BILL'S PASSAGE COULD RESULT IN U.S. TIKTOK BAN

The fate of TikTok in the U.S. remains up in the air after the House easily passed a bill that provides $95b in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan while also requiring ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest the platform or face a domestic ban from the app stores.

The bill’s passage effectively provides ByteDance a six-month extension, meaning the platform’s future won’t be determined until October, just weeks before the presidential election.

The TikTok ruling, determined by the last of four back-to-back votes following those approving the three aid packages, had recently been tucked into the legislation in order to mollify conservatives, who’d blocked these packages for months before the final version received overwhelming bipartisan support from lawmakers.

Will a nationwide ban of TikTok go into effect later this year? Will ByteDance reverse course and sell off the wildly popular TikTok to the highest bidder? Will this Congress pass any additional bills? These questions will be answered in time, but for the time being the waiting game continues.