All 4 Utah reps vote in favor of TikTok bill, as it faces uncertain path in the Senate

The bill requiring TikTok to divest of ByteDance or face a nationwide ban breezed through the House on Wednesday.

It cleared the House with the two-thirds necessary support on a 352 to 65 vote, with 14 representatives not voting and one voting present.

President Joe Biden previously indicated he would sign the bill if it passes the Senate, but its future there is uncertain.

Utah House Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, John Curtis and Burgess Owens all voted in favor of the bipartisan bill.

Curtis, a member of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, spoke in the favor of the bill leading up to the vote. He told the Deseret News on the phone that the bill had “a very limited scope” and was “very targeted” to ameliorate concerns around national security.

After the bill passed Wednesday, Owens said on X, that he fully supported the effort “to crack down on this national security and safeguard our kids.”

TikTok issued a statement following the passage of the bill in the House. “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.”

Lawmakers including Curtis, have pushed back on the characterization of the policy as a ban. The bill would give ByteDance six months to sell the company or else it would be restricted in U.S. app stores.

“It’s not a ban. It’s simply an unwillingness to let the Chinese government be in control of this,” Curtis previously told the Deseret News, adding the bill was not an attempt to restrict free speech.

While the bill mentions ByteDance and TikTok, it’s not exclusive to just those companies. It gives the executive branch a path to designate social media applications as risks to national security and ban them from online app stores unless they divest in a similar way to how TikTok may be required to divest of ByteDance to remain in the U.S.

When the bill gained traction in committee last week, TikTok send out a notification to some of its users with a screen where they could input their ZIP codes and call their representatives.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said members of Congress were inundated with phone calls as a result of the message.

“Most of these push notifications went to minor children, and these minor children were flooding our offices with phone calls,” Krishnamoorthi told CBS News. “Basically they pick up the phone, call the office and say, ‘What is a congressman? What is Congress?’ They had no idea what was going on.”

Caleb Smith, a former longtime staffer for retired House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republican politicians, told Politico that the strategy could work against TikTok.

“It’s not a strategy to just create chaos. What does move members of Congress is when constituents call into their office with well-informed viewpoints over a longer period of time. But a barrage of not well-informed people expressing outrage is not a strategy,” Smith said.

Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., has voiced opposition to the bill, according to NPR. “I think that it is a violation of people’s First Amendment rights. TikTok is a place for people to express ideas. I have many small businesses in my district and content creators in my district, and I think it’s going to drastically impact them, too.”

Former President Donald Trump also expressed his opposition to the bill in an interview with CNBC.

Lisa Plaggemier, executive director of The National Cybersecurity Alliance, said in a statement that there are national security concerns around TikTok.

“Beyond the immediate privacy implications, there are fears that TikTok could be leveraged as a tool for misinformation campaigns and data collection by foreign actors, particularly the Chinese government,” Plaggemier said. “The scale of TikTok’s user engagement, combined with China’s track record of aggressive cyber activities, raises the specter of sophisticated cyber threats targeting American users, including surveillance, data breaches, and manipulation of online discourse.”

Will the Senate vote on the bill?

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a statement to CNN after the House passed the TikTok bill. “The Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House,” Schumer said in a statement.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has disagreed with other TikTok bills, told The Hill that the current bill “makes no sense.”

“TikTok is banned in China,” Paul said. “We’re thinking — or people who want to ban it are thinking — Wow, we’re going to really defeat the Chinese communists, by becoming Chinese authoritarians and banning it in our country? TikTok is banned in China. So, we’re going to emulate the Chinese communists by banning it in our country?”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., issued a joint statement obtained by The Associated Press saying that they would work to pass the bill.

“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,” the statement said.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has also expressed his support of the bill, but many other senators have not voiced their thoughts on the measure.

Last year, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai requesting that they remove TikTok from their app stores.

“Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints. Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work,’” Bennet wrote in the letter.

But even with senators supporting the bill, it still faces an uncertain future.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said the House’s vote makes it “impossible for the Senate to ignore the effort,” according to The Washington Post.

“I think there’s an opportunity for us to have a productive dialogue with the Senate and particularly given that we got so many bipartisan votes today in the House.”