A handful of House Democrats creating a ludicrously cringe-inducing “choose your fighter” TikTok video is a good time to recall the fact that TikTok was supposed to be banned by now. Large bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate passed a law requiring TikTok to be sold or banned. President Biden signed it into law, and the Supreme Court upheld the law.
TikTok is not banned right now because shortly after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order “instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
In other words, Trump just didn’t want to enforce the law, even though it was constitutional.
Nothing in the law’s text said the president could suspend it for 75 days. Trump’s defenders argued the president didn’t have to enforce the law if a sale of the company was imminent. On February 3 Trump said, “numerous people are talking to me, very substantial people, about buying it, and I will make that decision probably over the next 30 days.”
Well, here we are, 45 days into the 75-day window, and 31 days past Trump’s early February statement, and not only is no deal “imminent,” TikTok has not responded to any offers.
Apparently, the Chinese company is confident that President Trump will keep finding new excuses to not enforce the law.
Axios speculates, “Another possibility is that TikTok will be used as a bargaining chip in the U.S.-China trade disputes.” This is unconstitutional nonsense. The president does not have the authority to unilaterally rescind a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court as part of negotiations with another country.
This is not how any of this is supposed to work. The president and the executive branch cannot just ignore a law that was passed by the legislature and upheld by the judicial branch. It doesn’t matter if you love Trump or hate Trump, the president doesn’t get to pick and choose which laws are enforced.
Part of Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy of constantly announcing new initiatives and moves is that actions get completely forgotten in the busy news cycle. It seems almost everybody forgot about TikTok and the fact that it was legally banned. It will apparently exist indefinitely, continuing to suck up Americans’ data off their phones and functioning as “a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” because Donald Trump doesn’t feel like enforcing the law.