House likely to pass a bill that could ban TikTok, sending it to the Senate

WASHINGTON — The House is poised to pass legislation Wednesday that could ban TikTok in the U.S. as Republicans and Democrats alike sound the alarm that the popular video-sharing app is a national security threat.

TikTok, owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, is mounting an aggressive lobbying campaign to kill the legislation, arguing that it would violate the First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. users and harm thousands of small businesses that rely on it.

"You will be destroying small businesses like us; this is our livelihood. We’ve created success," Paul Tran, who, with his wife, has a skin care company called Love and Pebble, said at a pro-TikTok rally outside the Capitol on Tuesday.

He said their business nearly shut down last year until TikTok Shop came along and "totally exploded our business." Now 90% of their business comes from the app, he said.

"If you pass this bill," Tran said, "you will be destroying the American Dream that we really believe in."

Despite that push, the bipartisan bill is expected to sail through the House and be sent to the Senate, where lawmakers say they are still evaluating it. President Joe Biden has said that if the bill reaches his desk, he will sign it into law.

Its backers say it’s wrong to call the legislation an outright ban. Dubbed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the bill would create a process for the president — through the FBI and intelligence agencies — to designate certain social media applications under the control of foreign adversaries, like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, as national security threats.

Once an app was deemed a risk, it would be banned from online app stores and web-hosting services