Former U.S. Representative Joe Crawley has taken on a new role within the landscape of U.S. policy. The former congressman turned law firm policy director has registered as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. By doing so, he joins a growing list of Washington, D.C. insiders who have become lobbyists for the social media app in recent months. According to a report from The Hill, former aides to Chuck Schumer, Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi have all register as lobbyists for TikTok. Despite the push from TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, federal and state lawmakers have seemingly doubled down on their disapproval of the app being used in America.
In 2023, federal and state lawmakers have pushed back against the use of TikTok in the United States due to democracy concerns. Most notably, the app is barred from federally owned digital devices. More recently, Montana lawmakers took steps toward banning the app. Not to be forgotten, the Biden administration has threatened to ban the app if ByteDance does not outsource its U.S. operations to another company.
ByteDance and TikTok have countered concerns from the federal government by ramping up their lobbying efforts and communications push. In addition, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sat before a panel of lawmakers who argued that the app should be banned completely. Eventually, policy experts believe that this back-and-forth will lead to a legal battle, but the U.S. government isn’t an early betting favorite.
“I don’t really care what Congress writes, or what the administration writes. They’re not going to ban TikTok,” James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told POLITICO.
“They can ban financial transactions, or they can try to force divestiture. But they don’t have the ability to ban TikTok itself.”
