The White House is pushing the Senate to pass a bill that would force TikTok to separate from its Chinese parent company after legislation, which could lead to a TikTok ban, passed with overwhelming support in the House of Representatives .
Speaking to reporters as President Joe Biden headed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration wants the Senate to take swift action.
Her comments came after the House passed a bill with bipartisan support of 352 to 65 on Wednesday morning, despite an avalanche of non-stop calls from TikTok users fighting the bill.
“We are pleased to see this bill moving forward. We will look to the Senate to take swift action,” Jean-Pierre said. “This bill is important and we welcome the move in an ongoing effort to address the threat posed by certain technology services operating in the United States that endanger Americans’ personal information and our broader national security.”
The White House argued that the bill would not ban apps like TikTok, but would ensure that ownership does not fall into the hands of those who would operate them.
But some lawmakers, users and TikTok officials disagree with the actual implications if the bill becomes law.
Now senators will decide whether the national security threat posed by TikTok is worth the headaches of voters who love the app.
Lawmakers accused TikTok of providing its US user data to Chinese parent company ByteDance, which they say has ties to the Chinese Communist Party
TikTok sent this notice to users Tuesday morning, asking them to contact their lawmakers to let them know if they support the TikTok bill
The House China Select Committee says Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials through ByteDance are using TikTok to spy on the locations of its American users and dictate its algorithm to carry out influence campaigns, making it a national security threat.
ByteDance would have five months after signing the law to get rid of TikTok. If not, app stores and web hosting platforms are not allowed to distribute it in the US
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not commit to a vote but said the Senate would review the bill once it came out of the House of Representatives.
On Friday, President Biden said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, despite his own reelection campaign launching Biden’s TikTok account last month.
TikTok has about 170 million users in the United States. Ahead of the vote, it urged users to pressure Congress not to pass the bill, which it claimed would hurt millions of content creators and businesses.
Gen Z Congressman Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said Biden’s support of the bill could hurt him among young people, but more than that he called it bad policy despite his own data privacy concerns.
Frost had an unlikely ally in former President Donald Trump, who reversed his own previous stance on banning TikTok and spoke out against the bill last week, claiming a TikTok ban would only help Facebook.
“I don’t want Facebook, which cheated in the last election, to do better,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. ‘They are a real enemy of the people!’
Elon Musk joined Trump in opposing efforts to control TikTok’s influence, calling it government censorship, in a post on X Tuesday.
‘This law isn’t just about TikTok, it’s about censorship and government control! If it were just about TikTok, it would only mention ‘foreign control’ as an issue, but that’s not the case,” Musk said.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk has spoken out against the TikTok law, claiming it could be used as a form of government oppression
Although the bill passed with overwhelming support in the House of Representatives, there was also bipartisan opposition.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., voted no, mentioned Musk by name, praised him for restoring her account on
“What’s to stop the U.S. government from forcing the sale of another social media company in the future that claims to protect U.S. data from foreign adversaries?”
‘I think this bill could cause future problems. It opens Pandora’s box and I am against this bill,” Greene said in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
“This is really about controlling US data, and if we cared about US data, we would stop the sale of US data universally, not just to China.”
Greene was among several key Republican members who voted against the bill, including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Tom McClintock, R-Calif., Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and more .
Across the aisle, “Squad” members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also voted against the measure.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said the bill could be akin to opening “Pandora’s Box” and that the measure’s future implications are unknown.
Gen Z Congressman Maxwell Frost said he had a ‘strong no’ vote on the TikTok bill, ahead of a vote in the House of Representatives that forced the app’s Chinese parent company to divest or risk a ban in the US .
But the bill’s author, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., backtracked Wednesday morning.
“TikTok is a threat to our national security because it is owned by ByteDance, which is doing the bidding of the Communist Party,” Gallagher said on the floor.
“This bill therefore forces TikTok to break up with the Chinese Communist Party. It does not apply to American companies.’
Gallagher argued that his bill would only affect companies controlled by foreign adversaries.
TikTok opposed the “ban” in a statement shared with DailyMail.com after the House passed the bill.
‘This process was secret and the bill was blocked for one reason: it is a ban. We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents and realize the impact on the economy, on seven million small businesses and on the 170 million Americans who use our service.”
TikTok advocates gathered outside the Capitol to oppose the bill ahead of Wednesday’s vote
Some of the advocates who came to the Capitol on Wednesday were TikTok content creators
The CCP also opposed the passage of the bill.
“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
“This kind of bullying behavior that cannot win in fair competition disrupts the normal business activities of companies, damages the confidence of international investors in the investment climate and damages the normal international economic and trade order.”
“In the end, this will inevitably harm the United States itself,” Wang added.
TikTok sent this notice to users last week after the bill was introduced
The White House’s support for the bill comes just weeks after the president’s own reelection campaign launched Biden’s TikTok account in February in an effort to reach young voters as the president gears up for a rematch with Trump in November.
While Biden maintains a lead over Trump in recent polls among young voters, the gap has narrowed since young voters helped him to the White House in 2020.
The president has also faced backlash among young people over his support for funding Israel as it wages war in Gaza.