These Lawmakers Actively Use TikTok Even After Voting To Ban It
With just hours to go before it is set to shut down, many senators and representatives are still posting on the app they claim is too dangerous for the rest of us to use.
Ticktock for TikTok.
Time is running out before a federal law goes into effect banning TikTok, the video-sharing social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, from operating within the United States. On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law, though some lawmakers are trying to extend the deadline, and President Joe Biden has apparently indicated that he will not enforce the ban anyway.
But ironically, some of the very same lawmakers who voted for such an unprecedented ban are still active on an app they feel is too dangerous for the rest of us to use.
In March 2024, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, in a vote of 352–65; it later passed the Senate by a similarly comfortable 79–18.
The bill prohibits operating or hosting "a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)" in the United States. TikTok would have a set amount of time to either find a buyer or shut down operations within the country. The clock runs out on January 19, and unless ByteDance manages to put together a sale overnight, its U.S. servers may go dark.
While specifics remain scarce, lawmakers cite the potential national security implications of an app used by hundreds of millions of Americans that could be subject to the whims of an authoritarian surveillance state like China.
But as Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party's 2020 presidential candidate, pointed out in a post on X this week, several lawmakers who voted to ban TikTok at the federal level still maintain accounts on the app.
A list of the people who voted YES on the Tiktok ban, who coincidently still use Tiktok.@CoryBooker @SenSherrodBrown @SenBobCasey @JohnFetterman @gillibrandny @SenMarkey @PattyMurray @SenOssoff @SenatorWarnock @JeffJacksonNC
Tell us again how dangerous it is for…
— Jo Jorgensen (@JoForLiberty) January 15, 2025
Jorgensen lists Sens. Cory Booker (D–N.J.), Bob Casey and John Fetterman (D–Pa.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.), Ed Markey (D–Mass.), Patty Murray (D–Wash.), Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock (D–Ga.), then-Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio), and then-Rep. Jeff Jackson (D–N.C.), who now serves as the attorney general of North Carolina.
"Tell us again how dangerous it is for National Security," Jorgensen added.
(While there is a "Reverend Raphael Warnock" TikTok account, it is not verified by the platform; a member of Warnock's staff told Reason it is a "false account" that is "not operated by Team Warnock.")
After the House vote, Newsweek also compiled a list of 12 representatives who voted for the bill but maintain active, verified TikTok accounts; some—including then-Reps. Colin Allred (D–Texas), who lost a Senate bid against Ted Cruz, and Adam Schiff (D–Calif.), the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee who won a U.S. Senate seat in November—maintain active TikTok accounts to this day.
Booker and Markey recently introduced legislation to extend the deadline by 270 days, from January to October. In an April 2024 TikTok video, Booker said he only voted for the ban because House Republicans packaged it into a larger bill that included aid for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine.
"If this bill came to the Senate as a standalone bill, I would vote against it," Booker said. "This is not the way I think government should work. It's one of those frustrating times for me in Washington where someone sticks something that you disagree with onto a must-pass bill as a strategy to get folks to support it, even though they don't."
Not every senator was so circumspect. "We must protect Ohioans' personal information from the Chinese Communist Party," Brown said in 2023. "I have serious concerns with this company's ties to the Chinese government, and will continue to work with members of both parties to look at how we can best protect Ohioans' privacy and our national security." Brown started a TikTok account later that year while running for reelection; he lost to Republican candidate Bernie Moreno in November 2024.
Some are not frequent users of the app; Fetterman has not posted since December 2023, Gillibrand and Murray have not posted since the end of 2022, and Ossoff has not posted since 2021, before they voted for the bill, though their accounts remain active.
Jackson, meanwhile, amassed a significant following on TikTok even as he voted for a potential ban.
"I've been a part of some briefings about this app that were genuinely alarming," Jackson said in an apology video he posted to TikTok after the vote. "When I was reading the bill, the part I agreed with was the part that tries to force a sale, because I figured this would just be a better app if we didn't have to worry about the stuff that comes with it being potentially controlled by an adversarial government."
"The part I didn't like was the part that threatens a ban," Jackson added, but "the reason I voted for it was because I genuinely believe the chance of a ban is practically zero."
Similarly, after the House passed the bill, Fetterman posted on X that "this legislation to restrict TikTok does NOT ban the app. It separates ties to the Chinese Communist Party and prevents them from accessing the data of Americans—especially our kids."
But with the deadline looming and no sign of a buyer, a ban looks increasingly likely.
Democrats may very well secure a deadline extension, or Biden may simply choose not to enforce the ban before leaving office the following day—at which point President-elect Donald Trump could make good on his pledge to "save" the app. But it's galling for certain Democrats to vote for a bill that applies an unprecedented sell-or-die provision to a private platform, justify it as important to counter an existential threat, and then continue using the app themselves.
"It's hypocritical to prevent other people from using an app because 'It's sooooo dangerous!' and then use it yourself," Jorgensen told Reason via email. "If it's too dangerous to national security for others to use, then you shouldn't use it. Politicians are using it because they see the benefit of TikTok, just as millions of Americans have….It's just another example of politicians thinking they know how to better run our lives than we do."
