Congress starts clock on TikTok ban in foreign aid bill
What happened
The Senate on Tuesday night passed a $95 billion bill to aid Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and ban TikTok if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, doesn't sell the social media company within 270 days. The 79-18 vote sends the package to President Joe Biden, who said he will sign it Wednesday.
Who said what
Congress is not "acting to punish ByteDance" or TikTok, but to "prevent foreign adversaries" from spying on and "harming vulnerable Americans," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said. "Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok," said former President Donald Trump, whose 2020 executive order banning TikTok was blocked in court. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) put the TikTok measure "in the big supplemental bill, and we had to get the supplemental bill passed as quickly as possible," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
The commentary
Banning TikTok would "infringe" on "Americans' First Amendment right to access information, ideas and media from abroad," Nadine Farid Johnson at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute said to CNN. "If our data is not safe on TikTok," content creator Tiffany Cianci said to The Associated Press, "I would ask why the president is on TikTok."
What next?
Even if the law survives a lengthy court challenge, CNN said, the Chinese government could "block the sale outright" or allow it "but without the lucrative algorithm that forms the basis for its popularity."
