Gopal Ratnam | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call

The House is set to vote on a bill that could effectively ban TikTok from Americans’ smartphones, potentially posing a dilemma for House Republicans as former President Donald Trump, who first tried to ban the app in 2020, backpedals from his position.

The measure goes to the House floor after a 50-0 vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 7, just 48 hours after the bill was introduced. The extremely compressed timeline followed a classified briefing with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials that lawmakers said led them to fast-track the measure.

The legislation would require TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest its U.S. subsidiary within six months of the law taking effect. It also would give the president the authority to deny other social media apps owned and operated by foreign adversaries access to U.S. users unless they sever ties to their foreign owners.

The restrictions would apply to any app with more than 1 million annual users. TikTok has about 170 million American users.

The House could vote on the measure as early as Tuesday under suspension of the rules that would require a two-thirds majority, according to Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.

Backers of the TikTok measure say the goal is not a ban but a forced divestiture by ByteDance because of concerns that top Chinese government officials have access to U.S. users’ data and could use such access to poison public opinion.

Even with House passage, the bill would still need to get through the Senate, and, if enacted, would likely have to overcome legal challenges raising free speech issues. Another big hurdle is Trump, who on Monday seemed to pour cold water on the idea, telling CNBC that if the app disappeared from Americans’ smartphones, it would make young people “go crazy.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which would have a key role in the measure passing in the Senate, said she’s examining provisions to ensure that they meet the free-speech threshold.

“I’m very concerned about foreign adversaries’ exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data and their attempts to build backdoors in our information communication technology and services supply chains,” Cantwell said in an email, referring to broader concerns about China’s efforts. “These are national security threats and it is good [that] members in both chambers are taking them seriously. I will be talking to my Senate and House colleagues to try to find a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties.”

Some free-speech advocates say the measure as it’s worded violates First Amendment protections.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to suppress the media on the grounds that it contains disinformation,” Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in an interview.

At the height of the Cold War in 1965, the Supreme Court held in the Lamont v. Postmaster General case that the “First Amendment protects Americans’ right to receive information from abroad … even if that information at that time was communist propaganda,” Farid Johnson said.

Congress and the Biden administration can better address the issue of Americans’ data flowing to other countries by passing a comprehensive federal data privacy legislation, she said.

An effort by state lawmakers in Montana to ban TikTok from the phones of the state’s residents was blocked in November by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, who ruled that Montana’s TikTok ban “oversteps state power” and “likely violates the First Amendment.” The ban, which was to go into effect in January, has been halted temporarily pending a trial.

A similar fate awaits the TikTok bill if Congress passes it, Farid Johnson said.

While the legality of the bill remains in doubt, the politics around it may be shifting.

The Trump switch

Trump recently met with billionaire hedge fund investor Jeff Yass, whose fund Susquehanna International Group LLP has more than a $30 billion stake in TikTok parent ByteDance, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Asked by CNBC if he changed his views on TikTok after meeting with Yass, Trump said TikTok never came up during their meeting. Speaking at a recent event hosted by the Club for Growth in Florida, Trump described Yass, a benefactor of the Club, as “fantastic,” The New York Times reported.

In the CNBC interview, Trump said that banning TikTok would strengthen Facebook. “I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” he said.

Trump Media & Technology Group, meanwhile, owns his own social media company, Truth Social, launched as a rival to social media companies including Facebook and Twitter after Trump was banned from the sites. Trump personally could potentially profit if the company goes public as planned this year.

Trump issued an executive order during his presidency saying that China’s access to Americans’ data gathered via TikTok could be used by Beijing to spread disinformation and at the time pushed ByteDance to divest. That pressure resulted in TikTok agreeing to store the data of American users within the U.S. in a deal involving Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc., which together would own 20 percent of the U.S. entity. That proposal was never approved by U.S. agencies.

Trump’s efforts at blocking Apple and Google from carrying the TikTok app on their stores were also halted by courts.

With a large number of young users, TikTok offers the potential of reaching first-time voters.

But most politicians and campaigns don’t fully understand how to use the app, said Larry Huynh, partner at Trilogy Interactive, a digital advocacy and advertising agency, and president of the American Association of Political Consultants.

Huynh said elected officials often don’t understand TikTok partly because the app does not allow direct political advertising, unlike other social media platforms. Despite the ad ban, there’s both conservative and progressive content on TikTok. Young users of the app use it to search for news delivered in a different format, and even as a search engine, Huynh said.

Given the “general concern about young voters’ appetite and enthusiasm for this election” in November, “part of the equation is how do we engage them and TikTok is an important aspect of that,” Huynh said.

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has a TikTok account and is using it to reach out to voters. Biden on Friday at Joint Base Andrews said he would sign the bill if it reaches him.

Given the legal challenges and change in tune by Trump, “nothing is going to happen before the election,” Huynh said about the TikTok measure.

___

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Claire Savage, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Not even education can close the pay gap that persists between women and men, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.

Whether women earn a post-secondary certificate or graduate from a top-tier university, they still make about 71 cents on the dollar compared with men at the same education level, Census Bureau research found.

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That difference is coming into stark view on Equal Pay Day, and in spite of the fact that women comprise more than half of college-educated workers and participate in the labor force at record rates.

Rather than comparing full-time working men to full-time working women, the Feb. 22 Census Bureau report juxtaposes men and women with the same education caliber: graduates of certificate degree programs and those who hold bachelor’s degrees from the most selective universities, explained economist Kendall Houghton, a co-author of the research. The report also includes graduates who may have opted out of the labor force, such as women taking on child care responsibilities.

“The main point here is that there’s a substantial gap at every single level,” added Census Bureau economist and co-author Ariel Binder.

Field of study, choice of occupation and hours account for much of the discrepancy, but not all. Field of study, for instance, contributes to the pay gap much more for top graduates (24.6%), but for less selective degree holders accounted for only a sliver (3.8%). And the number of hours and weeks worked affect the pay gap more for certificate earners (26.4%) than selective bachelor’s degree earners (11.3%), suggesting there is a bigger gender difference in work participation for certificate holders, Binder said.

At the same time, about 31% of the gap for each education level remains unexplained, suggesting less easily measured factors such as gender stereotypes and discrimination may be at play.

Chantel Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women.

Chantel Adams, a senior marketing executive, poses in her home office Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Durham, N.C. Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women. (AP Photo/Chris Seward)

A senior marketing executive who holds an MBA from University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, Adams said her qualifications aren’t enough to counteract the headwinds she faces in her career as a Black woman.

Despite taking on extra responsibilities and an undisputedly strong performance, Adams said she was turned down for a promotion because she was told that “I was so articulate and sharp that it was intimidating to some people.”

“I have nearly $300,000 of post-high school education. It would be surprising if I weren’t articulate and sharp,” said Adams, who is based in Durham, North Carolina.

She said her peers at the company — one of whom did not have an MBA — were promoted while she was held back two years in a row.

“It’s unreasonable and unfair to hold someone’s strengths against them,” Adams said. “I would consider that as something that is race-based.”

Broadly, younger women are closer to wage parity with younger men, according to Carolina Aragao, who researches social and demographic trends at Pew Research Center. But the gap widens between the ages of 35 and 44, which coincides with when women are most likely to have a child at home.

“That does not play out the same way for men,” Aragao said, adding that there is actually an opposite phenomenon known as the fatherhood premium, in which fathers tend to earn more than other workers, including men without children at home.

Despite women making vast gains in C-suite and high-earning industry representation, wage gap improvement has stalled for about 20 years, Aragao said. Uneven child care and household responsibilities, falling college wage premiums, and overrepresentation in lower-paying occupations are all contributors to why the pay gap stubbornly remains.

For Adams, the best strategy to overcome them has been to keep changing jobs — six times in 10 years, across multiple states in her case.

“I knew that I needed to be intentional and move with urgency as I navigated my career in order to work against that headwind,” she said. “When those opportunities were not afforded me within one company, I’ve gone elsewhere.”

Chantel Adams, a senior marketing executive, poses in her home office Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Durham, N.C. Adams says she isn’t surprised that the gender pay gap persists even among men and women with the same level and quality of education, or that the gap is wider for Black and Hispanic women.(AP Photo/Chris Seward)

Adams said job coaching, mentorship, and support from Forte Foundation, a nonprofit focused on women’s advancement, have been instrumental to her success, while salary transparency laws — and even salary transparency within social circles — could help alleviate the significant pay gap challenges women of color face.

But corporate diversity initiatives have been subject to a growing list of lawsuits ever since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Adams said she worries that without affirmative action, corporate racial diversity could decrease, too.

“The big question that is looming over my head and probably many other executive leaders is: What does that do to the pipeline of diverse candidates that we may or may not have 10 years from now?” Adams said.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Philanthropies. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Yes, the Detroit Lions are in the Chicago Bears’ division. Yes, the Bears play them twice a year.

But we can’t help but root for the Lions as they make their improbable way through the NFL playoff gauntlet and are one win away from their first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

Chicagoans can relate. Lions Nation is one fan base that has seen almost nothing but failure in the nearly six decades that make up the Super Bowl era. One measly playoff win in all that time.

The Bears put their fans through a lot of disappointment on the field, verging on abject embarrassment sometimes. But we at least can (and do) continue to bask in the brutal majesty of the 1985-86 Bears. Lions fans have Barry Sanders highlights on YouTube, and that’s pretty much it.

Also, as fellow Upper Midwesterners, we ought to have each other’s backs, with the obvious exception of the Green Bay Packers, who’ve won quite enough, thank you very much.

The Lions’ success this year is sort of a football version of when the Cubs finally won it all in 2016, some 108 years after last doing so. Watching Lions fans, young and old, celebrate the two playoff victories in their own stadium reminded us a little of the multigenerational delirium that took hold when that Cubs team broke through at last.

It’s a lovely thing to see people bond over something shared, a phenomenon sports at its best promotes more often than just about anything else in this fractious age.

So have your day, Detroit! A lot of us are enjoying seeing folks in our neighboring state experience something for the first time even if they have more than a little gray in their hair.

If the Lions win it all, we will be glad for you. But that pledge is good for this season only.

Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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In another sign of the improvement of the Gophers men’s basketball team this season, three players were honored as all-Big Ten Conference performers on Tuesday.

Forward Dawson Garcia was named to the all-Big Ten second team by media members and third team by conference coaches; point guard Elijah Hawkins was honorable mention all-Big Ten by both coaches and reporters, and shooting guard Cam Christie was named to the all-Big Ten freshman team.

Last season, only Garcia was honored by the conference, with the Savage native earning honorable mention nods from both coaches and reporters.

“I’m really proud of them, and I want them to be (proud),” head coach Ben Johnson said. “We had multiple guys that could have had an opportunity to be all-league. Dawson is very deserving of that. Cam is very deserving of being on the all-freshman team. Elijah is very deserving of being honorable mention. Hopefully some other guys are hungry to get some of those next year.”

Garcia leads the Gophers with averages of 17.7 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. Christ was second in scoring at 11.3 points per game, including 40 percent shooting from 3-point range. Hawkins led the U with 7.5 assists per game. He also averages 9.4 points per game.

Forward Parker Fox, who overcame two season-ending knee injuries, also received the U’s sponsorship award. Fox has averaged 4.7 points and 3.1 rebounds in all 31 regular-season games.

The ninth-seeded Gophers (18-13, 9-11 Big Ten) will play eight-seeded Michigan State (18-13, 10-10) at 11 a.m. Thursday in the second round of the Big Ten tournament at Target Center. The winner will play top-seeded Purdue (28-3, 17-3) at 11 a.m. Friday.

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