The committee will debate the proposal Tuesday afternoon, following a separately scheduled hearing earlier in the day with administration officials.
- The proposed bill, the latest to hit Congress with the goal of banning TikTok, was introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) last week.
- It follows a Republican bicameral bill to ban TikTok introduced in January by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.).
McCaul’s proposal, the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act, would adjust the Berman amendment, according to a GOP aide.
The amendments are a more than three-decades old exception to the International Emergency Powers Act that limits the president’s authority to regulate informational materials under the act and aims to promote the free exchange of ideas across nations.
McCaul’s bill seeks to clarify an exemption so that it does not apply to “sensitive personal data,” making software applications like TikTok, owned by Chinese-based ByteDance, potentially eligible to be banned.
TikTok has previously pushed back on allegations that it poses a national security threat.
The earlier hearing Tuesday morning will focus on challenges of potential threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party’s “aggression” into the economic and tech sector.
Read more on the effort in our full report at TheHill.com.
