House passes bill that could ban TikTok

The House voted Wednesday to pass legislation that could ban TikTok in the United States as Republicans and Democrats alike sound the alarm that the popular video-sharing app, owned by ByteDance, is a national security threat.

The vote was 352-65, with one member, Jasmine Crockett, voting present. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate and there appears to be less urgency to act. Fifty Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill. Among them were progressives as well as conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who lamented that she had previously been banned from social media.

The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes of Connecticut, was a surprising no vote. He also cited free speech issues with the bill.

TikTok has mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign to kill the legislation, arguing that it would violate the First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. users and harm thousands of small businesses that rely on it. “This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it's a ban,” the company said on X.

Paul Tran, who, with his wife, has a skin care company called Love and Pebble, protested at a pro-TikTok rally outside the Capitol on Tuesday, with a message for members: “You will be destroying small businesses like us; this is our livelihood. We’ve created success.”

He said their business nearly shut down last year until TikTok Shop came along and “totally exploded our business.” Now 90% of their business comes from the app, he said. “If you pass this bill,” Tran said, “you will be destroying the American dream that we really believe in.”

Despite that push, the bill sailed through the House, raising pressure on the Democratic-led Senate to act. President Joe Biden, whose 2024 campaign joined TikTok last month, has said that if the bill reaches his desk, he will sign it into law.

Its backers say it’s wrong to call the legislation an outright ban. Dubbed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the bill would create a process for the president — through the FBI and intelligence agencies — to designate certain social media applications under the control of foreign adversaries as national security threats.

Once an app was deemed a risk, it would be banned from online app stores and web-hosting services unless it severed ties with entities under control of the foreign adversary within 180 days of the designation. That means TikTok, which FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified poses a risk to national security, could face a ban unless ByteDance acted quickly to divest it.