The bill to outlaw TikTok was passed by the House

“That Midwestern Mom” was a viral content creator before the U.S. Senate voted to ban the TikTok app

Efforts to ban TikTok heated up in March last year, when CEO Shou Zi Chew testified in the House for the first time, then slowed to an apparent standstill until recently. In 2023, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the RESTRICT Act, which put the power to ban apps that present national security risks in the hands of the secretary of commerce.

“That Midwestern Mom”, a 44-year-old content creator also known as “That Midwest Mom,” went viral two years ago, when she uploaded a salad recipe from her home state of Minnesota. The ingredients that made her famous were: snickers bars, apples, jelli-O and Cool Whip.

Other TikTokers use their platform as a means of giving back. William McCoy, who goes by Izzy White, is a former drug dealer and ex-felon from Baltimore. He said that he helps homeless people in his community.

TikTok refused to give an interview to NPR. A statement said the government is trying to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”

“TikTok is not the only platform that collects that kind of information. Data is made available by other platforms to data brokers who then sell it to foreign governments.

The End of TikTok: Why the U.S. Digital Privacy Protection Act shouldn’t be a Ban on a Video Sharing App

The bill is expected to pass but its fate is unclear in the Senate where some lawmakers have said they would like to hold hearings and consider it further.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., who chairs the House Select committee on China and is the lead GOP sponsor of the bipartisan bill, maintains the bill does not amount to a ban of the video sharing app.

In speeches leading up to the vote on H.R. 7521, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, members of Congress highlighted the many security concerns with the app, including the potential for employees at the Chinese company to access American user data, and the spread of pro-China propaganda.

Gallagher says the lobbying campaign that TikTok launched — with push notices using location information to connect users by phone to their member of Congress — proves why the bill is needed.

“You had member offices being deluged with calls, you know, teenagers crying and one threatening suicide and one impersonating one of my colleague’s sons,” he said. “That, to me demonstrates how the platform could be weaponized in the future.”

The president can make a process for dealing with future threats from foreign owned apps if they are deemed to be a national security risk. Users can download their data and switch from one platform to another.

Raja Krishnamoorthi is a ranking Democrat on the House Select committee on China. He pushed back on the company’s argument, telling NPR, “There’s no first amendment right to espionage, there’s no first amendment right to harm our national security.”

The company stresses that it has invested its own money to set up a firewall in an effort dubbed “Project Texas” to address data privacy concerns and keep users’ data in the U.S.

The Facebook Ban, Facebook Adversarial, and Trump’s Social Media Critique: Implications for the Senate and for the First Amendment

When Donald Trump was president, he proposed to ban Muslims from entering the country. He is against the House bill.

When he served as president he vowed to ban the social media app. In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Trump said that despite his security risk, he opposed a ban because it meant users would migrate to another platform.

“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. He considers Facebook to be an enemy of the people, because without TikTok you are able to make Facebook bigger.

The bill, which Biden said he would sign if it were passed, protects Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications.

The bill was first introduced in the House a few weeks ago, but the Senate will present a whole different set of challenges.

To start, there’s no companion bill yet, so the legislation is barely at the start line in that chamber. The Senate’s rules could make it difficult to maintain enough support to clear it, even if one is introduced. Just one senator can put a hold on legislation to keep it from advancing quickly.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has indicated he could be willing to do just that. He told The Washington Post prior to the House vote that he would block any bill he believed to violate the Constitution and said Congress shouldn’t “be trying to take away the First Amendment rights of [170] million Americans.”

How the RESTRICT Act failed to pass through the Senate last year, after Shou Chew testified in a lower-eight chamber

A long legal process could leave room for doubts — and lobbying money — to seep in. Consider the splashy introduction of the RESTRICT Act — another attempt to ban TikTok — in the Senate last year just before TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified in the House. Despite early enthusiasm, the measure slowly fell off the radar, as opponents criticized it. Ultimately, it failed to move through the chamber.

The Senate should immediately take up the bill because it was passed by the House, said Sen. Josh Hawley after the House vote.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair and vice chair Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a joint statement that they 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.”

Warner was the leader of the RESTRICT Act and he is willing to get behind the House bill. Warner’s support for the new House legislation shows he’s willing to pursue other paths to deal with the threats he perceives from TikTok’s ownership.

Sigourney Norman, an artist and former lawyer, who uses TikTok to discuss politics, race, gender, and sexuality, doesn’t believe that lawmakers will protect the data of American users.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has so far been noncommittal about the path the bill could take. Schumer said simply in a statement after the House passed the bill that “The Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House.”

Several supporters emphasized that the bill is not an all-out ban, but instead an incentive to force divestment so TikTok can separate its ties to China.

Both sides of the aisle voiced their objections to the bill. Opponents of the bill worry that it will be an ineffectual solution to real national security concerns, while coming with unacceptable limits on free speech and expansion of governmental power.

Massie said it was risky to give the president that kind of power to decide what Americans can see on their phones and computers.

Some Democrats had reservations about an all-out ban. Despite being pushed by powerful lawmakers, the Restore Act later collapsed due to a strong lobbying campaign by TikTok and Republican concerns about granting too much executive branch power over the private sector.

The bill could lead to the sale of other social media platforms, particularly mentioning X, which is now owned by Musk, according to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove noted that Chinese influence operations are not restricted to TikTok. Meta decided to remove the massive Chinese influence operation from its platforms, due to their targeting of the US. Some smaller networks had also targeted users in India and Tibet.

The closing of TikTok Shop would have a negative effect on Dieux, says Palermino. Losing that would be difficult, she says. While she’s confident Dieux could pivot to focus on other platforms, she suspects a TikTok ban could seriously impact other independent and up-and-coming brands within the United States in a big way. “It will hurt their business.”