A small group of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill were able to keep quiet — for over a year — a renewed effort to take on TikTok and secure the speedy adoption of legislation that will force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either divest from or sell the social media app in the next nine months. Republican aides dubbed the effort: “The Thunder Run.”
The plan to take on TikTok and its Chinese parent company was born out of efforts by former President Donald Trump to confront the national security threat posed by ByteDance. In the final months of the Trump administration, the former Republican President used executive action that gave ByteDance the choice to either divest or face a ban on the TikTok app in the U.S. Unfortunately, though, federal courts hamstrung the effort.
RENEWING TRUMP’S TIKTOK EFFORTS.
House Republicans renewed efforts to take on the Chinese-owned social media app just over a year ago. Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House Majority Leader, began approaching his Republican colleagues regarding a legislative measure requiring divestment or a resulting ban on TikTok. The group comprised about 15 House lawmakers, national security officials, and the deputy attorney general. Scalise and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) began crafting the divestment bill in secret, hoping not to tip off TikTok’s army of lobbyists and passionate user base to the effort.
After months of meetings, Scalise and McMorris Rodgers were ready to go public with their legislation. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) sponsored the bill and ushered it through McMorris-Rodgers’s House Energy and Commerce Committee. It sailed through, gaining 50 co-sponsors in the process.
TIKTOK’S LOBBYING BACKFIRES.
Now aware of the threat, TikTok launched a full-scale lobbying operation to defeat the bill. However, the Chinese-owned social media company made a fatal error when it also pushed its users to lobby Capitol Hill. The messages left for lawmakers by TikTok users, some of whom appeared to be legal minors, devolved into threats. Senator Thom Tillis received a phone call from one individual threatening: “I’ll find you and shoot you and cut you into pieces.”
“It transformed a lot of lean yeses into hell yeses at that point,” Rep. Krishnamoorthi said of the flood of threatening phone calls from TikTok users.
DIVEST OR FACE A BAN.
Despite the full court press by TikTok, the divestment bill was adopted by the full House of Representatives in mid-March. It stalled out in the Senate, however.
The delay in the Senate–over timing concerns raised by Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) — gave TikTok time to recover. This prompted Speaker Mike Johnson to add a near-mirror version of the House-passed bill to a package of foreign aid funding supplemental. The only change to the legislation was an extension of the time ByteDance has to divest. Speaker Johnson’s foreign aid legislation, including the TikTok provision, passed by both the House and Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden earlier this week.
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