Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
There’s a good chance that the Chinese company ByteDance still controls the TikTok algorithm, so Trump’s deal does not solve the national security concerns, yet it makes some of Trump’s friends a lot of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jvd4avDcys
“A coalition of investors from Oracle, MGX, and Silver Lake has agreed to buy TikTok and run an American version of the company, separate from ByteDance’s ownership.
“The deal is aimed at helping TikTok comply with a federal law, which banned the app in the United States in January out of concern that Beijing could use it to gain access to Americans’ sensitive data or to spread propaganda,” reports The New York Times. President Donald Trump “has delayed enforcement of the ban repeatedly. The Thursday order gives negotiators until mid-January to finalize the deal.”
MGX is technically not American; it’s an investment firm that was established by the government of Abu Dhabi in 2024. Emiratis tend to have very strong ties with China.
…
it’s not clear that part-Emirati owners will be all that much better, or that the Trump administration’s frequent insistence on meddling in private business affairs sets a good precedent.”
https://reason.com/2025/09/26/tiktoks-sorta-american-owners/
“Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has run roughshod over Congress and its constitutional prerogatives. Trump’s decision to ignore the TikTok ban on his first day in office may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but it foreshadowed a series of far more aggressive moves to usurp much of lawmakers’ constitutional authority: dismantling congressionally-created agencies, redirecting congressionally appropriated funds and implementing a massive tax hike on the American public in the form of Trump’s chaotic tariff regime.
The vast majority of this was made possible by congressional Republicans, who have largely turned a blind eye to all of Trump’s gambits, and by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, who have handed Trump a series of victories this year in his wide-ranging efforts to both unilaterally slash the federal government while dramatically expanding the powers of the presidency.
The acquiescence to Trump’s TikTok reprieve this year has been a far more bipartisan affair, but it has been a constitutional farce all the same, and it is not over yet.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/19/tiktok-trump-xi-deal-law-column-00571832
Criminals can steal your car’s key fob’s signal and use that to steal your car. This is causing insurance rates to go up. Some kids do this because Tik Tok teaches them how to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sTqw0Vfg-A
“In 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which prohibited operating or hosting “a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)” within the United States. The law required TikTok to find a buyer by January 19, 2025, or else shut down operations within the United States.
Ultimately, neither happened…Trump issued the executive order on his first day, “instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today.” He has since issued two additional orders further extending the deadline
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“But no president has the authority to simply postpone the enforcement of a law passed by Congress. The fact that Congress seems content to let Trump decline to enforce it does not obviate the law itself. And for that reason, if Congress will not repeal the law, then it should insist Trump enforce it.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/07/either-repeal-or-enforce-but-ideally-repeal-the-tiktok-ban/
“President Donald Trump will extend the deadline for TikTok to divest its U.S. assets by another 90 days, the White House said Tuesday, marking the third time enforcement of the 2024 law has been punted.”
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“In Congress, Republicans are increasingly frustrated by the repeated extensions, but are still granting Trump space to negotiate a deal.
“We voted that it should be banned, and I look forward to the day that they can’t continue to propagate Chinese talking points,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) on Tuesday before the announcement.
Few lawmakers have been willing to voice their frustrations publicly, wary of crossing the president, even as they’re frustrated by a TikTok negotiation that shows little sign of movement.
One exception is Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the head of the House select committee on China, who warned in a public op-ed in March that nothing short of complete divestment from Beijing would suffice.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/trump-extends-tiktok-deadline-again-00411579
“A deal to spin off the U.S. assets of TikTok was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve the deal following President Donald Trump’s tariffs announcement this week, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Trump on Friday extended by 75 days a deadline for ByteDance to sell U.S. assets of the popular short video app to a non-Chinese buyer, or face a ban that was supposed to have taken effect in January under a 2024 law.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-tiktok-sale-deadline-looms-141008550.html
“Across Washington, China hawks are trying to draw a hard line against any plan that would let ByteDance maintain a degree of control of the company or insight into its underlying technology, both of which are banned by the bipartisan 2024 law passed by Congress.
But Trump is already violating that law by allowing the app to stay online. And if his promised deal goes through, Congress has almost no leverage to stop it: The law leaves final approval in the president’s hands, and lawmakers can’t take him to court even if he violates its clear meaning.
“Congress does not have standing to sue,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He said a lawmaker can typically only file suit if they’re personally harmed by a violation.
An illegal TikTok-Oracle deal blessed by Trump would immediately join a host of White House actions that flout settled law. The Trump administration is being sued for breaking laws around deportations, civil-service protections, federal spending rules, government data-sharing and more — all of which are now playing out in federal courts across the country.
When it comes to TikTok, however, even the courts offer little recourse to enforce the 2024 law, which the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed in January.
The law requires a “qualified divestiture” of TikTok — an arrangement where ByteDance gives up all control of both the company and the powerful algorithm that runs TikTok’s video-sharing service. It can retain at most a 20 percent financial stake in the company.
The Oracle deal under discussion — a modification of a prior arrangement between TikTok and Oracle, where U.S. user data was stored on Oracle-run servers while ByteDance retained a role in TikTok’s operations — would likely flunk one or more of those tests. But it’s Trump who is ultimately empowered to declare an agreement acceptable.
“The president gets to decide what constitutes a qualified divestiture,” said Michael Sobolik, a former national security staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. “That is completely up to him, even though the contours of what needs to happen in a divestiture are spelled out in the law.”
China hawks on Capitol Hill are rattling their sabers at Trump, warning against any deal that keeps ByteDance in the room.
“The law is clear,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, wrote on Tuesday. “Any deal must eliminate Chinese influence and control over the app to safeguard our interests.”
But Moolenaar and other lawmakers have few options to stop Trump once he decides to proceed. And lawyers say Washington’s sense of powerlessness is compounded by the fact that the White House is already ignoring the TikTok law.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/trumps-tiktok-oracle-deal-could-break-the-law-but-nobody-can-stop-him-00242107
“The Chinese government and Chinese companies do not enjoy the benefits of free speech guaranteed by our Constitution. But American citizens still do, including the often forgotten right to hear and receive information, even from the most suspicious sources. In his seemingly reluctant and “admittedly tentative” concurring opinion in TikTok v. Garland, Justice Neil Gorsuch alluded to the principle and its history while acknowledging the unique technical and security challenges presented by TikTok: “Speaking with and in favor of a foreign adversary is one thing. Allowing a foreign adversary to spy on Americans is another.””
https://reason.com/2025/01/22/tiktok-or-not-americans-still-have-a-right-to-receive-communist-propaganda/
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to delay enforcement of a TikTok ban by 75 days, hours after his swearing in ceremony and a day after a federal ban took effect.
His order directs his attorney general to not levy fines against app stores and service providers that continue helping TikTok stay up.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/20/trump-tiktok-extension-executive-order-00199545