Exactly a year ago, lawmakers displayed a rare display of bipartisanship when they questioned TikTok Chief Executive Shaw Chew about the video app's ties to China. Their harsh questions revealed that Washington was preparing to force the company to sever ties with its Chinese owner or even ban the app.
Then there was mostly silence. Little came out of the House committee hearing, and a proposal to force the administration to sell or ban TikTok failed in the Senate.
But behind the scenes, a small group of lawmakers began a secret effort that culminated on Wednesday, when President Biden signed a bill that forces TikTok to be sold by its Chinese owner, ByteDance. , or risk being banned. The measure, which passed the Senate late Tuesday, jeopardizes the future of the app that claims 170 million users in the United States and which touches nearly every aspect of American life.
For nearly a year, lawmakers and some of their colleagues worked to write a version of the bill that concealed its efforts to curb TikTok's lobbying. To defend the bill from expected legal challenges and persuade undecided lawmakers, the group worked with the Justice Department and the White House.
And the final stage – a race to the President's desk that led some aides to nickname the bill the “Thunder Run” – played out seven weeks after it was publicly introduced, remarkably fast for Washington.
“You don't get many opportunities like this on a major issue,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican majority leader. He was one of 15 MPs, aides and officials directly involved in the shaping and passage of the bill who were interviewed for this article.
“This fight has been going on for years,” Mr. Scalise said. “We learned a lot from each step and we wanted to make sure we had a strong legal position and a strong bipartisan coalition to do this.”
Their success stands in contrast to efforts by other lawmakers and US officials that began during the Trump administration to address national security concerns about TikTok. He says the Chinese government could rely on ByteDance to influence content on the app to serve Beijing's interests, including obtaining sensitive US user data or interfering in US elections.
TikTok has hit back at those allegations, saying the Chinese government has no role in the company and has taken steps and spent billions of dollars to address concerns. It has also aggressively fought in the courts against past actions of the federal and state governments.
But TikTok has been disappointed by the strategy adopted by lawmakers in recent weeks. And while next steps are being worked out, the app is unlikely to disappear from Americans' phones, the measure comes as it marks the first time a US president has signed a bill that would result in a blanket ban on a foreign app. There may be a ban.
In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said the bill “was drafted in secret, brought through the House and ultimately passed as part of a larger, pass-through bill because it is a ban “Which Americans will find offensive.”
He said it was “sadly ironic that Congress would pass legislation crushing the right to free expression of 170 million Americans as part of a package that aims to advance freedom around the world.”
From small hubbub to big majority
The effort around the TikTok bill began with Mr. Scalise meeting with Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, last March about his desire to see the measure taken on the app.
He began talks with other Republican lawmakers and colleagues on several committees about a new bill. By August, they decided to pass a potential bill through a House committee focused on China, the Chinese Communist Party's Select Committee, chaired by Representatives Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican and its chair, and Raja Krishnamurthy, an Illinois Democrat. Had taken.
The bipartisan committee quickly adopted this effort. “We recognized that there were a lot of different viewpoints and that the technical issues were very complex,” Mr Krishnamurthy said.
So the committee devised a strategy: Win the support of Democrats, the White House, and the Justice Department for a new bill.
Their efforts got a boost last year after Mr. Gallagher and other lawmakers, including others, accused TikTok of knowingly sending pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content to its users. Mr. Krishnamurthy and others said the Israel-Gaza conflict has increased lawmakers' appetite for regulating apps.
In November, the group, which then had fewer than 20 prominent people, brought in Justice Department officials to help secure the Biden administration's support for a new bill, including Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general and national security director. Council employees were involved. ,
For years, the administration had considered a proposal for TikTok called Project Texas, which aimed to keep sensitive US user data separate from the rest of the company's operations. Justice Department and National Security Council officials agreed to support the new bill in part because they viewed Project Texas as inadequate to handle national security concerns tied to TikTok, two administration officials said.
In conversations with lawmakers, White House officials emphasized that they wanted ByteDance to sell TikTok rather than ban it, partly because of the app's popularity among Americans, three people involved in the process said. .
The Justice Department and Ms. Monaco provided guidance on how to write the bill so it would withstand legal challenges. TikTok had previously defeated attempts to ban it, citing the First Amendment rights of its users. Officials explained how to draft the bill to defend against those claims, citing national security.
With the support of the administration, the group quietly called for more supporters in the House. The Justice Department included members of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI to brief House committees on the threats posed by Chinese ownership of TikTok. The briefing was later given in the Senate.
Ms Monaco met personally with lawmakers and warned them that TikTok could be used to disrupt the US elections.
Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said of a meeting with Ms. “She made a powerful case and we agreed that not only was the data being collected, but she shared that you have 170 million Americans. who are sensitive to publicity.” Monaco in Munich in February.
On March 5, Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Krishnamurthy announced the bill and named about 50 House members who supported it. The Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Ms. McMorris Rodgers, considered the bill that week.
TikTok, which had been in talks with US officials over its Project Texas plan, was caught off guard. It immediately sent information to Energy and Commerce Committee members outlining TikTok's economic contribution to their districts, according to documents seen by The New York Times. It used a pop-up message on its app to urge users to call legislators to protest the ban.
But when hundreds of calls began coming into some lawmakers' offices, including from callers who appeared to be minors, some lawmakers felt the bill was being misrepresented.
Sri Krishnamurthy said, “It turned a lot of lean yeses into hell yeses at that time.”
Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has voiced his opposition to the bill, causing consternation. But Mr. Scalise said he urged Mr. Trump to reconsider and the vote went ahead.
Two days after the bill was unveiled, Ms. McMorris Rodgers' committee voted 50 to 0 to advance it to the full House, where it passed the following week by 352 votes to 65.
There were tears of joy in Mr. Krishnamurthy's office, two people said. Mr. Gallagher's staff member Celebrated One of his signed awards for successful legislation, with a cookie cake sent by Mr. Scalise.
a less certain future
Despite the bill's rapid passage in the House, its future in the Senate was uncertain. Some senators, including Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington and powerful committee chairmen like Mr. Warner, are considering changes to the bill that could significantly slow it down.
The House bill gave ByteDance six months to sell TikTok. Senators wanted to extend the deadline and include details of the government's national security concerns about TikTok in the bill, to make it clear to courts how it justified the measure.
As the Senate worked on the bill, TikTok contacted lawmakers' offices and spent at least $3 million on ads defending itself. It blanketed the airwaves in major states with ads showing how users — like nuns and cattle farmers — make a living and build communities through the app.
TikTok also had the support of conservative groups like the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute, both of which were backed by Jeffrey Yass, a major investor in the app. And liberal organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union have said the bill violates Americans' First Amendment rights.
A Club for Growth spokesman said Mr Yass “never requested the Club to take any position or take any action on his behalf.”
Some deep-pocketed groups on the right rallied to support the bill. One was the American Parents Coalition, backed by Leonard Leo, a conservative activist, which ran an ad campaign in March titled “TikTok is poison.” A spokesman for Mr Leo said he was “proud to support” the group's efforts.
Some in Silicon Valley also spoke in favor of the bill, including Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, and Jacob Helberg, senior policy adviser to the chief executive of Palantir.
Bijan Kuhmarai, a lawyer in Mr. Scalise's office who helped push the bill, said the main reason the process was kept secret for so long was to keep lobbyists at bay.
“No company had any outside influence or assistance in drafting this bill,” he said.
a new opportunity
As the bill was introduced in the Senate, a new opportunity arose. House Speaker Mike Johnson last week announced an effort to pass foreign aid to countries including Ukraine. To ensure he had the votes, Mr Johnson took the unusual step of attaching a package of bills popular among Republicans, including the TikTok measure.
The senators now scrambled because the House had forced them to. Ms. Cantwell’s office asked the House for several edits to the measure, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
House lawmakers made only one change that the Senate wanted. The version of the bill included in the aid package extended the time limit for TikTok sales from six months to nine months. The president could add another 90 days if ByteDance makes progress toward selling TikTok.
“The most important thing is to have enough time to effect a sale,” Ms. Cantwell said.
The change was considerable. Late Tuesday night, the Senate passed the bill by a majority of 79 to 18. On Wednesday morning, President Biden signed it into law.