Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post, for your ears. Martine Powers and Elahe Izadi are your hosts, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Published weekdays around 5 p.m. Eastern time.
TikTok might get banned. For real this time.
The Senate is expected to pass a bipartisan bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform or face a national ban. How did Congress finally achieve consensus on this?
Read more:
The Senate spent the day debating a bill that would provide billions of dollars in aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. But something else is also tucked into the bill: an ultimatum to TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to either sell the popular app or see it effectively banned in the United States.
Tech policy reporter Cristiano Lima-Strong says this is the latest attempt by Congress to force a sale of TikTok, which some lawmakers say poses a national security threat by putting the data of roughly 170 million Americans in the hands of the Chinese government. While a previous version of this bill had stalled in the Senate, this time the legislation is on the path to becoming law.
Cristiano joins Post Reports to break down the latest developments surrounding this bill as well as its potential consequences.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff, with help from Elana Gordon. It was mixed by Sean Carter and edited by Monica Campbell.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.