TikTok ban: House Republicans to vote Wednesday on app's future

WASHINGTON - House Republicans are going forward with a vote on Wednesday on a bill that would ban TikTok in the United States if the Chinese company ByteDance doesn't sell the social media platform.

The vote was confirmed to the Associated Press by a Republican congressional aide who was not authorized to speak publicly and said lawmakers will vote on Wednesday, and they will face no significant pushback on the bill. 

The push by Republican lawmakers comes as former President Donald Trump voiced opposition to the effort, an unusual break with the former president by House Republicans.

Speaker Mike Johnson and others have all forcefully come out in favor of the bill. 

"It’s an important bipartisan measure to take on China, our largest geopolitical foe, which is actively undermining our economy and security," Johnson declared last week.

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Trump said Monday that he still believes TikTok poses a national security risk but is opposed to banning the hugely popular app because doing so would help its rival, Facebook, which he continues to lambast over his 2020 election loss.

"Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it," Trump said in a call-in interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box." "There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media."

"When I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size," he added. "I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections."

Trump has repeatedly complained about Facebook's role during the 2020 election, which he still refuses to concede he lost to President Joe Biden. That includes at least $400 million that its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife donated to two nonprofit organizations that distributed grants to state and local governments to help them conduct the 2020 election at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why do lawmakers want to ban TikTok? 

The video-sharing app, with about 170 million users in the U.S., most of whom are younger, has emerged as a significant issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. 

Biden's 2024 campaign officially joined TikTok last month despite previously expressing national security concerns over the platform. On Friday, Biden said he would sign proposed legislation to ban TikTok if Congress passes it. 

Biden in 2022 banned the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes.

When Trump was in office he attempted to ban the app through an executive order that called "the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China)" a threat to "the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States." 

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok owner ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government. TikTok said it has never done that and wouldn’t do so if asked. The U.S. government also hasn’t provided evidence of that happening.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. It was reported from Los Angeles.