With a bipartisan vote count of 360-58, the House passed a bill on Saturday that takes the banning of the popular video app TikTok in the U.S. one step closer to becoming reality. The bill is; that bill would ban TikTok owner ByteDance from U.S. app storefronts unless the Chinese company quickly sold TikTok to a new owner.
The new TikTok bill is attached to a couple of requests to fund military equipment for Ukraine and to fund missiles for Israel. By submitting the bill to the Senate in this format, House Republicans put pressure on the Senate to pass the bill in a single vote. Analysts believe that the Senate will take up the bill within the next two weeks which could improve its chances of getting passed. President Joe Biden has previously said that if the bill reaches his desk, he will sign it.
The U.S. considers TikTok, with its current ownership, to be a national security threat. However, many young Americans love the app and TikTok users would prefer to see ByteDance sell the app to a U.S. company. In 2020, then President Donald Trump tried to force ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. assets to an American company and in September of that year, he told reporters that he had approved"in concept" a deal that would have. That deal never made it to the negotiating stage.