{"id":16358,"date":"2025-02-06T15:07:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T15:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16358"},"modified":"2025-02-06T15:07:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T15:07:22","slug":"trump-is-ignoring-the-law-and-congress-doesnt-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16358","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Ignoring the Law \u2014 and Congress Doesn\u2019t Care"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok. The legislation was unambiguous and was passed by large, bipartisan majorities<\/a> in both houses of Congress; it was affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court less than two weeks ago<\/a>. And for the most part, both Republicans and Democrats have sat quietly by as Trump has waved away their previously stated concerns, as well as the constitutional powers and institutional prerogatives of Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TikTok ban was supposed to be a critical national security response to the threat posed by the Chinese government and its control over an app with 170 million users in our country. Shortly before the law went into effect, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a speech on the Senate floor that \u201cwithout question, TikTok\u2019s lethal algorithm has cost the lives of many American kids<\/a>.\u201d He announced that there would \u201cbe no extensions, no concessions and no compromises for TikTok<\/a>.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On his first day in office, Trump declared that he would effectively ignore the law, and so TikTok lives. He appears to have engineered a short-term bailout for TikTok \u2014 whose app should have gone dark in the U.S. by now \u2014 after a wealthy donor supported the move<\/a> and amid some belief that TikTok helped him get reelected<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“he has created a precedent \u2014 that he can direct his own administration to ignore laws that he believes are politically or personally unhelpful to him \u2014 that ought to trouble Republicans and Democrats alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start, there is no real question about the state of the law on paper: Trump is breaking it.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“His executive order<\/a> was little more than a public declaration that he would ignore the law on the theory that it interfered with his ability \u201cto assess the national security and foreign policy implications.\u201d Not only did he direct the attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days, he also instructed the Justice Department<\/a> \u201cto issue a letter\u201d to each TikTok service provider \u201cstating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct\u201d during the 75-day period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Republican China hawks, like Cotton<\/a> and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley<\/a>, had taken the position that state attorneys general could enforce the law anyway, but Trump unilaterally decided that they were wrong about that too. His executive order purports to prevent \u201cattempted enforcement by the States or private parties\u201d and to grant the Justice Department \u201cexclusive authority to enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is generally not how executive orders are supposed to work. They are not supposed to be vehicles for the president to pick and choose which laws passed by Congress he wants to enforce \u2014 or which ones he wants to change by fiat.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/01\/28\/trump-tiktok-bailout-00200800<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok. The legislation was unambiguous and was passed by large, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress; it was affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court less than two weeks ago. And for the most part, both Republicans and Democrats have sat quietly by as Trump has waved away their previously stated concerns, as well as the constitutional powers and institutional prerogatives of Capitol Hill.
\nThe TikTok ban was supposed to be a critical national security response to the threat posed by the Chinese government and its control over an app with 170 million users in our country. Shortly before the law went into effect, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a speech on the Senate floor that \u201cwithout question, TikTok\u2019s lethal algorithm has cost the lives of many American kids.\u201d He announced that there would \u201cbe no extensions, no concessions and no compromises for TikTok.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“On his first day in office, Trump declared that he would effectively ignore the law, and so TikTok lives. He appears to have engineered a short-term bailout for TikTok \u2014 whose app should have gone dark in the U.S. by now \u2014 after a wealthy donor supported the move and amid some belief that TikTok helped him get reelected.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“he has created a precedent \u2014 that he can direct his own administration to ignore laws that he believes are politically or personally unhelpful to him \u2014 that ought to trouble Republicans and Democrats alike.<\/p>\n

To start, there is no real question about the state of the law on paper: Trump is breaking it.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“His executive order was little more than a public declaration that he would ignore the law on the theory that it interfered with his ability \u201cto assess the national security and foreign policy implications.\u201d Not only did he direct the attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days, he also instructed the Justice Department \u201cto issue a letter\u201d to each TikTok service provider \u201cstating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct\u201d during the 75-day period.<\/p>\n

Some Republican China hawks, like Cotton and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, had taken the position that state attorneys general could enforce the law anyway, but Trump unilaterally decided that they were wrong about that too. His executive order purports to prevent \u201cattempted enforcement by the States or private parties\u201d and to grant the Justice Department \u201cexclusive authority to enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is generally not how executive orders are supposed to work. They are not supposed to be vehicles for the president to pick and choose which laws passed by Congress he wants to enforce \u2014 or which ones he wants to change by fiat.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/01\/28\/trump-tiktok-bailout-00200800<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1104,864,542,429,431,660,221,200,1255,170],"class_list":["post-16358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-authoritarianism","tag-autocracy","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-democracy","tag-dictatorship","tag-donald-trump","tag-law","tag-separation-of-powers","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16359,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16358\/revisions\/16359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}