Biden and Senate Democrats may postpone the TikTok bill amid election year
As a House-passed bill to force TikTok's sale or ban it moved to the Senate in spring 2024, Senate Democrats pushed to lengthen the divestment deadline -- a change critics said conveniently kept TikTok active through the November election.
The House passed a bill in March 2024 that would force TikTok's China-based owner, ByteDance, to divest the app or face a ban in the United States, under a six-month deadline. As the legislation moved to the Senate that spring, Senate Democrats pushed to extend that window, a change that took on added significance in a presidential election year in which TikTok remains a major platform for reaching younger voters.
A senior Republican aide said Democrats were behind the push to lengthen the timeline, telling reporters that "Senate Democrats had been pretty consistent about wanting to extend that timeline." A Democratic source close to the issue was more direct about the political calculus, saying the November election was "definitely" something "conveniently addressed" by the longer deadline.
How the timeline changed
In the Senate, Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell signaled openness to a longer runway than the House's six-month window, arguing it would "give you the ability to actually do a transaction and maybe have a little bit more...find the right divestiture." The version that ultimately advanced gave ByteDance nine months to divest, extendable up to a year at the president's discretion -- effectively pushing any forced ban well past the November 2024 election regardless of the outcome.
The election-year backdrop
The extended timeline meant Democrats -- and any campaign relying on TikTok to reach younger voters -- would be able to keep using the platform in its existing form through the 2024 election. The Senate debate also touched on First Amendment concerns and how much authority the bill handed the executive branch to make national-security determinations about the app, issues raised by lawmakers including Republican Sen. Mike Lee. The bill eventually advanced as part of a larger foreign aid package covering Ukraine and Israel, which the House passed on April 20, 2024, sending it on to the Senate.
Cantwell's own account of the change
In an April 17, 2024 statement, Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, confirmed she had personally pushed for the longer runway and that House leadership had adopted it. "I'm very happy that Speaker Johnson and House leaders incorporated my recommendation to extend the ByteDance divestment period from six months to a year," she said, according to a statement posted by her committee. Cantwell's framing centered on deal-making logistics rather than the election calendar, arguing the extra months were needed to give a prospective buyer "enough time...to get a deal done" -- a rationale that did not address the political benefit reporters and Democratic sources separately pointed to.
How the vote and legal fight played out
The Senate ultimately passed the bill 79-18 in late April 2024 as part of the broader foreign aid package, PBS NewsHour reported, and President Biden signed it into law the following day. Sen. Mike Lee remained among the bill's Republican critics through the process, having flagged concerns similar to those raised earlier in the debate: how much discretion the legislation handed the executive branch to designate an app a national-security threat, and whether forcing a sale or ban of TikTok violated the First Amendment. TikTok and ByteDance went on to press that constitutional argument directly, filing suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 7, 2024 seeking to have the law struck down.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by NBC News and the Deseret News. It restores a story originally published on this site in spring 2024; figures are as reported at the time.