[TikTok Logo. Photo Credit to Pixabay]

On Thursday, April 25, American President Joe Biden signed a mammoth foreign aid package into law.

The package includes military and humanitarian assistance for United States allies Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, which are currently involved in or in danger of being involved in conflicts with their neighbors.

Additionally, the package incorporates a national security bill titled the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act, which would ban the massively popular social media app TikTok in the United States unless it is sold to an American company within a year.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based tech company, and is the fourth most popular social media platform, with over 1 billion active users worldwide every month.

Notably, the United States of America has the most TikTokers of all countries, with a total of about 150 million users, approximately half the country’s population.

TikTok has also been a source of controversy and contention due to alleged conspiracy with the Chinese government.

National security experts suggest that the app may potentially be used to manipulate the political views of Americans, collect personal data from Americans, or install malware from the Chinese government on users’ personal devices.

That said, it is worth mentioning that TikTok does not operate in China, and that there has been no concrete proof that China has been using the data to spy on users, even after a 5-hour Congressional hearing with the Singaporean CEO, who claims that there is no government manipulation in his app.

The largest part of this package is the Ukraine aid bill, which has been a point of contention in Washington D.C. for the past 2 years, violating international law and causing thousands of deaths on both sides.        

The US has since provided billions of dollars worth of military aid, supplying Ukrainian troops with American weapons and defense systems that are no longer in use.

This latest contribution to the war effort is titled the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which appropriates about $60 billion to the war-torn nation.

Opposition to Ukraine funding mostly comes from the Republicans, who cite the view that the United States should not be involved in foreign conflicts and that the money is better spent on Americans.

The other major part of the funding package goes to Israel and Palestine, with $26 billion being sent to Israel and $1 billion being sent in humanitarian aid to the suffering region of Gaza.

Agreement on aid to Israel is a lot more bipartisan, with most Republicans and Democrats concurring that the U.S. must aid Israel’s military campaign against Hamas-controlled Gaza.

It is worth noting that most of the casualties from the Israel-Gaza war are Palestinains being killed by Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, with around 35,000 casualties on the Palestinian side and over 1,000 killed in Israel.

Israel is currently accused of disobeying the International Court of Justice’s order to ensure humanitarian aid to Gaza and to take any measures to prevent a potential genocide in the region.

This package has been in debate for months, with the Senate already having passed the bill months ago.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson obstructed the bill for months, even when it came with a Republican-friendly provision to take more action to prevent migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border.

The bill no longer contains said border provision.

This was partially motivated by threats from members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, such as Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to vote to oust him if he compromised with the Democrats to pass the bill.

Former President Donald Trump had also exercised a surprising amount of manipulation concerning the bill, seemingly deterring Speaker Johnson from passing the aforementioned border aid by signaling his opposition on social media.

Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky has thanked numerous American leaders for the passing of the Ukrainian defense bill, claiming that it may have saved Ukraine from “Russian terror”.