Critics from across the political spectrum warned a bill passed last week by the U.S. House of Representatives that could ban TikTok also grants the executive branch sweeping censorship powers, threatening First Amendment protections.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that,” she added.

Daniel MacAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told The Defender the bill is a “particularly egregious attack on the U.S. Constitution.”

In addition to requiring TikTok to change its ownership structure, MacAdams said, the bill “vests in the person of the president the power to declare a website, mobile or desktop computer application or hosting service a ‘foreign adversary-controlled entity’ and thus subject to removal.”

The House last week voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill (H.R.7521), which would compel TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to either divest itself of Chinese ownership or be banned from app stores in the U.S. within six months.

The bill also empowers the executive branch to unilaterally identify and ban other entities the government deems a national security threat.

The bill sailed through the House with bipartisan support by a margin of 352-65. President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law if it passes the U.S. Senate.

The Biden administration and Congress contend that because ByteDance is Chinese, the TikTok platform poses a national security threat to the U.S. It warned the Chinese government could use the app to shape what users see, giving it the power to, among other things, meddle in the upcoming U.S. elections.

Administration officials also said they are worried Beijing could compel TikTok to share the personal data of the app’s nearly 150 million U.S. users with the Chinese government.

“In passing the ‘TikTok ban’ the U.S. government is doing exactly what it accuses the Chinese Communist government of doing: controlling what its citizens can see and read,” MacAdams said.

He added:

“Americans who are concerned that a foreign entity may be collecting data about them on a particular website or application have the option of not using that website or application.

“No one is forced to use TikTok and certainly the U.S. federal government has no Constitutional authority to forbid Americans from using it.”

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