WASHINGTON ― The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would force ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the popular app or see it banned in the U.S.
The legislation sailed through the House by an overwhelming bipartisan margin, with a 352-65 vote, due to concerns about national security and data privacy. But the bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate, where it faces bipartisan opposition.
“TikTok is a threat to our national security because it is owned by a company which does the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party,” bill sponsor Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said before the vote. “This bill therefore forces TikTok to break up with the Chinese Communist Party. It does not apply to American companies. It only applies to companies subject to the control of foreign adversaries defined by Congress.”
The bill aims to outlaw the distribution of “foreign adversary controlled applications, such as TikTok and any successor application or service and any other application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Ltd. or an entity under the control of ByteDance Ltd.”
TikTok is used by more than 170 million Americans, including many children and teens. Over the past few days, congressional offices were flooded with calls after the app sent a pop-up message to users urging them to tell their representatives in Congress to oppose the bill.
Speaking on CNN on Wednesday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) said he had “a bunch of 12- and 13-year-olds calling my office because TikTok directed them that way, and they were irate, some of them were suicidal, some of them were threatening.”
Advocates of the legislation worry the app can be easily manipulated by Beijing to spread propaganda in the U.S. and influence elections. TikTok and critics of the bill, however, argued it would stifle creators and their free speech.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, spoke out against the legislation ahead of the vote.
“They’ve described the TikTok application as a Trojan horse, but there’s some of us who feel that either intentionally or unintentionally, this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a Trojan horse,” Massie said. “Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment implications here. Americans have the right to view information. We don’t need to be protected by the government from information.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew pleaded with lawmakers during a hearing last year, saying all U.S. user data was rooted to servers in Texas.
“The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil by an American company overseen by American personnel,” Chew said.
Chew acknowledged that he did have routine contact with ByteDance executives.
A vote on the bill won’t be scheduled in the Senate anytime soon, if at all. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday he would first discuss the issue with the heads of his relevant committees, who have introduced other proposals to deal with the matter.
Senators were careful not to endorse the House bill this week, even as they said they agreed about the underlying risks posed by the viral video app. Members on both sides of the aisle in the upper chamber expressed concerns about how the bill specifically singles out one company, and whether it could backfire on U.S.-owned companies abroad.
On Wednesday, however, the top two members of the Senate intelligence committee endorsed the bill, in a major boost to its prospects.
“We were encouraged by today’s strong bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, and look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law,” Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a statement after the House vote.
Former President Donald Trump, who’d previously said he supported banning TikTok, reversed himself when he voiced his disagreement with the legislation last week, splitting Republicans on the bill and turning it into a hot-button political issue. Many suspected Trump’s shift was related to a lobbying effort by the group Club for Growth, which opposes the bill, and that he’s doing the bidding of a wealthy donor with a stake in ByteDance.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has said he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk, drawing criticism from some progressives who fear he could alienate younger voters who are key to the Democratic coalition ahead of November’s presidential election.
“There are first amendment issues I see with taking away a platform that over 170 million Americans use, and this won’t fix the serious issues we have with data privacy,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, wrote in a post on X, the former Twitter.
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