NBCnews: Biden signs a bill that could ban TikTok — after the 2024 election

The new legislation provides nine months for TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days, bringing the timeline to sell to one year, if he certifies that there’s a path to divestiture and “significant progress” toward executing it.

Even without the extension, the earliest a ban could start is January 2025. With the extension, it would be April. And with TikTok threatening legal action, the matter could get tied up in the courts for even longer. It’s a shift from an earlier House-passed bill that included a six-month window that could have triggered a TikTok ban before the November election.

A senior Republican aide said Democrats were responsible for the change. “Senate Democrats had been pretty consistent about wanting to extend that timeline,” the aide said.

The election was “definitely” something “conveniently addressed” by the new deadline, said a Democratic source close to the issue.

Other Democrats are assuring voters that ByteDance would sooner sell TikTok than risk a U.S. ban, a view some experts disagree with.

“TikTok ain’t going away. There is no more capitalistic entity than an organization controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. They’re going to sell it,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a member of the Armed Services Committee, who faces re-election this fall. “Young people will go on their TikTok tomorrow and they’ll still have it. And then the day after that, they’ll still have it. And the day after that, they’ll still have it,” Kaine said, adding that the only difference is it will be American-owned. “If you like it, you’re going to keep it.”

In endorsing the revised TikTok bill, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said that extending ByteDance’s divestment period — what she called her “recommendation” — would help ensure there is “enough time for a new buyer to get a deal done.”

Other lawmakers who helped negotiate that change, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., agreed that the reason they pushed back the deadline was to improve the chances of a sale. “This gives more time to make the divestment achievable,” said Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the special committee investigating the CCP. “It made a lot of sense. That’s why, as you could tell, we didn’t lose any votes because of the change. In fact, we gained some votes — we went from 352 to 360 votes in the House.” TikTok gave no indication that it would consider divesting, with a spokesperson saying in a statement: “This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court.”