The U.S. House of Representatives voted 352-65 to pass a bill this morning that would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell their U.S. TikTok assets to avoid being banned, preventing U.S. users from accessing the app.
The “The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” is in response to national security concerns about China, election interference, and foreign control of a dominant news platform.
The sponsor of the bill, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), stated before the bill passed the House:
The only impacted sites are those associated with foreign adversary apps such as TikTok.com it can never be used to penalize individuals, the text explicitly prohibits that and it cannot, cannot be used to censor speech, it takes no position at all on the content of speech, only foreign adversary control. Foreign adversary control of what is becoming the dominant news platform for Americans under 30. This is a common sense measure to protect our national security. I urge my colleagues to support this critical bipartisan legislation.
After the bill passed the House, Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) urged the Senate to pass the bill, stating on X, “BREAKING → The House just passed a bipartisan bill to force TikTok to sever their ties with the Chinese Communist Party. This is a critical national security issue. The Senate must take this up and pass it.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) opposed the bill, stating on X, “As the only member of Congress who has ever been banned from social media, I oppose today’s TikTok ban bill. This bill would open Pandora’s box and create a slippery slope for future government censorship of Americans and our precious First Amendment.”
