The US senate is pushing ahead with plans to empower president Joe Biden with the ability to ban social media platform TikTok.

A group of senators led by Democrat Mark Warner and Republican John Thune on Tuesday will unveil a series of proposals that will give the Biden administration new tools to ban the app, along with other apps which could pose security risks.

In comments to Reuters, Warner's office said that the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act will "comprehensively address the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries, such as TikTok."

Reuters also reports that the Biden administration has provided input on the draft legislation, though the White House has declined to say if it would endorse the bill.

The news comes after the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week voted to give Biden the power to ban the app. The vote was split down party lines on a bill sponsored by Republican Michael McCaul, with Democrats critical of the bill’s lack of due diligence.

The US has long had TikTok in its sights over its data capture and storage practices, with fears that the Chinese government could access US user information. Former president Trump previously demanded that the company divest its US business, and though parent company ByteDance did agree a deal with Microsoft it never went through.

TikTok last week said that the US government’s moves to block the service would amount to "a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion people who use our service worldwide."

The company, whose chief executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before Congress on 23 March, said that it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts and has rejected claims that it can be used as a spying tool of the CCCP.

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