Vice President JD Vance has been a key factor in getting President Donald Trump‘s Cabinet picks approved by the Senate, but now the president is reportedly assigning him to negotiate a deal for TikTok to be sold.
Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz have been assigned to oversee a deal to have TikTok divest from its Chinese ownership, according to a report from Punchbowl News. The report claims Vance is responsible for “quarterbacking a deal to save TikTok,” while Waltz is focused on the national security aspect of a sale.
The clock is ticking on the deadline for a deal to avoid the social media platform being banned in the United States. An executive order signed by Trump last month extended the Jan. 19 deadline to divest or be banned to April 5, but it is unknown if ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, will actually make a deal to divest from its ownership of the platform.
The bill forcing the sale of TikTok was passed by Congress in 2024 with sweeping bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden. The legislation also survived a legal challenge from TikTok when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the law forcing the sale of the platform over national security concerns did not violate the company’s First Amendment rights.
While some lawmakers have expressed regret about voting for the 2024 law, others have stood firm that TikTok must be sold or face a ban, citing national security risks. Upon the app being removed from app stores in the U.S., Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) pushed back on the legality of an extension of the deadline and called for the platform to be sold.
“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s qualified-divestiture requirements by severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China,” Cotton and Ricketts said in a joint statement.
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“Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posed to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok,” the statement continued.
Vance’s role as vice president early in his term has been to shore up support in the Senate, a chamber he served in from 2023 until he was sworn in as vice president last month, as Trump works to move his agenda quickly.
