A coalition of bipartisan House members voted on Wednesday to pass a law that would force the Chinese parent of TikTok, to either sell the video sharing platform or face an app store ban in the U.S.

The bill was passed by 352 votes to 65, and 15 Republicans and fifty Democrats voted against it. Now, the legislation will be sent to the Senate where it may face more challenges. Joe Biden, the president of the United States, said that he would sign a bill if it reached his desk. This is despite his 2024 reelection campaigns creating a TikTok page last month.

Wednesday’s vote was a rare example of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, as tech skeptics and China hawks from both sides of the aisle united to strike a blow at the hugely popular social media platform despite the risks of alienating its young users.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican Representative from Wisconsin who chairs the House Select Committee for the CCP, said: “We cannot take the risk of having the dominant news platform owned or controlled by a Chinese Communist Party-aligned company, which is our greatest enemy.” Gallagher is one of the bill authors.

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Republicans and Democrats are both concerned that China can monitor American users of TikTok. However, former President Donald Trump has recently been lobbying for legislation against TikTok, reversing his previous position regarding the national-security threat posed by the application.

Former President George H.W. Bush’s sudden change of heart happened shortly after he met with Jeff Yass. Yass is a billionaire investor who owns a 15-percent stake in ByteDance – the Chinese company which owns TikTok. Yass, a Republican megadonor, has also donated more than $60 million to Club for Growth – a conservative super PAC associated with Trump that is fighting the ban.

Trump spoke out first against a possible TikTok banning on Truth Social, last week. He claimed that the legislation would empower Facebook to replace TikTok. In a CNBC interview on Monday, Trump repeated these remarks and called Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook “enemy” of the people.

Trump stated, “There are many good things about TikTok and some bad, but I’m not a fan of it because without TikTok you’re only going to grow Facebook, and Facebook, along with most of the media, is an enemy to the people.” In the interview he denied talking to Yass regarding TikTok.

TikTok and its CEO are also lobbying against this legislation, after being blindsided by the bipartisan support of such a ban.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a TikTok spokesperson as saying, “This process was deliberately conducted in secret. Bill authors knew that it was the only possible way to move the bill forward.”

TikTok sent notifications last week to its 170,000,000 U.S. users urging them call their representatives and oppose the bill. Users in different districts were able to see the name of their representative and a button that would help them call. Some lawmakers were angry at this move because their offices had been inundated with phone calls over the last week.

Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday ahead of the anticipated vote.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was part the small group of Republicans voting against the bill said that it would “open the Pandora’s Box” and allow “future government to censor Americans and our precious First Amendment.”

It is likely that the bill will face a stiff resistance in the Senate as well-known Republicans like Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky have voiced their opposition. Some senators urged the upper chamber, however, to approve the bill in conjunction with the House.

In a joint press release, Senators Marco Rubio, R., Fla. and Mark Warner, D., Va. said that they were united in their concern over the national security threats posed by TikTok, a platform which has the power to divide and influence Americans, and whose parent company ByteDance is legally required to follow the orders of the Chinese Communist Party. We were encouraged by the strong bipartisan vote today in the House of Representatives and look forward working together to pass this bill through the Senate.

The 12-page bill states that TikTok has to be sold in six months time to a buyer approved by the federal government so that ByteDance can no longer control or own the app. Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame, a Canadian businessman, has offered to buy TikTok in order to transform it into a new American company. This was announced earlier this week.