Parts of the debate over TikTok — about the overall benefits and drawbacks of social media, for instance — are complicated, and they would not justify the forced sale of a single company, the policymakers say.

Posts related to subjects that the Chinese government wants to suppress — like Hong Kong protests and Tibet — are strangely missing from the platform, according to a recent report by two research groups.

A separate Wall Street Journal analysis, focused on the war in Gaza, found evidence that TikTok was promoting extreme content, especially against Israel.

As Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, told me, “The fears that TikTok gives China too much of a way into the U.S. seem to be overriding any political concerns.” There is a long history of members of Congress overcoming partisan divisions to address what they see as a national security threat.

No, officer, he wasn’t drinking: A Belgian man suspected of drunken driving was instead diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome, a rare condition in which the gut makes its own beer.

“How do you arrive at any single meaning of ‘cowboy’ when the stylistic variants run from western to modern to rhinestone to preppy to line-dancing Saturday night buckaroo to Black?” he writes.

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