If the terms are signed, TikTok's parent company ByteDance will have about nine months to sell the wildly popular app or face a nationwide ban. The President may extend this deadline by 90 days.
The measure, which has broad bipartisan support, poses the most serious threat yet to apps operating in the United States, an economic and cultural powerhouse with more than 170 million users. There is. Lawmakers pushing the restrictions have raised concerns that the company's ownership structure could give the Chinese government access to Americans' data, something TikTok has disputed.
TikTok will object to the bill, launching a high-stakes and potentially lengthy legal battle that will test its claims that such laws violate the free speech rights of millions of people. It is expected. But frenzied efforts to derail the proposal, including urging users to register complaints with members of Congress and running ads touting TikTok's data security efforts days after the final vote. That didn't deter lawmakers.
“It's unfortunate that the House of Representatives is once again using the cover of critical foreign and humanitarian aid to block a ban that would trample on the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said. stated in a statement last week.
For five years, U.S. lawmakers have been scrutinizing TikTok's relationship with Beijing-based ByteDance over concerns that U.S. user data could be vulnerable to surveillance by the Chinese government. In response, TikTok has proposed a plan called “Project Texas” to protect U.S. data, including storing the information at U.S. tech giant Oracle. But as negotiations between TikTok and the federal government stall, lawmakers reinvigorated a bill that would give the executive branch the power to restrict the platform.
“This has been a long and winding road,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), one of the bill's biggest sponsors in Congress, told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
These efforts escalated last month after a bipartisan group of House members announced and quickly passed a stand-alone version of the TikTok divestment and ban bill, shortening the time it would take for ByteDance to sell the platform. It was done.
It looked like he was pushing, but Lawmakers and Biden administration officials have been working for months to craft the latest bill and expand its support base, according to interviews with key lawmakers and six senior aides on Capitol Hill, which will emerge in the coming days. Meanwhile, this was revealed in interviews with six key aides at the Capitol. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
In March 2023, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee summoned TikTok CEO Xiang Zhi Chu to testify about TikTok's ties to China, raising political tension in a heated Congress. Overreaching lawmakers denied the company's commitment to block American user data. We will take steps to eliminate influence from China and prevent foreign influence on our platform. Chew's controversial appearance has put a new spotlight on several proposals aimed at separating TikTok from ByteDance.
But after even some of the most widely supported bills faced pushback from some Democrats and Republicans, lawmakers on the House Select Committee on China last year worked to hammer out a potential compromise. “We're back to square one,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), one of the lead sponsors of the TikTok bill and poised to sign it into law.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the China Select Committee, and Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) spent months building a framework with House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders, The scope of the bill has been narrowed to address concerns that have been raised repeatedly by the government. Two senior House Republican aides say they have significant discretion over which apps to restrict or ban. One aide said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) played a key role in rallying support for TikTok behind the scenes by convening members of various committees targeting TikTok. It is said that he achieved this goal. Mr. Gallagher and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, were not available for interviews Tuesday.
Months before the bill was introduced, lawmakers brought senior government officials into negotiations, and the Justice Department gave important feedback on how to make tweaks to the bill to avoid legal challenges from TikTok from lawmakers, according to multiple aides. A senior Republican official said that he provided his opinion. This was announced by House of Representatives aides.
“We said we needed to involve the White House and the Department of Justice early on in the planning so they could understand the technical challenges involved in writing the bill,” Krishnamoorthy said.
House members garnered support for the bill, in part, by pairing it with legislation that would prohibit foreign adversaries from purchasing Americans' personal information from data brokers. The issue is not publicly known, but it has long raised privacy concerns among key lawmakers, he said. Two senior House Democratic aides. The proposal, led by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D.N.J.), was included in the foreign aid package alongside the TikTok bill. If signed into law, the data broker bill would be one of the most notable privacy bills passed by Congress in recent years, even though lawmakers have yet to enact nationwide rules.
That support helped House members move the bill quickly through committees and pass it on the floor less than a week after it was introduced last month, according to several aides.
“The fire appeared to be out, but the embers were still extremely hot,” said Federal Communications Commission Republican Brendan Carr. Brendan Kerr has been a vocal critic of TikTok and is working closely with lawmakers targeting the company.
After the House passed the stand-alone bill, many senators initially balked at filing back-to-back lawsuits. Among them was Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who had planned to hold a hearing on the topic before taking action.
But support grew in the Senate after Congressional leaders updated the bill to give ByteDance more time to exit TikTok. Cantwell, one of several Democrats to publicly raise the issue, said in a floor speech on Tuesday that the new deadline would give ByteDance “ample time for potential investors to come forward to buy the app.” He said he would give it time. Cantwell's Republican colleague on the Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said Tuesday that the TikTok provisions are “very important to our national security.”
Still, some liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans in both chambers, including Sen. Edward J. Markey (D), argue that the federal government has too much power to restrict businesses and to curb online speech. I continue to oppose this bill because of my concerns. (Massachusetts) and Rand Paul (Republican of Kentucky).
Markey spoke on the Senate floor on Tuesday in “defense of TikTok's users” and warned that the bill “will likely result in blocking the most popular application among young people in this country.” . Markey argued that the chances of the company exiting ByteDance within a year are “very small.”
Paul, who has thwarted some past efforts to target the app, wrote in an op-ed last week that the bill would “violate the First Amendment rights” of TikTok users and “encourage the government to It gives the power to compel the sale of ”
Ultimately, lawmakers were able to avoid a lengthy and potentially contentious debate in the Senate by tying the bill to passage of foreign aid, but the bill already has significant bipartisan support. I was getting it.
“If you asked me six months ago, three months ago, if I could have predicted this would be the path this would take, I never would have predicted it,” Warner said. “Sometimes sausage making actually works.”
