'No gray area': Trump’s TikTok exec order puts GOP lawmakers in bind

22 January

One of the many executive orders that President Donald Trump issued after returning to the White House on Monday, January 20 calls for a 75-day of the TikTok ban, which was scheduled to go into effect the day before Trump's inauguration.

The ban was passed by Congress with strong bipartisan support and signed into law by former President Joe Biden. And according to Semafor reporters Kadia Goba and Morgan Chalfant, the law puts Trump's GOP allies in Congress — many of whom voted for it — in a trick position.

In an article published on January 22, Goba and Chalfant report, "Some experts — and even some Republicans — have questioned the legality of Trump's order, which tells the U.S. attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days in order for him to determine an 'appropriate course forward' that 'protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.'"

The popular TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company in Mainland China. And the law calls for TikTok to be blocked in the U.S. unless ByteDance is totally divested from the platform.

Rep. Young Kim (R-California), who voted for the ban, told Semafor, "The law is very clear, right?.... There is no gray area on this issue…. Go back to the details of the law. It's very clear the whole purpose was divesture outside of the ByteDance ownership. So we cannot give even 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent to ByteDance."

Similarly, Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), another Republican who voted for the ban, told Semafor, "The law says that TikTok has to show us categorically, unequivocally, that they do not have the ability to share Americans' data with the Communist Party of China."

Cornell University law professor Sarah Kreps told Semafor that "opponents of Trump would be on firm legal ground" if they challenged his executive order. And Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters that "we're living on borrowed time with TikTok."

Read Semafor's full article at this link.

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