The Home on Wednesday handed a invoice with broad bipartisan help that may power TikTok’s Chinese language proprietor to both promote the massively in style video app or be banned in the USA.
The transfer escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over the management of a variety of applied sciences that would have an effect on nationwide safety, free speech and the social media business.
Republican leaders fast-tracked the invoice by the Home with restricted debate, and it handed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for laws that may take direct purpose at China in an election yr.
The motion got here regardless of TikTok’s efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. customers in opposition to the measure and amid the Biden administration’s push to persuade lawmakers that Chinese language possession of the platform poses grave nationwide safety dangers to the USA, together with the power to meddle in elections.
The outcome was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans, who defied former President Donald Trump in supporting it, and Democrats, who fell in line behind a invoice that President Joe Biden has stated he would signal.
The invoice faces a troublesome highway to passage within the Senate, the place Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the bulk chief, has been noncommittal about bringing it to the ground for a vote and the place some lawmakers have vowed to combat it. And even when it passes the Senate and turns into legislation, it’s more likely to face authorized challenges.
However Wednesday’s vote was the primary time a measure that would extensively ban TikTok for shoppers was accredited by a full chamber of Congress. The app has been beneath risk since 2020, with lawmakers more and more arguing that China’s relationship with TikTok’s mother or father firm, ByteDance, raises nationwide safety dangers. The invoice is aimed toward getting ByteDance to promote TikTok to non-Chinese language homeowners inside six months. The president would log out on the sale if it resolved nationwide safety considerations. If that sale didn’t occur, the app can be banned.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who’s among the many lawmakers main the invoice, stated on the ground earlier than the vote that it “forces TikTok to interrupt up with the Chinese language Communist Get together.”
“This can be a commonsense measure to guard our nationwide safety,” he stated.
The transfer escalates a showdown between Beijing and Washington over the management of a variety of applied sciences that would have an effect on nationwide safety, free speech and the social media business.
Republican leaders fast-tracked the invoice by the Home with restricted debate, and it handed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for laws that may take direct purpose at China in an election yr.
The motion got here regardless of TikTok’s efforts to mobilize its 170 million U.S. customers in opposition to the measure and amid the Biden administration’s push to persuade lawmakers that Chinese language possession of the platform poses grave nationwide safety dangers to the USA, together with the power to meddle in elections.
The outcome was a bipartisan coalition behind the measure that included Republicans, who defied former President Donald Trump in supporting it, and Democrats, who fell in line behind a invoice that President Joe Biden has stated he would signal.
The invoice faces a troublesome highway to passage within the Senate, the place Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the bulk chief, has been noncommittal about bringing it to the ground for a vote and the place some lawmakers have vowed to combat it. And even when it passes the Senate and turns into legislation, it’s more likely to face authorized challenges.
However Wednesday’s vote was the primary time a measure that would extensively ban TikTok for shoppers was accredited by a full chamber of Congress. The app has been beneath risk since 2020, with lawmakers more and more arguing that China’s relationship with TikTok’s mother or father firm, ByteDance, raises nationwide safety dangers. The invoice is aimed toward getting ByteDance to promote TikTok to non-Chinese language homeowners inside six months. The president would log out on the sale if it resolved nationwide safety considerations. If that sale didn’t occur, the app can be banned.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who’s among the many lawmakers main the invoice, stated on the ground earlier than the vote that it “forces TikTok to interrupt up with the Chinese language Communist Get together.”
“This can be a commonsense measure to guard our nationwide safety,” he stated.
