... - The Hearing Review

Inside the halls of power and outside on the campaign trail, US politics is a mess.

The leading Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump, faces four criminal indictments. The leading Democratic candidate, President Joe Biden, has dismal favorability ratings. The presidential race has so far generated as much positive enthusiasm as a barroom brawl between two old duffers, which in a certain sense it is.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Congress was deadlocked for three weeks in October because the Republican Party couldnt decide on a new Speaker of the House. Finally, the party chose the far-right politician Mike Johnson, whose obscurity was his greatest asset, because he hadnt made enough enemies among his colleagues to sink his candidacy. Obscurity also translates into precious little deal-making experience, which is not a good sign when the federal government faces a shutdown in just a few months, despite a temporary fix, if the two major parties cant agree on a spending bill.

With a year left before Americans go to the polls in yet another supremely consequential election, President Biden is eager to keep the economy on an even keel and demonstrate resolve in the field of foreign policy. The latter has been sorely tested. Not only has the administration attempted to maintain support for Ukraine in its battle against Russian occupation forces, it is now trying to increase military assistance to Israel in its fight against Hamas.

Toward that end, the administration has proposed a $105 billion bill that bundles together military aid to Ukraine and Israel along with funding for Taiwan, increased security at the USMexico border, and some humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.

In typical DC style, the bill contains something for nearly everyone. And yet, it still manages to piss off nearly everyone.

Most of the money earmarked for Ukraine and Israel would actually go to the Pentagon to replenish its stocks of weaponry to send to those countries. Congressional supporters of military spending, who make up the vast majority of lawmakers, should be delighted that, of the $61 billion slated for Ukraine, $44 billion would go to the Pentagon, while $10 billion of the $14 billion for Israel would also go to the military-industrial complex. China hawks will rejoice at the money for Taiwan while MAGA Republicans should be happy about the $13 billion for border security. The bill also includes some of the humanitarian aid to Palestinians that progressives have been urging.

Bundling is a traditional tactic for building consensus in a divided Congress. But it might not work this time, not only because the House is divided but because the Republican Party itself is a house divided.

On the issue of Ukraine, Republicans come in three flavors.

Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell heads up the plain vanilla faction. He supports Ukraine because he doesnt like Russia, believes the United States is still locked in a cold war with this evil-ish empire and was horrified by Trumps pro-Putin statements over the years. McConnell is no friend of Bidens, but he buys the administrations frankly distasteful argument that the West is engaged in a civilizational struggle against a common enemy. For these reasons, McConnell has pledged to support the bundled funding in the Senate, though with some important caveats.

Over in the House, Mike Johnson straddles the vanilla faction and the Rocky Road crew: hes a scoop of vanilla with some nuts sprinkled on top. Like McConnell, he is no friend of Russia. We cant allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine, because I dont believe it would stop there, and it would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan, Johnson told Fox News. We have these concerns. Were not going to abandon them.

But Johnson has also adopted most of the positions of the nut-filled MAGA faction, from its unmitigated support for Trump to its diehard opposition to abortion. So, despite his aversion to Putin, Johnson has introduced a bill to divide the funding for Israel from the money for Ukraine, presumably so that the far right can register its disapproval of the latter without compromising its approval of the former.

Johnsons colleagues have various problems with the bill. J. D. Vance criticizes the small amount of humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Other Republicans have taken aim at the measure that was included precisely to curry their favor money for border security because suddenly they dont care about money but insist instead on a change in administration policy.

Johnson is a budget-cutter, and he knows that 61% of Republicans believe that the value of aid to Ukraine is not worth the cost (compared to a mere 29% of Democrats). Reducing government spending is a perennial favorite of the Republicans going into an election (as opposed to after they win an election, when they go on a spending spree). As a result, Johnson supports the crowd-pleasing (but budget-busting) tactic of slashing funds for the Internal Revenue Service to pay for the military assistance.

But the leading criticism of the bill, from the far right, concerns Ukraine. Why the skepticism? Vance worries about an endless conflict with no plan from the Biden administration. But Vance and friends are not anti-war, anti-intervention or anti-militarist. The signers of a congressional letter in September to the Biden administration vowing to oppose any further aid to Ukraine, aside from the libertarian Rand Paul, have no problem preparing for an endless conflict with China.

In fact, many of these fixtures of Trumps political universe have a residual affection for Vladimir Putin. In many ways, hes their ideal politician: anti-LGBT, pro-Church, anti-liberal, pro-sovereignty, anti-woke. Hes also the leader of a predominantly white country that has many supporters in white supremacist circles in the West. Finally, Vladimir was one of Donalds best buds. Republican Senate nominee Lauren Witzke summed up the MAGA position when she said back in April 2022 that anyone who supports Ukraine is either transgender, a Satanist, or a straight-up Nazi. Methinks that Witzke doth project too much.

But its not just failed politicians who make these arguments. NATO has been supplying the neo-Nazis in Ukraine with powerful weapons and extensive training on how to use them, Marjorie Taylor-Greene tweeted back in March 2022. Paul Gosar agreed in May 2022 when he said that Ukraine is not our ally. Russia is not our enemy. More recently, Tommy Tuberville claimed that Democrats created the war in Ukraine. Who needs Twitter trolls when US lawmakers indulge in such fictions?

Its one thing to link aid to Ukraine and Israel as a political tactic. Its quite another to make the larger argument that the money goes toward fighting the same enemy. Putin and Hamas have almost nothing in common beyond their militant illiberalism. Putin has turned Russia into an imperial power that has attacked its neighbors, occupied Ukraine, and attempted to establish an international network of illiberal states. Hamas is a reactionary entity that has enough power to commit atrocities but not enough power to occupy territorynot even its own territory of Gaza as the current Israeli invasion demonstrates.

If there are any comparisons to be made between the two regions, Russias counterpart is not Hamas but Israel, an increasingly far-right polity with messianic dreams that has been steadily expanding its control within the already Occupied Territories.

Unfortunately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also bought into this civilizational discourse, coming out in strong support of Israel. His statements, however much they reflect his personal outrage at Hamass attacks, are largely directed at US audiences. The Israelis have already indicated, by turning down an offer from Zelensky to visit in solidarity after the Hamas attacks, that there wont be a quid pro quo in terms of boosting their support for Ukraine. So, Zelenskys real goal is to help advance the $105 billion bill in Congress.

Theres a definite downside to this strategy. Zelenskys attempts over the last year to woo Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, are taking a hit from his defense of Israel. In August, Saudi Arabia hosted a meeting in Jeddah to consolidate support for Ukraines ten-point peace plan. Now, all of that patient diplomacy is at risk. A number of key countries, such as China, Egypt and the UAE, didnt attend a follow-up meeting last weekend in Malta, and Saudi support seems to have dimmed as well.

Putin didnt plan Hamass deadly intervention in Israel, but he must be pleased at the geopolitical consequences. On the other hand, being lumped together with Hamas, conceptually and budget-wise, doesnt do Russia any favors. Ukraines image, at least among a certain class of wavering Republicans, might benefit from the faulty comparison.

The US economy is in relatively good shape, at least according to the conventional indicators: low unemployment, modest growth, tamed inflation. Despite the usual link between pocketbook issues and political favorability, Joe Bidens approval ratings remain in the dumps.

On certain foreign policy issues, however, Biden is doing better. His approval rating on Ukraine is a few points higher than his overall polling. When it comes to US policy toward Israel and Hamas, the gap is even more in Bidens favor.

At this point in the campaign, at least, Biden is building the case that he is the more competent candidate when it comes to global issues. Its not clear, though, whether American voters will care a year from now that Americas reputation is considerably higher around the world under Biden than it was under Trump. Being a competent statesman with an agile secretary of state would certainly guarantee Biden a presidential victory if everyone in the world voted in the US election.

For better or worse, however, only Americans will go to the polls next November. Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, will claim that he is the peace candidate, didnt start any wars when he was president, got us out of Afghanistan, and would have restrained the adventurism of both Putin and Netanyahu. All of this is nonsense, but elections rarely bring out the rational side of an electorate.

With the latest supplemental funding bill, the Biden administration hopes that it can help Ukraine win the war and somehow contain the damage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. This is a pipe dream, since US influence is limited. But this new and improved mission to fight a civilizational war, however false the narrative, might prove sufficiently convincing to speed passage of the supplemental funding bill and, in appealing to plain-vanilla conservatives and a few independents, perhaps win a presidential election as well.

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

See more here:
Congress Divided on the Funding for Ukraine and Israel - Fair Observer

A graphic showing a phone screen canceling the TikTok logo with the American flag in the background. It is speculated that TikTok has been used to disseminate misinformation and share private user data with the Chinese government. ILLUSTRATED BY BRITTNEY DIETZ/THE STATESMAN

I have always firmly believed that ensuring the safety of American citizens and the national security of the United States surpasses individual liberties, and this is no different when it comes to my unwavering support for banning TikTok.

Joseph Moreno, a Stony Brook University alumnus who formerly served as a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, believes TikToks problematic nature, in the eyes of the U.S. government, lies with its parent company ByteDance.

For several years, the U.S. Defense Department and the Department of Justice both members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States have alleged that TikTok has been used to disseminate misinformation and share geolocation and other private user data with the Chinese government, Moreno said. While ByteDance denies these allegations, it has admitted that employees accessed data on American journalists TikTok accounts in the past.

From COVID-19 origins to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) buying U.S. farmland, China has taken advantage of the U.S.s unwillingness to address their questionable actions; if the U.S. bans TikTok, American dominance in world affairs will be demonstrated, intimidating the CCP at a vital time when China may be invading Taiwan.

Unfortunately, many libertarians such as those in the Republican Party who are nationally known to embrace individual liberties, have not taken the threat of TikTok seriously. For example, Senator Rand Paul blocked legislation that would result in a nationwide TikTok ban, citing freedom of speech as his reasoning. However, banning TikTok does not necessarily constitute an attack on the First Amendment, as other social media platforms are not being banned.

Additionally, current presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who has claimed to be tough on China has backed down from being against TikTok and now supports it.

Ramaswamy said he changed his mind to reap young Americans votes, which includes compromising and engaging with Generation Z on TikTok. As Ramaswamy has said in an interview with The Hill, I have a radical idea for the Republican Party: We need to win elections. And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.

No one who prefers to compromise our national security in order to further themselves politically is fit for public office.

We have already seen a ban on the use of TikTok from government devices and systems [in] the United States, many of its states and municipalities (including New York City) and several of its global allies including Australia, Canada, the EU and the U.K., Moreno said. In response, ByteDance claims to be conducting an effort referred to as Project Texas to house U.S. user data in domestic services managed by a U.S.-based team.

China is arguably the most powerful of Americas adversaries. As it is, China has developed alliances with other U.S. adversaries like the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Russia. If the U.S. bans TikTok, a message will be sent to the world that we will no longer turn a blind eye to China, or any of our other global competitors who intend to harm our way of life.

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There must be a complete ban on TikTok in the U.S. - Stony Brook Statesman