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| By The Free Press | PAID |
The Free Press is in D.C. for inauguration weekend, and the one thing dominating the conversation—even more than president-elect Trump—is TikTok.
On January 17, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Congress’s law forcing a divestiture of TikTok “is necessary to address [Congress’s] well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary” and thus did not violate the First Amendment. This meant that TikTok, since it had failed to secure a sale to a buyer not controlled by a “foreign adversary,” needed to shut down by Sunday.
On Saturday, TikTok announced that the app was going dark. Soon thereafter, news broke that president-elect Trump might even be open to nationalizing half the social-media app.
By Sunday around noon, after the previous night’s brief shutdown, Trump had promised to issue an executive order on Monday to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect.” TikTok announced that “In agreement with our service providers” the company “is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”
Whew.
Left unexplained was how Trump could do this given the law’s plain language, which allows the president to grant such a reprieve for 90 days only if he can certify "evidence of significant progress" toward a sale. And that’s a big reason that, even before Trump takes office, disagreements are breaking out between Republican national-security hawks and tech-world interests that—for the moment—seem to have Trump’s ear. Of TikTok’s restoration of service in the U.S., Senator Tom Cotton said: “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs. Think about it.”
In other words, TikTok may be pursuing a perilous path—regardless of any assurances Trump has just issued. Some are warning this all ends with a Meta monopoly on apps like TikTok.
What will happen next? For now, TikTok has restored service and posted the following message to its users, crediting Trump:
“As a result of president Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S."
In a frank and freewheeling conversation with The Free Press on Saturday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) weighed in on the fast-moving furor over TikTok’s legal status.
The below reflects Senator Cruz’s comments on TikTok’s future.
Bari Weiss: If TikTok is a national security threat, how can that national security concern be waived for 90 days?
Senator Cruz: Because the statute provides that it can be waived for 90 days. And the statute provides that it can be waived in order to facilitate a sale. So I don’t know what Trump is or isn’t going to do on this. If we are sitting here 91 days from now and TikTok is still live and China is still owning and controlling it, that will be a very dangerous situation because the Chinese communist government uses TikTok—number one for espionage, and number two to push propaganda and very harmful content to our children that pushes self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, antisemitism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. It is a potent propaganda tool. The Chinese variant of TikTok, for their kids—number one, the hours they can use it are limited, and number two, they’re pushing things like math and hard work and discipline.
Weiss: It’s like Khan Academy.
Cruz: It really is astonishingly harmful. So their kids are studying calculus and our kids are being told to chew Tide Pods. That’s a problem.
Watch Senator Ted Cruz sound off on TikTok above. And watch Bari’s whole conversation with Ted Cruz here
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