The House voted 352-65 to pass legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the company or lose access to more than 170 million U.S. users, easily overcoming opposition of those who feared that the measure would violate First Amendment rights or give the president unchecked powers.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which voted 50-0 to bring the bill to the House floor, said on the House floor that the legislation is aimed at the Chinese Communist Party for using TikTok to “manipulate tens of millions of people to further its agenda.”
Passage of the measure would “send a clear message that we will not tolerate our adversaries weaponizing our freedoms against us,” Rodgers said.
