Sen. Josh Hawley tried to fast track his bill to ban TikTok and was stopped by Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican Senate conference’s lone wolf. TikTok, a popular social media app used by more than 150 million Americans, is gaining bipartisan support despite fears that the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, could be used to spy on Americans.
As the Biden administration remains in negotiations with TikTok about security measures, a process that has taken years, Congress has become impatient. There has been growing momentum on Capitol Hill to address the issue as FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned about the potential the app has for spying on Americans. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has called on ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a potential ban.
However, Hawley, a Missouri Republican, has rejected a bipartisan measure in the Senate that would give the Biden administration the authority to ban the app and has maintained that Congress should simply ban it outright. On Wednesday, he tried a non-controversial legislative manoeuvre that would enable the bill to pass the Senate if no senator objected. It’s a strategy that enables a senator to avoid the arduous legislative process of assembling a coalition of support, as well as the traditional route a bill takes through committee.
Hawley has used this technique before; last year, he was able to use it to pass legislation prohibiting TikTok from federal devices. That bill was subsequently incorporated into a larger, end-of-year spending bill that was approved. He claimed he had no choice but to test it because TikTok is lobbying Congress to delay efforts to ban it.
This time it didn’t work. Paul, a Kentucky Republican, stood up to object. Paul, whose politics have a libertian bent, said if the U.S. banned TikTok, it would be censoring Americans. He said there were two clear reasons for him not to support the bill — it would limit the speech of Americans, and that it would run afoul of rules that prevent a piece of legislation that declares a company guilty of a crime. “We should beware of people who peddle fear,” Paul said. “We should beware of people who peddle half truths.” Much of Paul’s argument centered around the freedom of Americans to watch dance videos, which later prompted Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, to say no one was attempting to ban “booty videos.”
But Paul also pointed out that many American social media companies are collecting similar data to TikTok. He said the Republican Party would lose a generation of voters in banning the app — an argument that has also been used by Democrats who have opposed a TikTok ban, given the app’s young audience. “You don’t like TikTok? Quit using them,” Paul said. “But don’t disenfranchise 150 million Americans who are using a social media app.” March Madness
However, Hawley portrayed the company as a national security threat, claiming that the app could be used by the Chinese Communist Party to gather information on Americans because the company is subject to Chinese laws that can be used to force it to turn over data.
“The problem with TikTok is not the videos on the app,” Hawley said. “The problem with TikTok is that it’s a backdoor for the Chinese Communist Party.” At times, the debate was reminiscent of arguments from the 1950s, with Paul saying several times that he opposes Communism, but that he doesn’t support the tactic of banning a social media company, or handing the government more power over social media companies. Hawley’s inability to pass his bill on Wednesday doesn’t mean the end of the effort to ban TikTok.