Maine’s two senators said they continue to believe TikTok must not operate in the U.S. if it has a Chinese owner, with next steps not yet clear after President Donald Trump said Sunday he wants the U.S. to own at least 50 percent of the popular video app.
TikTok, which has about 1 billion monthly users worldwide and 170 million in the U.S., temporarily went dark over the weekend as the result of a law former President Joe Biden signed last April requiring China-based owner ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company.
The Supreme Court upheld that law, but TikTok said Sunday it was restoring service to U.S. users and alluded to Trump saying he would issue an order to prolong the app’s existence while seeking a deal to “protect our national security.” Trump, who returned to office with Monday’s inauguration, said he would like the U.S. to have a stake in TikTok.
Maine’s congressional delegation joined a vast bipartisan mix of members that supported the law Biden signed last year requiring TikTok’s sale, but additional attention follows the two senators by way of their party affiliation and past efforts to rid TikTok of its China connection.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is now Trump’s secretary of state nominee, introduced a measure in 2023 to ban social platforms owned by “adversarial foreign regimes.”
Asked about Trump’s latest desire to see the U.S. own at least half of TikTok, King’s office deferred to the senator’s 2023 statement on his bill.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s potential to access TikTok user data and exploit American’s private information is an unacceptable national security risk,” King said at the time.
Collins has supported a ban on TikTok if ByteDance does not sell it, but the issue has divided various Republicans amid free speech debates. Collins echoed King in a statement Monday by saying the “problem is not the platform but rather its control by the Chinese Communist Party.”
“All ByteDance has to do is agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s divestment requirements — something that it could do at a significant profit — and TikTok would be able to continue to be enjoyed by millions of Americans,” Collins said.
