Congress passes foreign aid bill, including TikTok sell-or-ban legislation | The Excerpt

On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Congress has passed legislation that puts the future of TikTok up in the air. USA TODAY Congress & Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin breaks it down. Israel slams northern Gaza, while Hamas calls for an escalation. Plus, campus protests continue. The Department of Justice will pay nearly $139 million to survivors of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse in a settlement. USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent David Jackson looks at former President Donald Trump's ongoing strategy of campaigning from the courthouse. The Biden administration has announced a rule that would make millions of workers newly eligible for overtime pay. Contact has been restored with NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, April 24th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Congress passes a bill that puts the future of TikTok up in the air, plus the latest from Gaza and a look at how Donald Trump continues to campaign from the courthouse.

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Congress has passed a long-awaited $95 billion foreign aid bill. The Senate approved the package yesterday. It'll set $60 billion to support Ukraine, $17 billion for Israel, $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and elsewhere, and $8 billion for allies in the Indo-Pacific. The move passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. The package also includes legislation that would force TikTok's Chinese parent company to divest from the social media app or face an effective ban in the United States. For more on that, I spoke with USA TODAY Congress and Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin. Riley, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Riley Beggin:

Hey, happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Riley, the Senate has passed this bill. What does it do as it pertains to TikTok?

Riley Beggin:

So this bill has been tweaked a little bit since the last time I talked to you about it. It would give TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, up to a year to sell the company. If they do not do that, then there would be an effective ban in the United States. That means that the app stores can't offer them. There can't be any updates to the app, and web hosting services also can't host them, so you can't find it on the internet, for example.

Taylor Wilson:

So the lawmakers in both chambers who supported this bill, why did they say it's necessary and what issues do opponents take here?

Riley Beggin:

The argument from proponents of the bill is that this is a national security issue. They've essentially said that ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing, gives the Chinese government access to Americans data that could be weaponized essentially. So they say that TikTok is being used to spread propaganda to Americans and that it's being used as a surveillance tool. We haven't seen public evidence of that, but these senators are getting intelligence briefings and there's of course reporting from multiple outlets that TikTok is not necessarily using the data in the way that the American subsidiary claims it is. For or opponents of the bill, they say that this is a First Amendment issue, that if you restrict a specific social media app, it has implications for freedom of speech and that it could hurt small businesses. There are a lot of creators who make money on the app, people who would not be able to afford advertising if they didn't have access to it. So those are the main arguments we hear from people who want to oppose the bill.

Taylor Wilson:

And how is TikTok responding to this legislation?

Riley Beggin:

They have gone all out to oppose it over the last several weeks since it's been gaining steam in Congress. They have been blasting out a message early on to their supporters to call members of Congress. Some lawmakers implied to us that backfired and made them want to ban it more. Though of course I will caveat, they are not using that word ban. They argue that it is not a ban, because of course it forces ByteDance to sell the company, but they've also got influencers to come to the The Hill to talk to lawmakers. The CEO has come to talk to senators, and there's of course, tons of money going into lobbying these lawmakers over the last several weeks. Now that the bill has passed, TikTok has said, this is not the end of the road. We are going to mount a legal campaign, which of course, we can talk a little bit about more. And TikTok has been making the same arguments that I said that the opponents were making, that this is a First Amendment issue.

Taylor Wilson:

As for what this means for Americans, Riley, just how big of a deal is this and what does polling tell us about how Americans feel about this move?

Riley Beggin:

So there are around 170 million American users of TikTok, so it does have a big impact on people. I will say that if you're going to see an effect of this, it's going to be a while from now. And as I mentioned, we expect this to get caught up in a legal debate, which probably will delay it further. So don't expect TikTok to disappear from your phone overnight. That is not what's going to happen here. But overall, the public sentiment that we have seen from polling on this, is around 38% of Americans in December said that they would support a ban. That's down from 50% last year in March. But those numbers switch quite a bit when we talk about young people. 41% of people under 30 oppose a TikTok ban.

Taylor Wilson:

And Riley, as you mentioned, this may not be the end of the road. What legal battles still remain.

Riley Beggin:

TikTok has pledged to fight this. As I mentioned, they said this is the First Amendment issue. They have also raised concerns about the impact on small businesses, and TikTok has had success with this in the past. Former president, Donald Trump, tried to ban TikTok. That was stopped by a federal judge. The state of Montana also attempted to do that recently in the state, and that was stopped by a federal judge there. So there's a high bar to make this argument that we can impact First Amendment rights for the sake of national security. So I think we're going to have to follow closely how this plays out in the court system.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Riley Beggin covers Congress and campaigns for USA today. Thank you, Riley.

Riley Beggin:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Israeli bombs pounded Northern Gaza yesterday as Hamas's military wing called for an escalation against Israel. Meanwhile, David Satterfield, the U.S. regional envoy for humanitarian issues, said the risk of famine in Gaza, especially in the north, was very high. The renewed shelling and bombing of Northern Gaza comes almost four months after the Israeli army said it was drawing down troops there saying then it had pushed Hamas out. Stateside protests continued yesterday at Columbia NYU and other colleges around the country. The protests have fueled a national debate over free speech and student demonstrations amid growing unrest over the fate of Palestinians and Gaza and concerns for the safety of Jewish students at home. Dozens of protesters were arrested Monday at pro-Palestinian demonstrations at NYU and Yale University in Connecticut. Columbia University president, Minouche Shafik, said last night that it's essential a protester encampment be dismantled. You can follow along with all the latest on USAToday.com.

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The Department of Justice announced yesterday that it'll pay nearly $139 million to survivors of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse. That's part of a settlement stemming from the FBI's mishandling of the initial allegations. USA Today Sports and the Wall Street Journal first reported last week that a settlement had been agreed upon and would stretch into nine figures. The money will be distributed across 139 victims. Olympic champion, Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, and Aly Raisman were among the victims who filed claims with the Department of Justice in 2022, roughly a year after the release of a report by the department's Inspector General. The report found that FBI officials failed to respond to allegations of abuse that they received involving Nassar with the utmost seriousness and urgency in 2015, a delay that allowed the abuse to continue. Nassar, the former U.S. Women's National Gymnastics Team Doctor and Michigan State employee was found to have sexually assaulted more than 500 women and girls under the guise of providing medical treatment. He's now serving what will amount to a lifetime prison sentence.

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Former media executive, David Pecker, again took the witness stand yesterday in former president Donald Trump's, New York Hush Money trial. Pecker testified that he used the National Enquirer to promote Trump's 2016 campaign interests, including stifling a story about an alleged love child of Trump's. Pecker's actions were part of a so-called catch-and-kill conspiracy with Trump to kill stories that could hurt Trump's 2016 presidential campaign according to prosecutors. Yesterday's proceedings began with arguments over whether Trump should be held in contempt for allegedly violating a gag order. Prosecutors say Trump has violated that order at least 10 times, and the judge should not only fine the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but also warn him he could get jail time if things don't change.

Trump has complained the gag orders silences him, but not others. But even this week, Trump again attacked potential witness Michael Cohen outside the courtroom saying, Cohen "got caught lying, pure lying", in a previous trial.

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Meanwhile, as Trump's hush money trial heats up, he continues to try and campaign from the courthouse. I spoke with USA TODAY National Political Correspondent David Jackson about this ongoing strategy. David, hello, sir.

David Jackson:

Hey, how are you doing?

Taylor Wilson:

Good. Good. Thanks for hopping back on The Excerpt. So David, let's just start with this, what has the scene been like outside the courthouse? Are Donald Trump supporters showing up to this trial?

David Jackson:

No, not really. It's been pretty quiet outside the courthouse. In fact, there are probably more anti-Trumpers out there than pro-Trumpers, and it's been something of a disappointment to the president, because I think he expected a lot more people to show up so that he could go out there and proclaim his innocence in front of a crowd, but he hasn't really been able to do that.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. So David, then, how is Trump now campaigning based off this hush money trial?

David Jackson:

He's basically bootstrapping campaign events in and around the trial. For example, last week after one of the sessions, he visited a bodega in Harlem to talk about crime, kind of a standard campaign hit. It just happened to be in New York City, which is where he happens to be on trial and will be for the next six or eight weeks. He also had a foreign affairs event. He had a meeting with the president of Poland last week.

So he's basically using his spare time, which is rare these days, to do traditional campaign events. They just happen to be confined to New York. He's also had a few plans fall through during the weekend recess. He planned to do a traditional campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, but he had to cancel that because of bad weather. He also, I think as I understand it, he planned to do some kind of speech on Friday, but he shelved those plans because we had the incident with the man who immolated himself in protest of the trial. So it's been a day-by-day thing, on the spur of the moment, but he's basically trying to campaign from the courthouse.

Taylor Wilson:

David, where do voters stand at this point? Are voters nationally changing their minds at all about what a conviction here might mean for their support or lack thereof for Trump, and really just how significant are these legal issues shaping up to be for Trump's electability?

David Jackson:

So far, the polls have indicated that a significant chunk of voters would change their mind about Trump if he is convicted. They wouldn't vote for a convicted felon. And there have been estimates as high as 10% of Trump's base might feel this way. So obviously that's a chunk of change he can't afford to lose. So when he makes these campaign appeals, those are the people he's talking to, the people who say they may turn off of him if he's convicted. But we really don't know until it actually happens, and a lot of Trump people say that he could be acquitted in this trial or there could be a hung jury and that would help him with these people. So it's too hard to say right now, but there's a significant number of voters who are really on the fence about Trump because of this trial.

Taylor Wilson:

And David, what are we hearing from the Biden camp at this point when it comes to this hush money trial and Trump's legal issues writ large?

David Jackson:

Well, not much publicly. They say they don't want to get in the way of an opponent who's in the process of destroying himself. So they've basically confined themselves to little comments and little jokes. I mean, president Biden, during a speech, he referred to his predecessor and noted that he's been pretty busy lately. Another campaign statement referred to Trump's stormy positions on abortion, which of course is a reference to witness Stormy Daniels, who's involved in the trial. So little things like that, making little snide comments about Trump, but they're really not engaging on the issues of the trial or of Trump's involvement in it. They're letting that play for itself.

Taylor Wilson:

And Trump's got all kinds of other legal sagas. What's coming down the pike, David, and should we expect him to continue with a similar strategy of campaigning or trying to campaign from the courthouse?

David Jackson:

Well, that's another question that we don't know the answer to. He's basically looking at the potential of three criminal trials, but he's trying to delay all of them. There is a distinct possibility that he might be able to do that. First, he's got the two trials, one in Washington, one in Atlanta, on allegations that he tried to steal the election from President Joe Biden. But the Supreme Court is considering an appeal from Trump in one of those cases that would basically make him immune from prosecution for any actions he took while he was president. So if the Supreme Court agrees with him on that, that could knock out the federal case and the Georgia case. He's also got another trial about illegally handling classified information. That's scheduled to start in May in Florida, but the judge has been very sympathetic to Trump on some of his pretrial appeals. So there's also the possibility that that trial could be delayed as well, all of which means that this might be the only trial he has to deal with before election day on November 5th.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Interesting stuff. David Jackson is a national political correspondent with USA Today. Thank you, David.

David Jackson:

Thanks, sir.

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Taylor Wilson:

Some good news for workers. The Biden administration announced a new rule yesterday that would make millions of white collar workers newly eligible for overtime pay. Starting July 1st, the rule would increase the threshold where executive, administrative and professional employees are exempt from overtime pay to $43,888 from the current $35,568. That change would make an additional million workers eligible to receive time and a half wages for each hour they put in beyond a 40-hour week. Then, on January 1st, the threshold would rise further to more than $58,000, covering another 3 million workers. Also, yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule to ban agreements commonly signed by workers not to join their employers rivals, or launch competing businesses, which it says limit worker mobility and suppress wages.

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Contact restored. That was the message relieved NASA officials shared after the agency regained full contact with the Voyager 1 space probe, the most distant human made object in the universe, scientists have announced. For the first time since November, the spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems, according to a NASA press release on Monday. The nearly half century old probe, now 15.1 billion miles from Earth, has continually defied expectations for its lifespan as it moves farther into the uncharted territory of the cosmos. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Congress passes foreign aid bill, TikTok sell-or-ban | The Excerpt