Former President Donald Trump said he wants young voters to know that “Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.” But a TikTok ban enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress. Trump himself tried to ban TikTok as president through an executive order, but it was blocked by the courts.

A House bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest or face a U.S. ban overwhelmingly passed the House 360-58 on April 20, with the support of 186 Republicans and 174 Democrats.

The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who said in an April 20 speech on the House floor that the bill “protects Americans, especially our children, from the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled TikTok.”

“This app is a spy balloon in Americans’ phones,” McCaul said. “It is a modern-day Trojan horse of the CCP
used to surveil and exploit Americans’ personal information.”

TikTok is a popular video-sharing mobile app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. Many legislators fear the Chinese government could access TikTok users’ data via Chinese national security laws that state, “All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”

The logo of TikTok is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 20. Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images.

The bill, which was paired with new sanctions on Iran, China and Russia, prohibits “foreign adversary controlled applications” and would give ByteDance a year to divest or else TikTok would be banned in the U.S.

Biden vowed on March 8 if Congress passed the TikTok bill, “I’ll sign it.”

In December 2022, Biden signed a spending bill that included a provision prohibiting the use of TikTok by most federal government employees on devices owned by the government.

But much of the momentum behind the recent TikTok legislation has come from Republicans. On March 13, the House passed a Republican-introduced TikTok bill that was similar to the one passed on April 20. It received even greater Republican support, 197-15, than the recent bill. Democrats also supported that bill 155-50. But the bill stalled in the Senate commerce committee after its chair, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, expressed some concerns about it. The latest version of the legislation would extend the deadline for TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest from six months to a year, and Cantwell said she supports that iteration.

While both TikTok bills received overwhelming Democratic support in the House, neither could have advanced without Republican support, as the GOP narrowly controls the House. And Biden could not sign any bill that does not reach his desk, a point Trump omits in his post on Truth Social.

“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump wrote on April 22. “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party. It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Young people, and lots of others, must remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote!”

A recent poll from the CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that a plurality of Americans supported a ban or sale of TikTok, including 60% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats. But nearly half of people age 18 to 34 opposed a ban.

Trump himself once supported a ban of TikTok. As we have written, when Trump was president he tried to ban the popular app, but he was blocked by the courts.

Trump’s Order Banning TikTok

In May 2019, Trump issued an executive order that declared a national emergency “to protect America from foreign adversaries who are actively and increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology infrastructure and services in the United States,” as described in a White House statement.

No company was named in Trump’s order, but that order was referenced in another executive order issued by Trump in August 2020 that specifically targeted TikTok. “Under authority delegated by the 2020 Order, the Secretary of Commerce issued a list of prohibited transactions, which included maintaining TikTok on a mobile app store or providing internet hosting services to it,” the Congressional Research Service said in a Sept. 28 report.

According to the August 2020 order, “TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

“TikTok also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive, such as content concerning protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities,” Trump’s order stated. “This mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. These risks are real.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said on Sept. 10, 2020. “It’ll either be closed up or they’ll sell it. So we’ll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it’ll be sold.”

In separate lawsuits, TikTok and TikTok users challenged the Trump administration’s restrictions on TikTok’s U.S. operations. “The courts ultimately sided with the plaintiffs and issued preliminary injunctions temporarily barring the United States from enforcing the restrictions,” the CRS report said. “Both courts described the government actions as effectively banning TikTok from operating in the United States.”

On June 9, 2021, Biden rescinded Trump’s executive order and replaced it with one that the New York Times said “calls for a broader review of a number of foreign-controlled applications that could pose a security risk to Americans and their data.”

Trump has since reversed his position on the app. According to ABC News, the conversion came shortly after Trump met in early March with hedge fund manager Jeff Yass, “a GOP megadonor who reportedly has a major financial stake in the popular social media platform.”

In a Truth Social post on March 14, Trump argued that “TIKTOK IS LESS OF A DANGER TO THE USA THAN META (FACEBOOK!), WHICH IS A TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.”

Trump railed against what he said was Facebook’s interference in the 2020 election. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $350 million in nonpartisan grants to help election officials meet the challenges of administering the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some Republicans criticized it as an effort to boost Democratic voting. In his March 14 post, Trump claimed, “FACEBOOK IS A GREAT THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, AND IT WILL ONLY GET BIGGER AND STRONGER IF TIKTOK IS TAKEN OUT.”

In an interview with CNBC on March 11, Trump expressed ambivalence on the topic of banning TikTok.

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” Trump said. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media.”

Trump said he did view TikTok as a security threat, “and we have to very much go into privacy and make sure that we are protecting the American people’s privacy and data rights. … But you know, we also have that problem with other, you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies too. … But when I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you, if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”

Trump also said he never discussed TikTok when he met with Yass and that the meeting had no impact on him changing his position on TikTok.

The Senate is expected to pass on the TikTok bill this week.

TikTok released a statement saying it was “unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24bn to the US economy, annually.”

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While the risks associated with COVID-19 generally have decreased over time due to prior exposure to the vaccines and the virus, some people remain at elevated risk, such as the elderly and immunocompromised. The updated COVID-19 vaccines and, in some cases, a new monoclonal antibody can provide increased protection for this group.

“At this point, many people have had multiple vaccines and we are seeing a lot less severe and life-threatening illness, especially in people who have had recent vaccination,” Dr. Camille Kotton, clinical director of Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, told us. “Nonetheless, we are still seeing significant severe disease, hospitalization, even life-threatening disease, especially in people over the age of 65 or who are immunocompromised.”

We spoke with Kotton, who is also a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, about the current state of affairs for people at elevated risk of severe disease from COVID-19 and the tools they can use to protect themselves.

For some people who are immunocompromised, a newly authorized monoclonal antibody, Pemgarda, or pemivibart, may provide an additional layer of protection, Kotton said. These antibodies may substitute for a person’s own antibodies and help block the coronavirus from entering a person’s cells. 

Even so, Kotton emphasized the importance of getting this year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines. “The majority of immunocompromised patients have not had a first dose of the 2023/2024 vaccine,” she said. They, along with people age 65 and up, are eligible for multiple doses of the updated vaccines this year.

Who Remains at Increased Risk from COVID-19?

Last month, the CDC updated guidelines for people with COVID-19, removing the previous standard five days of isolation and replacing it with symptoms-based guidance. The move was part of a transition away from the emergency response phase of the pandemic to recovery and maintenance phases, the agency explained.

Rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalization have declined across adult age groups since early pandemic waves. There is also evidence that outcomes have improved for those who are immunocompromised. However, these groups remain at elevated risk from COVID-19, Kotton said.

As of the latest census, just around 17% of the U.S. population was age 65 or over. But between October 2023 and January 2024, around two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations were among those 65 and older, according to data from the CDC. Older Americans make up an increasing proportion of those hospitalized for COVID-19, as outcomes have improved more markedly for younger people.

People who are immunocompromised also are hospitalized for COVID-19 and die from the disease at a relatively high rate. Between October 2022 and November 2023, 16% of all adult COVID-19 hospitalizations were among people with immunocompromising conditions, and 28% of in-hospital deaths occurred in this group. 

People can be immunocompromised for a variety of reasons, and to varying degrees. Sometimes, a health condition itself alters a person’s immune system’s ability to respond to infection. These conditions can include certain blood cancers, advanced or untreated HIV, or primary immunodeficiency, a group of rare genetic diseases in which some portion of a person’s immune system is altered and doesn’t work properly.

At other times, the treatment for a disease weakens someone’s immune system. For instance, people are considered immunocompromised if they are receiving immunosuppressive treatments associated with transplant or various treatments for conditions such as autoimmune disease or cancer.

Recent estimates indicate around 7% of U.S. adults report having immunosuppression, up from around 3% in 2013.

The growing availability of advanced therapies for various diseases has likely contributed to the increasing percentage of immunocompromised Americans, Kotton said. Previously, for “many of those people, we did not have such successful treatments,” she said. “Unfortunately, now one of the side effects of all of those treatments can be a higher risk of infection.”

How Can People Protect Themselves from COVID-19?

The Food and Drug Administration approved, and the CDC recommended, updated COVID-19 vaccines in September. (For more information, see “Q&A on the Updated COVID-19 Vaccines.”) Since then, the updated vaccines have been shown in multiple studies to reduce the risks of hospitalization and other negative outcomes — including among the elderly and immunocompromised.

As is recommended for everyone 6 months and up, people who are elderly or immunocompromised should get an updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine if they haven’t yet, Kotton said. People who are immunocompromised or elderly are also eligible for additional vaccine doses. Protection from the vaccines wanes as time passes, particularly among these groups, she said. 

People age 65 and up should get a second dose of the updated vaccines at least four months after their previous dose, according to the CDC. People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised “may get additional updated COVID-19 vaccine doses” if it has been at least two months since their last COVID-19 vaccine, the agency says.

Percentage of American adults by age group who received updated COVID-19 vaccines between September 2023 and early February 2024. Source: National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module, Feb. 28 ACIP meeting slides.

Despite these recommendations, just over 20% of American adults had gotten the updated vaccines as of February. Uptake was a bit better among adults 65 and older, with more than 40% having gotten the shots.

In a recent study of electronic health records through February, just 18% of immunocompromised people had gotten an updated shot. The same study showed that the vaccines reduced the risk of hospitalization in this group by 38% between seven and 59 days after getting the shot and 34% in the 60 days following that, compared with immunocompromised people who hadn’t received an updated vaccine.

“I actually believe that we should focus many of our efforts on really encouraging uptake of the 2023/2024 COVID-19 vaccine, and that everybody has a first dose and at least two or more months later get a second dose so that they remain well vaccinated,” Kotton said, referring to the population of people who are immunocompromised.

What Is Pemgarda and Who Might Benefit?

On March 22, a new potential tool for mitigating COVID-19 risk was authorized by the FDA. Pemgarda, the monoclonal antibody, received an emergency use authorization for people who are moderately to severely immunocompromised and who are unlikely to have a sufficient immune response to COVID-19 vaccination. It became available for purchase by wholesalers on April 4.

It is the first preventive antibody treatment to be authorized since a prior monoclonal antibody combination, called Evusheld, was taken off the market in January 2023, based on data indicating that it was unlikely to help protect against the latest viral variants that were circulating.

Pemgarda is given to people who do not have COVID-19 or a known exposure. It consists of an antibody shown to recognize a section of the spike protein, which is part of the virus that causes COVID-19. The product was authorized based on calculations indicating that receiving it should lead to sufficient antibodies in a person’s blood to protect against JN.1, the current dominant variant in the U.S.

Pemgarda may benefit a subset of immunocompromised people, Kotton said, but it is not a substitute for vaccination. People who are vaccinated “tend to develop multiple forms of immunity that seem more protective than just administration of a monoclonal antibody alone,” she said.

Seventyfour / stock.adobe.com

Vaccination should lead to both the production of antibodies and a cellular immune response, she explained. A drug like Pemgarda may help people who are not producing sufficient antibodies on their own in response to vaccination.

It is not cut and dried how well someone who is immunocompromised will respond to vaccination, however. “When we give immunocompromised people vaccines, some respond by developing an antibody, others develop a cellular immune response, and it’s not always predictable that if they develop one that they will develop the other,” Kotton said. “And so it’s been challenging to know who is actually well protected.”

It is clear that the people who are at risk of severe COVID-19 include those with recent bone marrow transplant, people with certain cancers such as multiple myeloma, or those taking certain drugs given for various cancers and autoimmune diseases. “We do think that those populations could potentially benefit” from Pemgarda, Kotton said.

These patients are not only at risk of severe disease, Kotton said, but of chronic infections. Distinct from long COVID, these long-term infections occur when a person is unable to clear an active infection.

“Otherwise, it seems that it’s not clear that there will be widespread benefit to all immunocompromised populations, in the era of widespread, numerous vaccination doses,” Kotton said.

What Are the Obstacles to Getting Pemgarda?

Kotton emphasized the importance of practical considerations, such as cost and logistics, when considering COVID-19 prevention measures. 

Evusheld, the previously available preventive treatment, was provided for free by the U.S. government, she said. The same is not true for Pemgarda. Its maker, Invivyd, announced a wholesale acquisition cost of nearly $6,000 per dose. This is the list price a manufacturer charges wholesalers, although it may not represent the price they actually pay after discounts. Costs to patients will vary depending on insurance coverage.

Preventive monoclonal antibodies are available without cost-sharing for people covered by Medicare, who make up a portion of those eligible for Pemgarda, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. However, the amount individuals with private insurance pay will depend on their insurance plans and whether the monoclonal antibody is covered.

While Evusheld was given as two injections, Pemgarda is an infused drug, Kotton added, increasing the logistical challenges for both patients and health care providers. Patients must sit for an hour-long infusion, followed by a two-hour observation period, for a drug that may be given every three months. “Already Evusheld was a very challenging rollout,” Kotton said. “We did not have staff or capacity.” 

In contrast, the private sector cost of the COVID-19 vaccines for those 12 and older is between $115 and $130 per dose. And people in the U.S., including those without insurance, should be able to get COVID-19 vaccines for free.

As Pemgarda is rolled out, Kotton said, it will be important to push for equity in who receives it. “I think it’s important to think hard about how we would make the monoclonal antibody available to all severely immunocompromised people who would really benefit and not just people that might be able to pay for it,” she said.

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Political leanings: Democratic

2022 total spending: $181.6 million

The House Majority PAC was founded in April 2011 by Alixandria Lapp, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official. In 2023, Lapp stepped down as the political action committee’s president and was succeeded by political strategist Mike Smith, who was most recently a senior adviser to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Abby Curran Horrell, a former chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Ann McLean Kuster, is the PAC’s executive director.

The House Majority PAC was one of several PACs formed by Democrats in response to the heavy spending by conservative organizations in the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans gained control of the House. As a Carey committee, or hybrid PAC, the House Majority PAC can act as both a traditional PAC, giving money directly to candidates’ committees, and a super PAC, making independent expenditures not coordinated with candidates. It can also accept donations of any size for its independent expenditures from individuals, labor unions and corporations, but must disclose those dona and expenditures tions in reports to the Federal Election Commission.

On April 7, the House Majority PAC announced that it was reserving an initial round of $186 million in television and digital placements in 58 markets across the country. In a press release, the group said over $146 million has been reserved for TV ads and about $40 million for digital ones.

“Through these historic television and digital reservations, House Majority PAC has made it clear that we are ready to do whatever it takes to flip the House and elect Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker of the House,” Smith said in a statement.

As of Feb. 29, the group had raised about $61.1 million for the 2024 cycle, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending. Of that amount, $8 million was donated by House Majority Forward, an affiliated nonprofit organization. Other large donors include hedge fund manager James Simons, businessman and philanthropist Fred Eychaner, Netflix Executive Chairman Reed Hastings, and Suffolk Construction Company Chairman and CEO John Fish.

This cycle, House Majority PAC already spent about $7 million on a variety of independent expenditures to help Democrat Tom Suozzi win the special election for New York’s 3rd Congressional District seat against Republican Mazi Pilip.

During the 2022 midterms, the PAC spent over $181.6 million, including about $145 million on independent expenditures supporting Democratic candidates and opposing Republicans. In 2020, about $139 million of its more than $160 million in spending was on pro-Democrat or anti-Republican ads and other communications.

Staff Writer D’Angelo Gore contributed to this article. 

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