Posted BY: Cassandra MacDonald
The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bill on Wednesday that moves towards being able to ban TikTok.
The social media platform's parent company, ByteDance, has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul on Friday, HR 1153 would revise legal protections that have shielded TikTok from US sanctions and prohibit Americans from engaging with entities that may transfer sensitive personal data to a foreign entity "subject to the influence of China."
The committee voted 24-16 along party lines.
Now, the legislation will head to the House. If passed there, it would move to the Senate, then Joe Biden for a signature.
TikTok has released a statement denying that the app is a national security threat.
"A U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide. We're disappointed to see this rushed piece of legislation move forward, despite its considerable negative impact on the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use and love TikTok," said TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump had attempted to ban TikTok while he was in office in 2020 but was blocked. Many politicians, including Democrats, have now said he was correct.
Democrat Sen. Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, admitted Trump was right during a November appearance on Fox News Sunday.
The senator told host Shannon Bream, "as painful as it is for me to say, if Donald Trump was right and we could've taken action then, that'd have been a heckuva lot easier than trying to take action in November of 2022."
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