Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Doug LaMalfa 1st District of California
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) voted in favor of H.R. 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. This bill addresses the immediate national security threat posed by TikTok and establishes a framework to ensure other applications subject to control of the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, or other adversaries do not threaten our national security now or in the future. Under this bipartisan bill, if an application, such as TikTok, is determined to be owned by a company controlled by a foreign adversary, such as TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, the application must be divested from foreign adversary control or face a prohibition on app store availability and web hosting services in the United States. If the application is divested, there would be no restrictions and the application would continue to operate in the United States.
This bill does not encroach against protected First Amendment speech.
“As long as TikTok remains in the CCP’s control, 170 million American users’ data is at risk of being targeted, manipulated, and abused. This bill will allow TikTok to continue being used in the US as long as it is divested from communist control. This avoids censorship, and is commonsense protection against adversarial nations. Additionally, we should all be concerned at TikTok’s aggressive algorithm that has repeatedly prioritized delivery of anti-American messages. It’s past time to set some guardrails in place and minimize future risk China can cause to our national security,”said Congressman LaMalfa.
Congressman Doug LaMalfa is a lifelong farmer representing California’s First Congressional District, including Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama and Yuba Counties.
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