Joe Biden says he will sign a bill that would force TikTok to be sold or banned

TikTok’s future looks increasingly uncertain as support grows for a new bill that would force the company to sell itself or face a ban in the United States. Now President Joe Biden has come out in support of the measure, a day after it cleared its first legislative hurdle in the House of Representatives.

“If they accept it, I will sign it,” he said in remarks CBS News. The bill, called the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Enemies Act, which was introduced earlier this week, would give TikTok a six-month window to break free from parent company ByteDance or face a store-level ban for US applications. Meanwhile, House Republicans could bring the bill up for a vote as early as Wednesday, Semaphore .

TikTok said the bill was a thinly veiled effort to impose a “total ban” on its app. “This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban on TikTok in the United States,” the company said in a statement earlier this week. “The government is trying to deprive 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. It will hurt millions of businesses, deprive artists of an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless artists across the country.”

The company also encouraged its millions of users to oppose the measure. On Thursday, before the bill was voted on in committee, the app sent push notifications urging users to call their representatives and ask them to oppose the legislation. The notices reportedly sent calls to many congressional offices as officials received hundreds of calls from teenagers.

Notably, the bill has another prominent opponent: former President Donald Trump. Although Trump also tried to impose TikTok on a US company during his administration, the former president said he no longer believes the app should be banned. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

While clearing the House would be an important milestone for the bill, it’s unclear where the Senate stands on it. Like Semaphore points out that some prominent senators were a bit more guarded in their comments about whether they would support the legislation. At a recent Senate hearing on child safety, several senators challenged TikTok CEO Shaw Chew over his own citizenship (he’s Singaporean), as well as the app’s ties to China and the practices of its parent company, ByteDance.