Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who led the effort to pass legislation banning TikTok last year will soon be formally briefed on President Donald Trump’s executive order to give the company a reprieve.
The member briefing, confirmed in an interview by a committee Republican granted anonymity to share details of the upcoming private meeting, comes as GOP members of the panel grapple with how to respond to the president’s latest curveball.
“We all know Donald Trump is a negotiator,” Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), a senior Energy and Commerce member who worked on the legislation, said in an interview. “Regardless of whether there was a little or some significant progress, I think he wants the opportunity to try to move it along.”
The law allows a president to give a 90 day-extension if there is “significant progress” in divesting from Chinese ownership.
“We built that into legislation so that if the president wanted to, they could extend it,” said another senior committee member, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) in an interview. “They have got to sell or figure something else out.”
What’s less clear is how Trump plans to argue that discussions involving the current owner, ByteDance, met that “significant progress” benchmark, though China has signaled new openness to a deal in recent days.
Republicans who sit on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee expended significant political capital last year to report out a bill, in a 50-0 vote, to force the wildly popular social media app to either divest from Chinese ownership — deemed a potential national security risk to the U.S. — or shutter.
The legislation was later voted on by the full House, 352-65, before the Senate cleared the legislation as part of a larger government funding package.
The Supreme Court last Friday ruled TikTok had run out of time to find a new buyer, but Trump promised to intervene, on Monday making good on that pledge by giving ByteDance 75 days to find a solution.
At the time of the high court’s ruling, Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee cheered the news in public statements. They have, however, been quiet since the new president’s intervention. That includes the full committee chair, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and the chair of the Telecommunications and Technology Subcommittee, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who is also the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Unlike Republicans, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee didn’t hold back their frustration in what they saw as having their legislative product undermined.
“[Trump] is circumventing national security legislation,” committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “I do not believe ByteDance has taken any real actions to sell TikTok so far.”
