House Approves TikTok Divestment Bill With Bipartisan 352-65 Vote

The House voted 352-65 Wednesday to approve legislation that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest the app in six months (see 2403120062).

Fifty Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (HR-7521). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement his office will review the bill when the House delivers it.

Hopefully, the Senate Commerce Committee will consider taking up companion legislation, said House Strategic Competition Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., Wednesday, while speaking to reporters with lead co-sponsor ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., and House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. The House vote sends a “strong signal to the Senate that they need to act,” Rodgers said.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in a statement Wednesday she will talk with members in both chambers to “find a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties.” Cantwell said she is “very concerned about foreign adversaries’ exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data and their attempts to build backdoors in our information communication technology and services supply chains. These are national security threats, and it is good members in both chambers are taking them seriously."

The Senate should reject the bill, TikTok said in a statement Wednesday: “This process was secret, and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it's a ban. We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.” The company previously argued the bill would violate First Amendment rights.

In response, Krishnamoorthi told reporters Wednesday there’s no First Amendment right for Chinese companies to spy on Americans and threaten national security.

Members voting against the bill included House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.; and Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.; Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.; Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Nadler, who opposes the measure on First Amendment grounds, told us Wednesday he was initially going to vote for the bill but then found a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and the Center for Democracy and Technology “very persuasive.”

The House Commerce Committee’s 50-0 vote had suggested its members “must know what they’re doing,” said Nadler. “Then I started looking into it. ... It’s an imposition on free speech, and the government cannot do by indirection what it may not do by direction. By forcing a divestment, it’s a severe limitation on free speech.”

HR-7521 is “censorship -- plain and simple,” the ACLU said in its joint letter to the committee. The groups noted a district court in Montana recently blocked a statewide ban against TikTok, finding the law violated the First Amendment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee looks “forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law,” Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a joint statement Wednesday: “We are united in our concern about the national security threat posed by TikTok -- a platform with enormous power to influence and divide Americans whose parent company ByteDance remains legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Reps. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.; Maxwell Frost, D-Fla.; and Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., led a group of TikTok creators in protesting the legislation outside the Capitol on Tuesday. The bill would effectively ban certain forms of freedom of expression, and it would have an enormous economic impact on the millions of creators on the platform, said Garcia. The legislation doesn’t stop data brokers from selling user data to foreign governments, said Jacobs, calling for passage of a federal privacy law instead.

The House plans to vote next week on the House Commerce Committee’s data broker bill, Rodgers told reporters. Introduced by Rodgers and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (HR-7520) would ban data brokers from transferring “sensitive data” of American consumers to “foreign adversaries.” Rodgers confirmed it will be “on the floor next week.”

Pallone spoke on the floor Wednesday in support of HR-7521, saying the U.S. has “a long history of restricting our TV and radio airwaves from ownership by foreign governments and individuals, due to the national security concerns these arrangements pose.” Social media companies should face similar scrutiny, he said.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jay Himes, D-Conn., who voted against HR-7521, said in a statement what sets the U.S. apart from some adversaries is that it doesn’t “shut down” its newspapers, broadcasters and social media platforms: “We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy. We do not trust our government to decide what information they may or may not see.”

The legislation isn’t a TikTok ban, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement Wednesday. The bill would strengthen the app by “keeping Americans’ data and control of the algorithm out of the hands of a foreign adversary,” she said.

The bill raises First Amendment issues, it avoids addressing comprehensive privacy issues, and it might encourage foreign governments to ban U.S. apps in their countries, the Open Technology Institute said in a statement Wednesday.