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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., reiterated his support of the TikTok bill as the legislation heads to the Senate.
“The House passed the bill in a decisive and bipartisan fashion and it’s now appropriate for the Senate to evaluate the merits of the legislation,” he said during a press briefing after the House passed the bill.
Jeffries stressed that the legislation itself did not outright ban TikTok but simply required the app’s divestiture from its China-based owner ByteDance so that it could be “owned by an American company that would protect the data and the privacy of the American consumer from malignant foreign interests like the Chinese Communist Party.”
Asked whether the Senate should delay the TikTok bill until the House passes the bipartisan national security bill that Republicans had killed, Jeffries deferred to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“Who am I to tell the Senate what to do in terms of its own agenda?” he said. “You know, there’s a process — they pass bills, send it over to us for consideration. We pass bills and send it over to him. The ball is now in the court of the senators, and I trust Leader Chuck Schumer.”
Pressed on whether he shares concerns that the process behind the TikTok bill was rushed, Jeffries said his earlier statement announcing his support for the bill indicated that there were “very principal objections and concerns raised by members with respect to timing and process and I have no disagreement with them.”
Jeffries also expressed confidence that TikTok will remain available to its users when asked whether he is concerned about a potential backlash from young voters in response to the House’s passage of the bill.
“I don’t support a TikTok ban and I have every confidence in the world that whatever the course that this legislation takes as it goes over to the Senate, that TikTok will remain available to those who continue to enjoy the platform at this very moment,” he said.
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