After a bill that may force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a nationwide ban passed through the House at breakneck speed this week, its progress in the Senate has slowed.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who decides what laws might be voted on, has not decided whether to bring the bill to the ground, his spokesman said. Senators – a few of whom have their very own versions of anti-TikTok bills – will must be convinced. Other runway regulations might be prioritized. And the strategy of passing a House bill and potentially rewriting it to suit the Senate will be time-consuming.
Many Senate members are keeping their cards to their vests about what they are going to do about dissolving TikTok, at the same time as they acknowledge the House sent a powerful message with its vote on the bill, which passed by a 352-65 vote. The laws directs TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its shares in the applying inside six months under threat of ban.
“The lesson from the House vote is that this issue can erupt almost spontaneously with the support it has,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said in an interview Friday. He said the bill might be amended, but there was bipartisan support for stripping the app of Chinese ownership.
The slowdown in the Senate means TikTok likely faces weeks and even months of uncertainty about its fate in the United States. This could result in further lobbying, in addition to maneuvers by the White House, the Chinese government and ByteDance. It may even likely result in potential talks about deals – real or imagined – and the uncertainty of losing access to the app will hang over the heads of TikTok’s creators and its 170 million US users.
“Almost everything in the Senate is going to slow down,” said Nu Wexler, a former Senate aide who has worked for Google, Twitter and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. “They will need some time to either massage egos or build consensus.”
The House approved the laws just over per week after it was introduced, passing it with bipartisan support amid concerns that the app could compromise US users’ data or be used as a Chinese propaganda tool. The bill also received support from the White House. After stating last week that he opposed the laws, former President Donald J. Trump said in an interview on Fox News on Friday that he now supports it.
The bill angered China, with the official saying the United States “has never found any evidence that TikTok poses a threat to U.S. national security.” Beijing could block the sale if the laws is passed. Some lawmakers anxious the bill might exceed Congress’ mandate by specifically naming TikTok, which violates the constitutional prohibition against targeting individuals. TikTok argues that the key bill and the speed with which it was passed in the House of Representatives suggest lawmakers were looking for a ban, not a sale.
TikTok, which has repeatedly said it has not and is not going to share data with the Chinese government or allow any government to influence its algorithmic recommendations, tried to reply to the bill, surprising the corporate.
On Wednesday, Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok in Singapore, posted a video in which he addressed users, arguing that a ban on the service would hurt small businesses in the United States. He urged them to call their senators and take up the fight. (The company did the identical to Chamber officials last week.)
TikTok has spent greater than $1 billion on a sweeping plan often called Project Texas – due to its partnership with Austin-based Oracle – that goals to process sensitive U.S. user data individually from the remaining of the corporate’s operations. The plan also calls for independent and government oversight of the platform to observe manipulation.
On Friday, whenever you searched the app for “KeepTikTok,” a banner appeared asking Americans: “Tell your senator how important TikTok is to you.” The message asked users to enter their zip codes after which told them which legislator to call.
“We continue to educate members of our community about the rush ban bill, how it would trample on their constitutional right to free speech, and how they can make their voices heard,” Alex Haurek, a spokesperson for TikTok, said in a press release.
Senate offices have received a whole bunch of calls and voicemails concerning the bill from TikTok users in recent days, said two Senate aides who weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the calls. Aides said lots of the calls got here from minors.
The White House can be lobbying behind the scenes, surprising some talent agencies representing TikTok creators on Friday by inviting them to a briefing “on ownership of the social media platform,” in keeping with an email obtained by two participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity since the conversation was unrecorded.
John F. Kirby, the president’s national security communications adviser, emphasized that the White House was looking for to sell TikTok to a bunch of representatives from talent agencies corresponding to CAA and Viral Nation, participants said. They said there have been several questions on the impact of the laws on the agency’s clients and their work. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the conversation.
Congressional experts said the Senate will likely be harder to crack because its fewer individual members might be more prone to attempt to put their stamp on laws. One MEP opposing a measure could make it harder to hurry up the legislative process. It also still needs to contemplate and pass a serious package of spending bills before the deadline for the partial government shutdown.
“I think senators will do their due diligence,” said Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow on the German Marshall Fund. “There will be a rigorous conversation about this exact question: do we just need to move, or is there room to tinker.”
Some senators supported the bill. The leaders of the Intelligence Committee, Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said in a press release Wednesday that they might support advancing the bill in the Senate.
Warner, who also has his own proposal on TikTok, said Wednesday that he continues to ask questions on various elements of the bill but welcomed the momentum it has created in the House.
“There are a lot of fundamentals that need to be covered,” Warner said. But he added that “it is difficult to imagine anything else that would garner more than 350 votes in a House that would otherwise not achieve full functioning.”
Others were more cautious. Blumenthal said in an interview that the Senate must review some features of the bill, adding that the six-month deadline to succeed in an agreement on the sale will not be sufficient.
He also said he had “heard of a number of very credible and well-known groups” that were interested in buying TikTok, but they’d not yet appeared in the press.
“There is a clear path to achieve all interests – keeping TikTok, but simply putting it in different hands,” he added.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state and chairwoman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, will likely have a say in whether the House laws involves a vote in the Senate. She said she was working on drafting her own TikTok laws last yr and was undecided whether she would support a vote on the House laws. In a press release released after the House passed the resolution, she said she planned to work with colleagues to “try to find a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties.”
A spokeswoman for the Commerce Commission declined to make Ms. Cantwell available for an interview.