WASHINGTON - Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) and Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States review the sale of Epic! Creations to a Chinese-owned company.

Epic! Creations' education tools are used by millions of American students. In May, Epic Kids was sold to Chinese tutoring company TAL Education Group for $95 million.

"We write to you regarding the protection of the personal data of millions of American students who use Epic! Creations' (Epic) education tools. Earlier this year, Epic was sold in bankruptcy proceedings to TAL Education Group (TAL), a prominent Chinese holding company that is headquartered in Beijing," wrote the lawmakers.

"We believe that this acquisition by TAL, which is subject to Chinese data laws that grant broad access of user data to the CCP, represents a significant threat

to American children and educational sovereignty," they continued.

"We urge you to initiate a review of TAL's acquisition of Epic by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and, if a CFIUS review is or has been conducted, we request that you brief us on that review," added the policymakers.

"As a Chinese company, TAL is subject to China's National Intelligence Law and Data Security Law, meaning that TAL's assets and data are at the disposal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)," they wrote.

"This raises serious data privacy concerns. We should not allow adversarial foreign governments to access the private data of any American citizen, much less that of our nation's children," continued the senators.

"In addition to these data privacy concerns, we fear that allowing TAL to have editorial control of Epic's vast digital library will turn this useful learning tool into a CCP influence operation directed at American children. Epic's 40,000 books, videos, and quizzes are trusted educational resources and utilized by students and teachers in 94 percent of American elementary schools," they wrote.

"We cannot now allow China to make inroads into our elementary school systems to indoctrinate a young generation of American students," concluded the lawmakers.

The full letter is here.