Will Con­gress’ Tik­Tok divest­ment bill upend Biden’s dig­i­tal cam­paign strat­e­gy?

Con­gress is primed to pass a bill that will require Tik­Tok, the immense­ly pop­u­lar, Chi­nese-owned social media plat­form, to sell to an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny with­in one year or risk being banned in the Unit­ed States.
Pres­i­dent Joe Biden promised to sign the leg­is­la­tion into law ear­li­er this week, even as his 2024 reelec­tion cam­paign has made the app, which boasts more than 170 mil­lion Amer­i­can users, a crit­i­cal part of its dig­i­tal mes­sag­ing strat­e­gy specif­i­cal­ly aimed at win­ning over vot­ers under 25.
The deci­sion to get Biden on Tik­Tok, even after his admin­is­tra­tion barred fed­er­al employ­ees from using the app on their gov­ern­ment-issued phones and press­ing Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping on the mat­ter dur­ing closed-door, leader-to-leader meet­ings, comes as the pres­i­dent is …