A group of lawmakers is mounting a last-ditch effort to delay a TikTok ban from going into effect on Sunday and give the company more time to find an American buyer and evaluate the risks the app poses to national security.
The plea to President Joe Biden comes after Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a bill to extend the deadline to sell TikTok by another 270 days, stressing the online “communities cannot be replicated on another app.” An attempt to pass the bill by unanimous consent was blocked in the Senate on Wednesday, leaving lawmakers opposed to the ban with few options before it takes effect.
The Massachusetts senator said he has been in contact with the Biden administration and stressed that “the serious hardship” and “unintended consequences” of a ban must be considered.
“The Tiktok ban will take effect with serious consequences for 170 million users, for 7 million businesses in our country that rely upon the platform, and I’m committed to avoiding that fate,” Markey said during a Thursday press conference, standing alongside Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
“Sen. Booker and I are asking President Biden to exercise his authority in order to extend the deadline by 90 days,” Markey said. “We’re willing to work with President-elect Trump and try to extend that deadline as well. This should be bipartisan.”
Ironically, Markey and Booker voted for the legislation, which was passed in April 2024 as part of larger foreign aid legislation. It specified that a ban would be instituted if TikTok’s owner, the Chinese tech firm ByteDance, failed to divest the popular short-video app over the following nine months to a year.
“It was, to me, a cynical effort to stick it into a bill that many of us would have to vote for because of the high stakes or the other things going on,” Booker said Thursday. “We should have done this differently, and now is the time that we can do it differently.”
Markey called the ban “a rush to judgment without having heard all of the facts,” pointing to a declaration from the intelligence community that there is no evidence that ByteDance has manipulated TikTok’s content in the United States.
The Supreme Court heard a challenge to the law Friday and appeared skeptical of striking it down. The court has yet to issue an opinion on the matter.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also called for the looming TikTok ban to be delayed and has spoken with Biden directly to advocate an extension, according to a source familiar with the matter.
“We aren’t against TikTok,” Schumer said on the floor. “We want TikTok to keep going. But we are against a Chinese company that is in cahoots with the Chinese Communist Party owning TikTok.”
Schumer called efforts from Senate Republicans to block passage of Markey’s bill “stunning.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blocked Markey’s push to pass the legislation Wednesday, calling TikTok “a Chinese Communist spy app.”
“Let me be crystal clear: There will be no extensions, no concessions, and no compromises for TikTok,” Cotton said in a statement. “ByteDance and the Chinese Communists had plenty of time to make a deal. The legislation allows the president to grant a 90-day extension to the Sunday deadline, though only if negotiations have substantially advanced and the sale could likely close in 90 days. Neither is true today, so I expect President Biden will not grant the extension.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but an official told Politico in a statement that it does not have the “statutory authority to trigger the 90 day extension.”
“The company has not only not advanced such a plan, they have signaled they have no intention of selling it to an American owner,” the White House official said.
Even after attempting to ban TikTok by executive order during his first term, Trump has urged the courts to delay the deadline to give his administration more time to look into a resolution. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), Trump’s choice for national security adviser, said members of the new administration are looking for solutions during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News.
“We’re going to find a way to preserve [TikTok] but protect people’s data, and that’s the deal that will be in front of us,” Waltz said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Markey said reports that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew plans to attend Trump’s inauguration are “helpful” in the push to delay the deadline for the ban.
“Clearly, there needs to be an extension, and my hope is that President Biden and President-elect Trump can, between them, find a way of doing so,” Markey said. “I think it’s probably helpful that the CEO of TikTok is going to be in town because … he puts the human face on what the impact is going to be on 170 million Americans.”
