Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa
TikTok hires Biden-linked consulting company SKDK as federal ban looms.
TikTok has employed high Biden-linked consulting company SKDK while it continues going thru scrutiny in Washington, Politico reports. The general public affairs and political consulting company is providing communications toughen to the firm because it faces persevered fire from the government. Senators now not too lengthy ago launched a bipartisan invoice to empower the president to restrict or ban the Chinese-owned provider altogether.
The U.S. govt has been building a fire below TikTok for years since the Trump administration tried to ban the app. This has persevered with the Biden administration’s Committee on Overseas Investment within the U.S. conducting a nationwide safety overview of TikTok.
SKDK is considered as essentially the most neatly-linked Democratic company in Washington, with aged high workers in senior and mid-degree roles within the Biden administration. Anita Dunn, a founding partner, returned to the White Apartment in Might presumably also final year.
She serves as a senior adviser following her work within the early phase of the Biden administration and within the direction of Biden’s 2020 advertising and marketing campaign. Other aged SKDK workers within the Biden administration consist of deputy White Apartment communications directors Kate Berner and Herbie Ziskend, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh, and Interior Department press secretary Tyler Cherry.
While SKDK has persevered to thrive within the Biden era, it has also faced extra scrutiny for its sequence of shoppers, parting programs with Starbucks final year because the espresso huge tried to ward off a union-organizing effort. The company has also labored with Amazon now not now not as a lot as as now not too lengthy ago as 2021.
The invoice launched by a bipartisan neighborhood of senators that also can influence TikTok has considered toughen from the White Apartment. The proposed legislation would give the federal govt original powers to restrict and potentially ban technologies from China and other countries designated as U.S. adversaries. TikTok-owner ByteDance is constantly cited as one of many largest concerns, with worries that the Chinese govt also can plan essentially the most of data harvested from its hundreds and hundreds of American users.
ByteDance has spent bigger than $13 million on lobbying since 2019 to strive and mitigate federal govt motion in opposition to TikTok, having employed several dozen lobbyists, at the side of aged Senate Majority Chief Trent Lott (R-MS) and John Breaux Sr. (R-LA), who work for Crossroads Systems, and aged Reps. Jeff Denham (R-CA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN), at the moment working for K&L Gates.