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      The U.S. Investors Caught in the Scrum Over TikTok

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      Major U.S. investment firms such as General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia Capital own stakes in ByteDance, the parent of TikTok. Their investments are increasingly under fire.For years, the U.S. investors who backed ByteDance, the Chinese internet company that owns TikTok, have wrestled with the complexities of owning a piece of a geopolitically fraught social media app.Now it’s gotten even more complicated.A bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok is winding its way through the Senate after sailing through the House this month. Questions about whether TikTok’s Chinese ties make it a national security threat are mounting. And U.S. investors including General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group and Sequoia Capital — which collectively poured billions into ByteDance — are facing increased pressure from state and federal lawmakers to answer for their investments in Chinese companies.Last year, a House committee began examining U.S. investments in Chinese companies. The Biden administration has curbed U.S. investments in China. In December, a Missouri pension board voted to divest from some Chinese investments, following political pressure from the state treasurer. And Florida passed legislation this month to require the state’s Board of Administration to sell off its stakes in China-owned companies.All of this comes on top of existing issues with owning a piece of ByteDance. The Beijing-based company has grown into one of the world’s most highly valued start-ups, worth $225 billion, according to CB Insights. That’s a boon, at least on paper, for U.S. investors who put money into ByteDance when it was a smaller company.Yet in reality, these investors have an illiquid investment that is hard to spin into gold. Since ByteDance is privately held, investors cannot simply sell their stakes in it. A confluence of politics and economics means ByteDance is also unlikely to go public soon, which would enable its shares to trade.Even if a sale of TikTok was easy to pull off, the Chinese government appears reluctant to relinquish control of an influential social media company. Beijing moved to stop a deal for TikTok to American buyers a few years ago and recently condemned the congressional bill that mandates ByteDance divest the app.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Leaders Release $1.2 Trillion Spending Bill as Congress Races to Avert Shutdown

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      The bipartisan bill emerged one day before the federal funding deadline, and it was not clear whether Congress could complete it in time to avoid a partial shutdown after midnight on Friday.Top congressional negotiators in the early hours of Thursday unveiled the $1.2 trillion spending bill to fund the government through September, though it remained unclear whether Congress would be able to complete action on it in time to avert a brief partial government shutdown over the weekend.Lawmakers are racing to pass the legislation before a Friday midnight deadline in order to prevent a lapse in funds for over half the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and health agencies. They are already six months behind schedule because of lengthy negotiations to resolve funding and policy disputes.Now that they have agreed on a final package, which wraps six spending bills together, passage could slip past 12:01 on Saturday morning because of a set of arcane congressional rules. House Republican leaders were signaling that they intended to hold a vote on the bill on Friday, bypassing a self-imposed rule requiring that lawmakers be given at least 72 hours to review legislation before it comes up for a vote.There could be additional hurdles in the Senate, where any one lawmaker’s objection to speedy passage of legislation could prolong debate and delay a final vote.Democrats and Republicans both highlighted victories in the painstakingly negotiated legislation. Republicans cited as victories funding for Border Patrol agents, additional detention beds run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a provision cutting off aid to the main United Nations agency that provides assistance to Palestinians. Democrats secured funding increases for federal child care and education programs, cancer and Alzheimer’s research.“We had to work within difficult fiscal constraints — but this bipartisan compromise will keep our country moving forward,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Congressional Leaders Strike Deal on Final Spending Bill Ahead of Shutdown

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      Lawmakers resolved disputes over Department of Homeland Security funding, paving the way for an agreement. But they may still be unable to meet a Friday deadline to avert a brief partial shutdown.Congressional leaders said on Tuesday morning that they had reached an agreement on the final package of spending legislation to fund the federal government through the fall, though it was unclear whether they would be able to pass it in time to avert a brief partial shutdown over the weekend.House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House had been at loggerheads over funding levels for the Department of Homeland Security. For days, they had been litigating disagreements that threatened to imperil the spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies. They are facing a midnight deadline on Friday to pass the measure and avert a lapse in funding.A breakthrough on Monday night, in which Democrats and Republicans were able to agree to homeland security funding levels for the rest of the fiscal year, allowed negotiators to finalize their deal.“An agreement has been reached” that will enable Congress to fund the government through Sept. 30, Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “House and Senate committees have begun drafting bill text to be prepared for release and consideration by the full House and Senate as soon as possible.”Still, the delay in striking the deal could pave the way for a brief lapse in government funding over the weekend. It will take congressional staff time to draw up text of the bill, which wraps six spending measures into a sizable piece of legislation.House Republicans have demanded that Mr. Johnson abide by an internal rule that allows lawmakers 72 hours to consider the text of a bill before they vote on it, though previous House leaders have at times abandoned that guidance.And any number of senators may create procedural hurdles for the bill’s passage and demand votes on proposed changes or object to its quick consideration. Those tactics could push final passage past 12:01 on Saturday morning, when funding is set to expire.Late last year, Mr. Johnson chopped the spending process in half, creating two partial government shutdown deadlines instead of one, in an effort to avoid asking members to take a single vote on a huge catchall to fund the entire government, which Republicans have objected to repeatedly.Earlier this month, lawmakers were able to negotiate and pass a six-bill $460 billion spending package that just barely met the first deadline on March 8, and are now repeating the process — this time haggling over funding for more politically fraught agencies — before the second deadline at the end of this week. More

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      Primaries to Watch Today: Races in Ohio, California, Illinois and More

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      Five states will hold presidential primaries on Tuesday — Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio — the largest such set of contests since Super Tuesday three weeks ago.But with the presidential nominating contests already decisively clinched, neither of the presumptive nominees will make appearances in those states today. Instead, President Biden will travel to Nevada, a top fall battleground, visiting Reno and Las Vegas, while Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady, will campaign across New England. Former President Donald J. Trump campaigned in Ohio on Saturday.The attention today is on a handful of down-ballot races.Chief among them is the Republican primary for a competitive Senate seat in Ohio. Three Republicans are duking it out for the chance to run against Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat.Mr. Trump stumped for his preferred candidate, Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer from Cleveland, on Saturday but mentioned him only sparingly in his caustic, freewheeling speech at a rally in Vandalia in which he said that some migrants were “not people” and that the country would face a “blood bath” if he lost in the November election. Mr. Moreno will face off against Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, and Matt Dolan, a wealthy state senator, in the primary.In Illinois, a number of competitive House primaries could signal some of the contours of the fall election.In the 12th Congressional District, Mike Bost, the incumbent, is facing a Republican challenger to his right in Darren Bailey, who lost the governor’s race to J.B. Pritzker by a wide margin in 2022. Mr. Bailey is an ardent pro-Trump Republican, but Mr. Bost has Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Danny Davis, 82, is running to keep his seat in the Democratic primary for the Seventh Congressional District. He has two significant opponents: Chicago’s treasurer, Melissa Conyears-Ervin, and a youthful community organizer named Kina Collins. But the Democratic establishment in Illinois has rallied around Mr. Davis — who is a year older than Mr. Biden, making his age a sensitive issue for the primary.In the Fourth Congressional District, Representative Jesús “Chuy” García, a progressive Democrat, will face off against Raymond Lopez, a Chicago alderman, in a Democratic primary that has centered on immigration in Chicago. Mr. García, “a proud immigrant,” was one Democrat who criticized Mr. Biden when he referred to an undocumented migrant as “an illegal” in his State of the Union speech. Mr. Lopez is more conservative on immigration.In California, a special primary in the 20th Congressional District will be held to complete the term of former Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican who was ousted from his role as speaker of the House and resigned soon after. A separate primary was held on Super Tuesday for a full term in the seat starting January 2025, with two Republicans — Vince Fong and Mike Boudreaux — advancing to the general election in November. More

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      TikTok Bill’s Progress Slows in the Senate

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      Legislation to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned in the United States sailed through the House, but the Senate has no plans to move hastily.After a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a nationwide ban sailed through the House at breakneck speed this week, its progress has slowed in the Senate.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who determines what legislation gets a vote, has not decided whether to bring the bill to the floor, his spokesman said. Senators — some of whom have their own versions of bills targeting TikTok — will need to be convinced. Other legislation on the runway could be prioritized. And the process of taking the House bill and potentially rewriting it to suit the Senate could be time consuming.Many in the Senate are keeping their cards close to their vest about what they would do on the TikTok measure, even as they said they recognized the House had sent a powerful signal with its vote on the bill, which passed 352 to 65. The legislation mandates that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sell its stake in the app within six months or face a ban.“The lesson of the House vote is that this issue is capable of igniting almost spontaneously in the support that it has,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview on Friday. He said that there could be adjustments made to the bill but that there was bipartisan support to wrest the app from Chinese ownership.The slowdown in the Senate means that TikTok is likely to face weeks or even months of uncertainty about its fate in the United States. That could result in continued lobbying, alongside maneuvering by the White House, the Chinese government and ByteDance. It is also likely to prompt potential talks about deals — whether real or imagined — while the uncertainty of losing access to the app will hang over the heads of TikTok creators and its 170 million U.S. users.“Almost everything will slow down in the Senate,” said Nu Wexler, a former Senate aide who worked for Google, Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “They’ll need some time to either massage egos or build consensus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      If There’s One Thing Trump Is Right About, It’s Republicans

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      For the thousandth time, the Republican Party refused an off-ramp that would free itself from Donald Trump. As long as he’s around, it never will.In this year’s presidential primary campaign, the party had the chance to nominate Nikki Haley, a successful, conservative former two-term governor of South Carolina. Unlike Mr. Trump’s, her public career hasn’t been characterized by a lifetime of moral squalor. And many polls show she would be a more formidable candidate against President Biden than Mr. Trump. No matter. Mr. Trump decimated Ms. Haley, most recently on Super Tuesday. She suspended her campaign the next day. But she never had a chance.The Republican Party has grown more radical, unhinged and cultlike every year since Mr. Trump took control of it. In 2016, there was outrage among Republicans after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. On the tape, in words that shocked the nation, Mr. Trump said that when you’re a star, “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”In 2023, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. His “locker room talk” turned out to be more than just talk. Yet no Republican of significance said a critical word about it.The same was true earlier this year when Mr. Trump was found liable for civil fraud. The judge in the case, Arthur F. Engoron, said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on “pathological.” Yet Republicans were united in their outrage, not in response to Mr. Trump’s actions but at the judge for the size of the penalty.Today, many Republicans not only profess to believe that the election was stolen; prominent members of Congress like Representative Elise Stefanik and Senator J.D. Vance say they would not have certified the 2020 election results, as Vice President Mike Pence, to his credit, did. Mike Johnson, who played a leading role in trying to overturn the election, is speaker of the House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate Clears $460 Billion Bill to Avert Partial Government Shutdown

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      President Biden is expected to sign the legislation, the product of a bipartisan deal, ahead of the midnight shutdown deadline — but the spending fight isn’t over yet.The Senate gave final approval on Friday to a $460 billion spending bill to fund about half the federal government through the fall, sending the legislation to President Biden’s desk with just hours to spare to avert a partial shutdown.The lopsided 75-to-22 vote cemented a resolution to at least part of a spending stalemate that consumed Congress for months and has repeatedly pushed the government to the edge of shutdown. Mr. Biden was expected to sign it ahead of a midnight deadline to keep federal funding flowing.But top lawmakers were still negotiating spending bills for the other half of the government over the same period, including for the Pentagon, which Congress must pass by March 22 to avert a shutdown. Several thorny issues, including funding for the Department of Homeland Security, have yet to be resolved.The legislation passed on Friday packages together six spending bills, extending funding through Sept. 30 for dozens of federal programs covering agriculture, energy and the environment, transportation, housing, the Justice Department and veterans.“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “It helps parents and veterans and firefighters and farmers and school cafeterias and more.”The package adheres to the funding levels negotiated last year by Mr. Biden and the House speaker at the time, Kevin McCarthy, keeping spending on domestic programs essentially flat — even as funding for veterans’ programs continues to grow — while allowing military spending to increase slightly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Spending Impasse Persists Amid G.O.P. Resistance as Partial Shutdown Looms

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      With Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy measures to spending bills, lawmakers are running out of time to strike a deal to avert a partial government shutdown before a deadline of Friday at midnight.Congressional leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday, with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Mr. Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn’t occur.”With no sign of a breakthrough, President Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed earlier this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.Three consecutive times over the last six months, Congress has relied on short-term, stopgap spending bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longer-term agreement for several weeks at a time. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Mr. Johnson — has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Mr. Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a deadline on Friday to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More