Lawmakers typically seize every opportunity they can to boast about their accomplishments, especially when they’ve managed to actually pass a bill into law.
But in a 19-minute video Republicans released this month about the work of the House select committee on competition with China, the panel’s signature legislative achievement didn’t come up a single time. That accomplishment was a law to ban TikTok — a priority that President Donald Trump complicated by announcing his support for keeping TikTok available.
TikTok’s absence from the video raised eyebrows among people who work on China policy, and it illustrated why congressional Democrats fear that as Republican lawmakers seek to march in lockstep with Trump, they may not be as tough on China as they were in the last Congress.