Topline
Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., raised doubts in an Axios interview Thursday morning that the TikTok ban passed by the House yesterday could survive in the Senate, just one day after it passed through the House of Representatives with over 80% approval.
Key Facts
“What we’re likely to see happen in the Senate is people will nickel-and-dime it, a death by a thousand cuts,” Hawley told Axios, adding “nothing that Big Tech doesn’t want moves across the Senate floor.”
Although the bill passed in the House by a rare overwhelming majority vote, it was passed without a companion bill in the Senate, where it could now face an uphill battle.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., did not comment on whether he supported the bill, and did not confirm if the bill would even be brought to the Senate floor for a vote, only stating “the Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House.”
However, both chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., endorsed the legislation, stating that they “look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law.”
Key Background
Hawley has emerged as one of the Senate’s biggest critics of TikTok in the Senate. In 2022, he helped co-author a bill that banned TikTok on federal government devices, which was eventually signed into law by President Biden that December. Hawley introduced another bill to ban the app nationwide in January 2023, but the bill was quickly defeated two months later. Hawley renewed his call for a TikTok ban after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October, accusing the app of promoting anti-Israel content. He claimed the app has the power to “radically distort the world-picture that America’s young people encounter.” TikTok said that Hawley’s claims had “no basis.” Hawley has continued to support the House’s bill as it moved rapidly through the committee approval process and floor vote on Wednesday.
Tangent
Hawley also said he opposes the sale of TikTok to an American big tech firm, echoing concerns voiced by former President Trump last week. “I’d certainly oppose one of the monopolistic tech companies, like Meta or Google, from buying it. I think we ought to be breaking those companies up,” Hawley told Axios. Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who told CNBC this morning that he was looking to assemble an investor group to purchase the app himself, also raised doubts about its sale to an established social media firm. “I don’t think this should be controlled by any of the big U.S. tech companies. I think there could be antitrust issues on that, and this should be something that’s independent so we have a real competitor.”