Congress Takes One Step Closer to a TikTok Ban

By a unanimous vote, fifty members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill that would functionally ban TikTok unless it sells its US operations to a competitor. The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” — which, given its inelegant acronym of PAFFACAA, seems destined to be known simply as the TikTok ban bill — would prohibit Chinese companies or investors from having a 20 percent or larger ownership share of major social media platforms operating in the US. Should Bytedance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, fail to divest in a timely fashion,...