House lawmakers escalated efforts to restrict video-sharing platform TikTok, renewing pressure on the Senate by advancing a bill Saturday that would force the company to be sold or face a national ban as part of a broader package sending aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Washington
House passes potential TikTok ban that could speed through Senate
The move represents one of the most significant threats to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which is used by roughly 170 million Americans, but whose China-based parent company ByteDance has long sparked national security fears in Washington.
TikTok is “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” used to “surveil and exploit America’s personal information,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as he introduced the measure for debate.
The House voted 360-58 to approve legislation authorizing new sanctions against Russia and Iran and requiring that TikTok divest from ByteDance or face a prohibition, one of several measures considered alongside the $95 billion foreign aid bills.
House lawmakers overwhelmingly advanced an earlier version of the legislation targeting TikTok last month, but by tying the issue to the aid package, which has broad bipartisan support in both chambers, the new effort could trigger swift consideration in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday he hopes the House passes the foreign aid bills “without further delay” and that the “Senate will move expeditiously to send it to the president’s desk” if passed.
President Biden said last month he would sign the TikTok bill if passed by Congress, and on Wednesday he endorsed the House foreign aid package, saying, “The House must pass the package this week, and the Senate should quickly follow.”
But until House lawmakers unveiled plans to merge the TikTok legislation with foreign aid this week, the bill’s path in the Senate remained murky with no clear timetable for consideration.
Under an updated version of the bill, ByteDance would have up to 360 days to divest TikTok. If it declined or failed to do so during that time, mobile app stores and web-hosting providers would be prohibited from offering the app to users in the United States, effectively banning it nationwide. The bill explicitly targets TikTok and ByteDance, but would give the president the power to impose a similar ultimatum against other apps deemed to be “controlled” by “foreign adversaries.”
The TikTok measure has broad bipartisan support in the House.
“Companies and bad actors are collecting troves of our data unchecked and using it to exploit, monetize, and manipulate Americans of all ages,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said Saturday in a statement lauding the bill’s passage. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”
TikTok has blasted lawmakers’ efforts to potentially ban the app as an affront on free speech and disputes lawmakers’ suggestions that it is beholden to China or any government.
Since lawmakers introduced their latest proposal targeting the app last month, the company has launched a major counteroffensive against the effort, enlisting scores of users through pop-up notifications to bombard lawmakers with calls voicing opposition to the legislation.
“It is 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 $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually,” TikTok said Saturday in a statement to The Washington Post.
After House lawmakers passed the earlier TikTok legislation in just over a week, many senators called for slowing down deliberations in the upper chamber. Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose committee has jurisdiction over the bill, initially expressed concerns about whether the proposal could withstand legal scrutiny and called for hearings.
But since then, a number of senators have come out in favor of the proposal and plans to tuck it into the foreign aid package. Cantwell announced Wednesday that she now supports the legislation after lawmakers agreed to give ByteDance more time to sell off TikTok.
Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are supportive of the bill’s inclusion in the aid package, their offices confirmed. The two lawmakers had previously led separate legislative efforts to tackle concerns over the app.
“I’m glad to see the House help push this important bill forward to force Beijing-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok,” Warner said in a statement to The Post.
The effort is likely to face significant legal hurdles, as have previous attempts by the Trump administration and states to force a sale or ban of the app.
Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, a group that advocates for free speech rights, said in a statement Friday that the TikTok bill would “infringe” on “Americans’ First Amendment right to access information, ideas, and media from abroad.”
“Legislators who are genuinely concerned about social media platforms’ practices have better options at their disposal, and we continue to urge lawmakers to lean in to those rather than undermining the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans,” Johnson said.
Washington
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury announces she’s pregnant
Trinity Rodman signs record deal with Washington Spirit
USWNT forward Trinity Rodman signed a three-year deal with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. The deal makes Rodman the highest-paid female footballer in the world.
unbranded – Sport
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury has announced that she and her husband Matt are expecting a baby in July.
The couple made the announcement in a video on the Spirit’s social media channels, holding a baby goalkeeper jersey on the pitch at Audi Field.
Kingsbury becomes the most recent Spirit star to go on maternity leave, following defender Casey Krueger, midfielder Andi Sullivan and forward Ashley Hatch.
Sullivan gave birth to daughter Millie in July, while Hatch welcomed her son Leo in January.
Krueger announced she was pregnant with her second child in October.
Kingsbury has served as the Spirit’s starting goalkeeper since 2018, and has been named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year twice (2019 and 2021).
The 34-year-old has two caps with the U.S. women’s national team, and was named to the 2023 World Cup roster.
The club captain will leave a major void for the Spirit, who have finished as NWSL runner-up in back-to-back seasons.
Sandy MacIver and Kaylie Collins are expected to compete for the starting role while Kingsbury is on maternity leave.
The Spirit kick off their 2026 campaign on March 13 against the Portland Thorns.
Washington
Washington state board awards Yakima $985,600 loan for Sixth Avenue project design
YAKIMA, Wash. — Yakima could soon take a major step toward redesigning Sixth Avenue after the Washington State Public Works Board awarded the city a $985,600 loan.
The loan was approved for the design engineering phase of the Sixth Avenue project. The funding can also be used along Sixth Avenue for utility replacement and updated ADA use.
The Yakima City Council must decide whether to accept the award. If the council accepts it, the city’s engineering work will move forward with the design of Sixth Avenue.
The cost of installing trolley lines is excluded from the plan. The historic trolleys would need to raise the funds required to add trolley lines.
The award is scheduled to be discussed during next week’s City Council meeting.
Washington
Microsoft promises more AI investments at University of Washington
Microsoft will ramp up its investment in the University of Washington.
Brad Smith, the company’s president, made the announcement at a press conference with University of Washington President Robert Jones on Tuesday.
That means hiring more UW graduates as interns at Microsoft, he said.
And he said all students, faculty, and researchers should have access to free, or at least deeply-discounted, AI.
“ Some of it is compute that Microsoft is donating, and some of it is pursuant to an agreement where, believe me, we give the University of Washington probably the best pricing that anybody’s gonna find anywhere,” Smith said. He assured the small group of reporters present that it would be “many millions of dollars of additional computational resources.”
The announcement today didn’t include any specific numbers.
But Smith said Microsoft has already invested $165 million in the UW over several decades.
He pointed to Jones’ vision to spur “radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change,” and eliminate “any artificial barriers between the university and the communities it serves.”
Microsoft’s goal is for AI to help UW researchers solve some of the world’s biggest problems without introducing new ones.
At Tuesday’s announcement, several research students were present to demonstrate how AI supports their work.
Amelia Keyser-Gibson is an environmental scientist at the UW. She’s using AI to analyze photographs of vines, to find which adapt best to climate change.
It’s a paradox: AI produces carbon emissions. At the same time, it’s also a new tool to help reduce them.
So how do those things square for Keyser-Gibson?
“ That’s a great question, and honestly, I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m highly aware that there’s a lot of environmental impact of using AI, but what I can say is that this has allowed us to make research innovations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”
“If we had had to manually annotate every single image that would’ve been an undergrad doing that for hours,” Keyser-Gibson continued. “And we didn’t have the budget. We didn’t have the manpower to do that.”
“AI exists. If we don’t use it as researchers, we’re gonna fall behind.”
Microsoft reports on its own carbon emissions. But like most AI companies, it doesn’t reveal everything.
That’s one reason another UW student named Zhihan Zhang is using AI to estimate how much energy AI is using.
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