WASHINGTON — Citing major national security concerns, the U.S. House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that effectively bans TikTok unless the company splits from its Chinese owner ByteDance.
The 352-65 vote occurred just a week after lawmakers introduced the bipartisan proposal and days after the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously advanced the legislation, an unusual speed for the 118th Congress.
The bill required a two-thirds majority because House leadership placed it on the floor under a fast-track procedure called suspension of the rules.
The legislation, dubbed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, now heads to the Senate, where concerns over singling out a private company in legislation may slow momentum.
“The overwhelming vote today is a strong signal to the Senate that they need to act,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Washington Republican who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, said after the vote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement late Wednesday morning that the body “will review the legislation when it comes over from the House.”
Leaders on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said they are “united” in concern about a platform that has “enormous power to influence and divide Americans whose parent company ByteDance remains legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“We were encouraged by today’s strong bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives and look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law,” committee chair Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and vice chairman Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said in a joint statement.
President Joe Biden, whose administration had a hand in crafting the bill, is expected to sign the measure if the upper chamber approves it.
Despite Biden’s support of the bill, his re-election campaign joined TikTok last month as a way to reach Gen Z voters.
While broad support swells from both sides of the aisle, the legislation has been met by fierce opposition from TikTok users — totaling some 170 million in the U.S. — and from a coalition of young House lawmakers.
“Not only am I a ‘no’ on tomorrow’s TikTok ban bill, I’m a ‘Hell no,’” Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat representing Florida, said at a Tuesday press conference where he questioned which companies are large enough to acquire TikTok. Frost is the youngest member of Congress at 27.
“Essentially what this bill is doing is setting this whole sale up to fail,” he said.
Forty-nine Democrats joined Frost in opposing the bill Wednesday, including several members of the so-called squad, a group of progressive Democrats that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Greg Casar of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Washington Democrat Pramila Jayapal voted against the measure, saying in a statement that the “overly rushed” bill “provides an unworkable path to remove TikTok from ownership by a Chinese company, making it a de facto ban.”
