Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader in US Congress, yesterday endorsed the proposals to pass a "sell-or-be-banned" law targeting TikTok, stating that he would support "common sense steps" that take "one of Beijing's favorite tools of coercion and espionage off the table".
Last month the lower house of Congress, the House Of Representatives, speedily passed a proposed law that would force TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban in the US. It's based on concerns that the Chinese government has access to TikTok user-data via ByteDance, something TikTok continues to deny.
Having been voted through in the House super fast, the proposals are expected to get more scrutiny in the Senate. The timeline for that scrutiny is still to be confirmed. Last week Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, did say that the TikTok legislation was a priority and would be among the bipartisan proposals to be considered in the "weeks and months ahead". Though it remains to be seen if we are actually talking weeks or months.
Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell was due to meet with the other Democrat members of that committee yesterday to discuss the TikTok proposals, promising a "game plan" after that meeting. She has previously said that she might stage a public hearing on TikTok and the "sell-or-be-banned" law.
According to The Hill, McConnell stated in the Senate yesterday that, “America’s greatest strategic rival is threatening our security right here on US soil in tens of millions of American homes. I’m speaking, of course, about TikTok".
Some have raised constitutional concerns about the proposed TikTok law, predicting that - even if passed by Congress - it could still stall in the courts, most likely on First Amendment free speech grounds.
However, McConnell insisted that “requiring the divestment of Beijing-influenced entities from TikTok would land squarely within established Constitutional precedent. And it would begin to turn back the tide of an enormous threat to America’s children and to our nation’s prospects in the defining competition of the 21st century".
He then concluded, “This is a matter that deserves Congress’s urgent attention. And I’ll support commonsense, bipartisan steps to take one of Beijing’s favorite tools of coercion and espionage off the table".