Morning Report — The clock is ticking for TikTok

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 03/14/24 6:28 AM ET

Devotees of TikTok gather at the Capitol in Washington, as the House passed a bill that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner doesn’t sell, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Lawmakers contend the app’s owner, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok’s consumers in the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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TikTok’s fate now rests with the Senate.

The House easily approved bipartisan legislation Wednesday that would ban the popular video-sharing app — used by roughly 170 million Americans — if it does not separate itself from ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, sending the controversial measure to the Senate. The vote was 352 to 65.

President Biden supports the measure, and the White House on Wednesday urged the Senate to take “swift action” on the legislation. The bill would force ByteDance to divest itself of the app within roughly five months of going into effect or be banned from U.S. app stores and web hosting services. Supporters of the bill say it aims to curb national security risks posed by ByteDance, which they say could share sensitive data from American users with the Chinese government.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday the Senate “will review” the House-passed bill, but he was noncommittal about bringing the legislation to the floor — where it will likely face an uphill battle (The Hill and Axios).

ANY ATTEMPT TO FAST-TRACK the legislation would likely be blocked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who views it as unconstitutional. Some Senate Democrats have publicly opposed the bill, citing freedom of speech concerns, and suggested measures that would address concerns of foreign influence across social media without targeting TikTok specifically. “We need curbs on social media, but we need those curbs to apply across the board,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) (The Guardian and The Hill).

But Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — the top two senators on the Intelligence Committee — issued a statement Wednesday supporting the bill.

“We are united in our concern about the national security threat posed by TikTok — a platform with enormous power to influence and divide Americans whose parent company ByteDance remains legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party,” Warner and Rubio said in a joint statement immediately after the bill passed the House.

▪ The Washington Post: The U.S. could ban TikTok. These countries have blocked or restricted it.

▪ ABC News: TikTok influencers say a ban of the app would be “devastating” and hurt their businesses.

TIKTOK HAS PUSHED BACK on accusations that it poses national security risks and strongly opposed the legislation. The Biden campaign has a presence on the app, which is particularly popular with younger Americans. Former President Trump, who was once a proponent of banning the platform, has since reversed his position, while Democrats are facing pressure from young progressives among whom TikTok remains a preferred social media platform. In a statement on Wednesday’s vote, TikTok said its attention would now shift to the Senate (CNN).

“This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it’s a ban,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.”

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ Vice President Harris today will visit an abortion clinic near the Twin Cities in Minnesota to meet with health providers and staff members. A top elected official entering such a facility in an election year underscores the political shift in the abortion debate nationally and for the Democratic Party.

▪ Senior White House officials plan today to meet with Arab-, Muslim- and Palestinian-American community leaders in Chicago, still trying to quiet protests nationwide against Biden over the Israel-Hamas war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

▪ After six months in space and a fiery return over the U.S., NASA’s Crew-7 is back home, bringing with them the results of more than 200 experiments.

👉 BACKING UKRAINE: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Republican senators Wednesday to expect House legislation to help Ukraine, but not the $95 billion foreign aid package the Senate passed last month, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports . House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, is urging GOP leaders to send the Senate-passed measure to Biden’s desk by next week (The Hill).

The left-leaning group VoteVets released a new ad supporting additional U.S. assistance to Ukraine. The clip uses former President Reagan’s remarks from his 1984 D-Day speech at Pointe du Hoc, France, to support an argument to confront “tyranny,” interspersed with images from Ukraine, including Biden with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The 60-second ad includes a clenched-fist image of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) as Reagan denounces “isolationism.”

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Shawn Thew | President Biden delivered the State of the Union speech a week ago to a large audience, according to Nielsen, but received no immediate bump in public opinion polls.

POLITICS

Did Biden’s State of the Union speech a week ago freeze what might have become a public opinion slide or Democratic Party panic, rather than inspire a bump in the polls? Impossible to know, but some have broached that hypothesis.

“None of these State of the Union speeches have lasting effect, and they often don’t have any impact on the overall numbers. But the one thing Biden was able to do was quiet the panic,” said Democratic strategist David Axelrod during his “Hacks on Tap” podcast Tuesday.

Post-speech surveys suggest the president’s persistently low job approval numbers are statistically unchanged from before. Nielsen said viewership was high (32.2 million), and the Biden campaign said the muscular address with its anti-Trump messaging helped deliver $10 million in contributions. But there was no public opinion improvement for the incumbent.

Before the speech, 40 percent of Americans surveyed approved of the job Biden was doing as president and 56 percent disapproved. Those numbers were 39 percent and 55 percent, respectively, in the survey afterward, according to the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

“Doubts about his strength as a candidate don’t appear to be subsiding,” Yahoo News reported after ticking off the findings.

A HarrisX poll conducted overnight after the address found that 59 percent of registered voters believed the president’s remarks would “divide” the country even more. Republican enthusiasm to vote for Trump exceeded Democratic decisions to vote for Biden in that survey.

It helps explain why the incumbent’s campaign is so focused on reassembling the type of voter coalition that helped Democrats win in 2020.

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ Harris on Friday plans a White House roundtable about reforming marijuana classification under law, including expungements, as generally referenced by Biden during his State of the Union address. Harris’s event will include rap artist Fat Joe, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and people who received pardons for past marijuana convictions. At his Milwaukee, Wis., campaign headquarters Wednesday, Biden spied a man holding a sign that said he was “on board” with the president’s campaign because “no one should be jailed for using or possessing marijuana.” The president assured him, “I’m taking care of that.”

▪ During a campaign stop in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Biden needled Trump and Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, pointing to the senator’s likening of Social Security to a “Ponzi scheme” and a recent interview where Trump suggested he was open to making cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security.

▪ No Labels national co-chairman Pat McCrory, a former Republican North Carolina governor, quit the centrist group, which is expected today to announce a process to move ahead with selection of a presidential candidate.

▪ In Pennsylvania’s Senate race, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) leads GOP challenger David McCormick, according to a new poll.

▪ If Trump and Biden won’t debate this year, it would be the first time in half a century that U.S. presidential contenders have not faced off during general elections.

▪ To satisfy state ballot requirements, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce a vice presidential running mate March 26 in Oakland, Calif., his campaign said Wednesday.

Editor Text

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will hold a pro forma session at 11 a.m. Friday. GOP leaders will hold a news conference at 8 a.m. today at the conclusion of a Republican conference retreat at a resort in Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

The Senate will meet at 10 a.m.

The president begins his day in Wisconsin, where he will receive the President’s Daily Brief before flying to Saginaw, Mich., where he will participate in a campaign event at 2 p.m. before returning to the White House this evening.

The vice president will travel to Minnesota’s Twin Cities to visit an abortion clinic and speak about reproductive rights and states’ restrictions on abortion. She will take questions from the news media at 1 p.m. CT. Harris will address a campaign event in St. Paul at 2:10 p.m. and return to Washington.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken at 10 a.m will meet with Peruvian Foreign Minister Javier González-Olaechea at the State Department.

ZOOM IN

TRUMP WORLD

In Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee on Wednesday dismissed some criminal charges against Trump in the state’s election interference case, which at the outset involved 18 other defendants. Prosecutors could refile on the dismissed charges by providing additional statutory detail McAfee said was absent.

The charges dropped against Trump include his phone conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), which was recorded, seeking to “find” enough votes — 11,780 — to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. Trump was indicted on three of the six counts McAfee dismissed. The former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee still faces 10 remaining counts in the case (The Hill and NBC News).

▪ The Washington Post: What happens if Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is removed from Trump’s case?

▪ ABC News: Trump wants his New York hush money trial delayed until the Supreme Court rules on his immunity claims.

ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

THE UNITED NATIONS AGENCY for Palestinian refugees on Wednesday said at least one staff member was killed in an Israeli strike on a food distribution center in war-torn Gaza. “At least one UNRWA staff member was killed and another 22 were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution center in the eastern part of Rafah,” in southern Gaza, the agency said in a statement. Israel’s war against Hamas has caused mass civilian deaths and reduced vast areas to rubble-strewn wastelands, sparking warnings of a looming famine. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced from their homes (CBS News).

The Biden administration is grappling with what kind of Israeli military operation it can accept in Rafah, with U.S. officials knowing Israel wants to eliminate Hamas’s four battalions in the city. Biden’s “red line,” which he drew over the weekend, is that Israel should no longer pursue a campaign without credible civilian protection plans in place (Politico).

▪ NBC News: A highly anticipated report from the U.N.’s top investigative agency is poised to shed new light on Israel’s allegations that U.N. workers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, with the fate of the U.N.’s aid agency for Palestinians hanging in the balance.

▪ NPR: An international nonprofit organization evacuated 68 orphans from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, enraging Israel’s far-right.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Palestinians are draining savings and struggling to get cash to pay for the limited food and essentials available.

A PROPOSAL TO INSTALL new leadership in Haiti appeared to be crumbling Wednesday as some political parties rejected the plan to create a presidential council that would manage the transition. The panel would be responsible for selecting an interim prime minister and council of ministers to help chart a new path for a country that has been overrun by gangs. Violence in Haiti has closed schools and businesses, disrupting daily life (ABC News). What has resulted in the plan failing, according to experts: The gangs united. It is unclear how strong the alliance is or whether it will last. What is apparent is that the gangs are trying to capitalize on their control of Port-au-Prince and become a legitimate political force in the negotiations being brokered by foreign governments including the United States, France and Caribbean nations.

“Prime Minister Ariel resigned not because of politics, not because of the massive street demonstrations against him over the years, but because of the violence gangs have carried out,” Judes Jonathas, a Haitian consultant who has worked for years in aid delivery, told The New York Times. “The situation totally changed now, because the gangs are now working together.”

▪ The Washington Post: The U.S. has sent a specialized Marine unit to help secure its embassy in Haiti.

▪ CNN: The Biden administration is discussing using Guantanamo Bay to process a possible influx of Haitian migrants. The center — which is separate from where terrorist suspects are held — has been used before. In 2010, the U.S. military prepared the site in anticipation of Haitians fleeing the earthquake-stricken country.

▪ CNN: Ukraine hit oil refineries deep inside Russian territory as Kyiv steps up drone attacks before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s likely reelection.

OPINION

■ The Biden-Netanyahu rift goes much deeper than Rafah, by David Ignatius, columnist, The Washington Post.

■ TikTok ban gets huge win in the House, but is poised to hit a wall in the Senate, by Aron Solomon, opinion contributor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

Take Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! With tech legislation in mind, we’re eager for some smart guesses about TikTok.

Be sure to email your responses to asimendinger@digital-stage.thehill.com and kkarisch@digital-stage.thehill.com — please add “Quiz” to your subject line. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

The House, in a rare bipartisan vote Wednesday, backed an effort to force TikTok to split from its owner — or face consequences. What parent company is in the crosshairs?