TIK TOK: The House yesterday passed a bill with strong support from both parties that would force the sale of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok or ban it with the US.

  Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who is among the lawmakers leading the bill, said, “This is a common-sense measure to protect our national security.”

  Many legislators fear that Tik Tok is being used by China to collect information and intelligence on the American public. The Chinese foreign ministry accused Washington of “resorting to hegemonic moves” although China has banned Facebook and Twitter/X in its own country.   

  TikTok — and we remind you it’s owned by China — says the law would be an infringement on free speech. The vote came despite TikTok waging a media campaign claiming to be a benefit to society and mobilizing its 17 million users to lobby with Congress.

  The bill has a harder road for passage in the Senate where enthusiasm for it is not as great.

ORANGE ALERT: The Atlanta judge overseeing the Georgia election meddling case against Donald Trump and 15 other defendants dismissed six of the charges yesterday against the former president and five other defendants, saying they were not clear on how the law may have been broken.

  It’s a win for Trump, but far from a dismantling of the case.

  The ruling involves charges that said Trump “unlawfully solicited, requested and importuned” the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to violate his oath of office by decertifying the election. That involves the phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,780 votes.

  “These six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission,” Judge Scott McAfee wrote in his ruling. “They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitution and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”

  The ruling does not prevent prosecutors from giving those charges a re-write and issuing new indictments.

PLUGGED IN: A surge in the use of electric power is threatening US climate goals, the NY Times reports. The paper says utilities have doubled the estimate of power they will need to satisfy demand by 2028. Ironically, it’s the result of the national drive for clean energy. 

  The resurgence is the result of manufacturing driven by new federal laws, millions of electric vehicles that need recharging, and an explosion in the number of data centers. Cryptocurrency mining uses a stunning amount of power producing nothing of value.

TO THE STARS: SpaceX is set for the third test launch of its massive Starship rocket in a window opening at 8 ET this morning. The Starship rocket is the vehicle NASA has chosen for landing astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

  The Starship blew up shortly after launch in November.

 THE OBIT PAGE: Paul Alexander, who was paralyzed by polio at age 6 and spent the next 72 years of his life in an iron lung yet still became a lawyer, the author of a memoir, and a star on TikTok, has died at age 78.

  He was one of the last people from the polio age still living in an iron lung, a pressurized canister that keeps a person breathing.

  After months in the hospital, Alexander had been sent home with his parents who were told he had maybe weeks to live. He ended up living a long and at least intellectually active life. He needed help with everything, from eating to bodily functions.

  In one of his videos, Alexander described living in the iron lung. “It’s lonely,” he said with the machine humming in the background. “Sometimes it’s desperate because I can’t touch someone, my hands don’t move, and no one touches me except in rare occasions, which I cherish.”

THE SPIN RACK: Presidential son Hunter Biden rejected a request from House Republicans for public testimony in their impeachment inquiry into President Biden, blasting the whole notion as a “made-for-right-wing-media circus act.” — Fired CNN host Don Lemon said a deal to host a streaming show on Twitter/X blew up after he had an interview with the app’s owner, Elon Musk. Lemon said he asked tough questions about the coming presidential elections, Musk’s reported drug use, and his various businesses. — Actress Olivia Munn, who looked smashing in a silver dress at the Oscars on Sunday, revealed that last year she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. Munn credits her survival to her obstetrician-gynecologist who diagnosed with the help of a breast cancer risk assessment. — The National Park Service plans to cut down about 140 of Washington’s iconic cherry trees in preparation for construction of new and taller sea walls to protect the area around the Jefferson Memorial.

BELOW THE FOLD: Conservative podcaster Candace Owens said this week that she would bet her career that Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, is actually a man.

   “After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” Owens wrote in a post on Twitter/X. Owens is wagering something she doesn’t have, a professional reputation. Brigitte Macron delivered three children with a previous husband.

  Nevertheless, “Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Owens wrote.

 She said, “The implications here are terrifying,” and on that, you have to agree.

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