Ticker: Congress files TikTok ban; Contractor to pay $500K over foreign blankets

TikTok would be banned from most U.S. government devices under a spending bill Congress unveiled early Tuesday.

It’s the latest push by American lawmakers against the Chinese-owned social media app. The $1.7 trillion package includes requirements for the Biden administration to prohibit most uses of TikTok or any other app created by its owner, ByteDance Ltd.

The requirements would apply to the executive branch and don’t appear to cover Congress, where a handful of lawmakers maintain TikTok accounts. A spokesperson for TikTok calls the ban a “political gesture” that is not needed to protect national security since TikTok is developing security and data privacy plans to secure the platform in the U.S.

Contractor to pay $500K over foreign blankets

A Rhode Island defense contractor that sold woolen blankets to the Army has agreed to pay nearly $500,000 to settle allegations that it violated a law requiring companies that supply the military to manufacture their products in the U.S. using American labor, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

The agreement resolves a civil False Claims Act investigation into Woonsocket-based textile manufacturer Hyman Brickle & Son, Inc., also known as The Brickle Group, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Providence.

The company in 2016 sold the blankets to the U.S. Department of Defense, despite knowing that the blankets were produced using labor in India, rather than in the U.S. using American labor, prosecutors said.

The settlement is not an admission of liability. A voicemail was left with the president of Brickle.