U.S. Senator Josh Hawley wants to ban TikTok nationwide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican and China hawk, said on Tuesday that he would introduce a bill to ban the short video app TikTok in the United States.

TikTok, whose parent is the Chinese company ByteDance, already faces a ban that would stop federal employees from using or downloading TikTok on government-owned devices.

"TikTok is China's backdoor into Americans' lives. It threatens our children's privacy as well as their mental health," he said on Twitter. "Now I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide."

Hawley did not say when the bill would be introduced. Neither Hawley's office nor TikTok immediately responded to requests for comment.

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Wisconsin, North Carolina ban TikTok from state devices on security concerns

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)