TIKTOK BAN: Here’s how Wisconsin, Minnesota US House reps voted

A party-line vote by US House members in Wisconsin that could lead to a nationwide ban of TikTok, if the parent company ByteDance, based in China, doesn’t sell in the coming months.

All six Republican House members in Wisconsin, including Derrick Van Orden, who represents La Crosse and the 3rd District, voted for the ban.

Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore, the state’s only two Democratic members, voted against the ban.

In Minnesota, a bit of a different story. While the state also has eight House members, half of them are Democrats and two representatives — Dean Phillips and Ilhan Omar — voted against ban.

The rest of the state’s reps, two Democrats and four Republicans, including Brad Finstad, who represents Minnesota’s 1st District that includes all of southern Minnesota, voted for the ban.

The bill passed the house overwhelmingly 352-65 — with 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voting in opposition. It’s unclear how the Senate will vote. Here’s how every member voted.

Lawmakers supportive of the bill argue TikTok poses a national security threat because the Chinese government could get data of US app users.

One argument against the bill is that China can simply buy that user data on the free market already, since there are minimal rules in place preventing it.

Others argue that perhaps all social media companies should have restrictions over what data they can gather or share from users — whether it’s TikTok, Facebook/Instagram (Meta) or Twitter/X — regardless of who or what owns it.

Roughly 170 million in the US use TikTok.