Congress

Trump’s TikTok Dance Is a Constitutional Farce

Published

4 days ago

September 19, 2025

In January, just days before the Supreme Court unanimously upheld Congress’ ban on TikTok and Donald Trump returned to the White House, Sen. Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor and warned the country that the “lethal algorithm” in the Beijing-based social media company’s app “has cost the lives of many American kids.” “Let me be crystal clear,” the Arkansas Republican said. “There will be no extensions, no concessions and no compromises for TikTok.”

Eight months later, the Trump administration has just given TikTok and the Chinese government another extension, another concession and another compromise. On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order providing a fourth “enforcement delay” of Congress’ ban — now extending until December 16.

It’s just the latest development in a saga that served as an early warning for what was to come in the second Trump term: a president eager to steamroll Capitol Hill and a GOP-controlled Congress happy to oblige him. When it comes to Trump’s handling of the TikTok ban, it has, at best, scrambled the constitutional order, and, at worst, seen the administration openly flout a law passed by the American public’s elected representatives in order to advance the political, personal and financial interests of Trump and his allies.

On Friday, Trump is set to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping to agree to the terms of a proposed deal that is supposed to finally end the TikTok drama and bring all parties into compliance with the law. The deal reportedly involves some sort of sale to a consortium of investors that may include Trump allies and billionaires like Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen, though the structure and legality of the agreement remain unclear. Indeed, whatever happens Friday is not likely to end the matter.

The law passed by Congress and signed into law under Joe Biden requires TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to divest at least 80 percent of its financial stake in the company and also precludes “any cooperation” concerning “the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing.” Earlier this week, however, a Chinese cybersecurity official said that the framework includes “licensing the [TikTok] algorithm and other intellectual property rights.” Depending on the specifics, that licensing arrangement, with its “lethal algorithm” intact, could run afoul of the law. What then?

Some Republican China hawks on Capitol Hill insisted this week that they will closely scrutinize the deal when the terms become clearer, but there has been almost no pushback from Republicans over Trump’s decision to unilaterally ignore the TikTok ban all year — and far less from Democrats than one might have expected.

Cotton did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s continuing refusal to enforce the law, despite being a once-voluble critic of TikTok and the Chinese government’s control of the app and arguing that the app has already “cost the lives of many American kids.”

A representative for Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told me that if I wanted to hear from him on the matter, I was free to track him down in the Capitol. Hawley previously defended the ban and warned of the dangers of TikTok in January, shortly before Trump returned to office and announced that the administration would simply ignore it. “It’s not just a national security threat,” Hawley said of TikTok at the time. “It’s a personal security threat.”

Trump himself once shared these concerns. In 2020, he signed an executive order declaring that TikTok’s data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

That, of course, was before Trump courted a billionaire donor with a stake in TikTok and before Trump decided that TikTok had helped him win his 2024 reelection bid. Last month, the White House created an official TikTok account — a further sign, if one was needed, of the Trump administration’s ongoing disregard for the ban passed by Congress.

Meanwhile, Trump has benefited from an apparent lack of coordination and urgency on the Democratic side of the aisle.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer voted for the ban but later opposed immediate implementation of the law in January and endorsed a legislative extension before the law went into effect. That did not pass, but Trump has kept TikTok alive anyway without apparent legal authority to do so. Schumer did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s series of TikTok executive orders this year.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, for his part, opposed the TikTok ban in the first place but said that he is waiting to see more about the deal before rendering a final opinion.

“I’m working to make sure this deal does not lead to the censorship of free speech and will protect the millions of content creators who rely on TikTok,” he told Blue Light News Magazine.

The whole situation has no apparent precedent in the annals of American law.

Sure, there are lots of laws on the books, and the federal government cannot enforce them all. That is why federal law enforcement relies heavily on priority-setting and careful attention to the opportunity costs of pursuing some crimes over others.

The Trump administration has made its agenda clear, and the ramifications have not been surprising. If, for example, you insist that federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors focus almost entirely on illegal immigration, then you are going to have fewer investigations and prosecutions for white-collar crime and financial fraud — which is exactly what is happening now.

In February, Trump announced that he was “pausing” enforcement of the foreign anti-bribery statute — a law that he notoriously hates — and in June, the Justice Department issued a memo that dramatically narrowed the circumstances under which the administration would enforce the law. In less overt fashion, the Justice Department has also significantly de-prioritized public corruption investigations, which Trump also hates.

Reasonable minds can often disagree about which federal laws merit the Justice Department’s focus at any given point in time, but the TikTok ban stands apart both for its public and political salience, as well as its simplicity.

The law passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and was unanimously affirmed on constitutional grounds by the Supreme Court. In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, the country is also now engaged in a national, rolling public debate about the polarizing and radicalizing dangers of social media, particularly on America’s youth.

The TikTok ban is also not subtle or particularly complicated to implement. It states that the Justice Department “shall conduct investigations related to potential violations” of the ban by tech companies, including third-party service providers, and that the Justice Department “shall pursue enforcement” if a violation has occurred. The fines that are supposed to apply are massive, potentially adding up to billions of dollars.

Instead of abiding by this provision, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote letters to Apple, Google and other tech companies earlier this year informing them that she was effectively immunizing them for any violations of the law. She argued that enforcing the ban would “interfere with the execution of the President’s constitutional duties to take care of the national security and foreign affairs of the United States.”

Left unsaid was how this decision would comply with the president’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” how it could be squared with Congress’ constitutional lawmaking authority, or why we should all be okay with the administration unilaterally disregarding the American public’s interest in having the executive branch enforce the laws passed by their elected representatives.

The TikTok ban may or may not be good on the merits. You may hate it or you may love it, but it is the law of the land — and it has been all year.

If the ban was a bad idea, then Congress could have repealed the law or passed a legislative extension, but neither of those things has happened. Instead, pretty much every politician in Washington — on both sides of the aisle — has effectively decided that the law can be flagrantly ignored because of TikTok’s popularity and the potential electoral fallout that could result from antagonizing the app’s relatively young user base.

This is not how laws are supposed to work in this country.

Congress is supposed to pass them, and the president is supposed to enforce them. There are no constitutional carve-outs for popular social media apps or for companies that helped you win your election.

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.

Congress

How Arizona voters are set to put Mike Johnson in a corner

Published

10 hours ago

September 23, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

Speaker Mike Johnson is about to confront one of his biggest leadership tests yet, courtesy of voters in southwest Arizona.

They are highly likely to elect a new Democratic House member in a special election Tuesday. That would-be lawmaker, Adelita Grijalva, told Blue Light News she plans to become the 218th and clinching supporter of a bipartisan effort to force public disclosure of federal investigative files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s a controversy that Johnson has been working desperately to snuff out in recent months on behalf of President Donald Trump, who has called the effort a “Democrat hoax.” Now he will have to decide whether to pull rank and settle a fight that has divided his conference or let the matter play out on the House floor.

Grijalva — who is heavily favored to succeed her late father, Raúl Grijalva, in a district Trump lost by 22 points — said she will be pleased to force the issue. She would be eligible to sign immediately after she is sworn in, likely early next month.

“This is as much about fulfilling Congress’ duty as a constitutional check on this administration as it is about demanding justice for survivors,” she said. “The days of turning a blind eye to Trump must end.”

Grijalva’s signature would complete a process launched by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) after the Epstein controversy exploded over the summer, cornering Republican leaders between Trump and GOP voters who have insisted on transparency in the government’s handling of the abuser.

The discharge petition allows Massie and Khanna to sidestep Johnson, who has instead supported a House Oversight Committee probe into Epstein. It would force a floor vote requiring publication of all Justice Department records related to the sex offender, with limited exceptions to protect victims.

Johnson has options, however. He can seek to block the discharge effort in the Rules Committee, which he nominally controls, but he has faced a string of mutinies there over Epstein in recent weeks. Or he can let the bipartisan Epstein bill proceed to the floor, where it’s very likely to pass, extending the controversy and handing the hot potato to Senate GOP leaders.

Asked last week about the dilemma, Johnson said he wasn’t ready to make a call.

“We haven’t talked about any of that,” he said in a brief interview before leaving the Capitol Friday, adding that the discharge vote was a “moot point.” He referenced a House vote this month that directed the Oversight panel to continue its probe without explicitly requiring the Justice Department to release the files.

“The Oversight Committee is working overtime on this,” Johnson said. “They’re releasing every single page of documents every time they receive one. I mean, it’s all out in the open. It genuinely is a moot point.”

Behind closed doors, Johnson has told Republicans in recent weeks he wouldn’t force the Rules Committee to short-circuit the discharge petition. Johnson and GOP leaders have also acknowledged in private that a floor vote is likely if the petition gets 218 signatures, as POLITICO reported earlier this month.

House Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) also said in a brief interview earlier this month that her panel would not intervene in the discharge petition and block a floor vote on Massie-Khanna bill.

White House operatives have been aware for weeks that the petition was on track to receive the necessary 218 signatures without any additional GOP support, according to two Trump officials granted anonymity to comment on internal dealings. Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) became the 217th supporter after winning a special election earlier this month. Grijalva’s victory has not been in much doubt.

Trump has stewed over the matter. Earlier this month, he argued on the Truth Social that DOJ “has done its job” and “given everything requested of them,” adding that it’s “time to end the Democrat Epstein Hoax.”

Despite White House pressure, three Republican women — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.) — have declined to remove their names from the discharge petition. They have cast their decisions to sign as a gesture of support for Epstein’s victims and for transparency.

“These are some of the most courageous women I’ve ever met,” Greene said after meeting some of them earlier this month. “This shouldn’t have been a battle, and unfortunately, it has been one.”

If the bipartisan bill goes to the floor, other House Republicans who didn’t sign onto the discharge effort are expected to join the three women in supporting the measure — possibly many more.

That could ramp up pressure on Senate Republicans to take action, though Majority Leader John Thune has so far beaten back several Democratic efforts to surface the Epstein issue in that chamber. He has declined to say how the Senate might act on the Massie-Khanna measure.

Some Republicans have recognized that burying the issue could be untenable for party leaders.

“I don’t think there’s too many options,” Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters when asked about the House discharge petition in late August. “I think you have to take it up, right?”

Nicholas Wu and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Congress

Nancy Mace and Cory Mills are still squabbling over censure vote

Published

21 hours ago

September 22, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

A failed effort to punish Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar for comments about Charlie Kirk led to more squabbling Monday among two Republicans.

Rep. Nancy Mace attacked Rep. Cory Mills for voting against the measure with a series of social media posts, calling attention to previous reports alleging that the Florida lawmaker has exaggerated his war record.

Mace, who is running for governor of South Carolina, has been feuding with Mills since he became one of four Republicans to join all Democrats to kill her censure measure, which fell just one vote short of passing on Wednesday.

She suggested in her social media posts that Mills should be removed from his position on the House Armed Services Committee for lying about his Army service.

“Cory Mills never spent over 20 years in the Iraq War or Middle East fighting terrorists,” Mace wrote. “This guy definitely has a screw loose and shouldn’t be on Foreign Affairs or the House Armed Services Committee.”

Mills said he voted against censoring Omar on First Amendment grounds. “At the end of the day, I’m a constitutionalist,” Mills wrote on X after blocking Mace’s censure vote.

The vote ended the effort to strip Omar of her committee assignments over her criticism of the late conservative political activist. The Minnesota lawmaker strenuously denied directly making the comments cited by Mace, and House Democrats rallied behind her.

Neither Mace nor Mills responded Monday to requests for comment.

Mills responded on social media with a handful of posts defending his military service and past statements, even posting a lettersigned by a fellow service member from his time in Iraq to respond to attacks that have been leveled previously against the Florida lawmaker.

“On multiple occasions Team-21 was attacked by insurgents with improvised explosive devices (IEDs and EFPs),” the letter reads. “Cory was present for two of these attacks.”

The letter goes on to defend Mills’ statements that he had been “blown up” on two missions in Iraq, incidents that Mace has specifically questioned.

“I understand that there may be a question as to what “blown up” means to the military contractors that served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the letter states. It refers (in contractor speak) to being in a motorcade struck by improvised explosive devices. It does not necessarily mean that you are physically “blown up” or even seriously wounded.”

Mace dismissed his responses in follow-up posts.

“This post doesn’t say or prove anything,” Mace replied on X. “This is what he does. Blows hot air hoping no one will notice. And you’re not allowed to question all of his many lies.”

Congress

Trump to meet with Democratic leaders ahead of shutdown deadline

Published

22 hours ago

September 22, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump will meet this week with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss government funding ahead of a looming shutdown deadline, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans, which have not been publicly announced.

It was not immediately clear when this week the sitdown will happen; it’s also unclear if the top Republican congressional leaders will participate. Both the House and Senate are out of session this week, with funding set to expire at midnight Sept. 30.

Republicans and Trump have been pushing for a “clean” seven-week stopgap spending bill, while Democrats have introduced an alternative measure that would extend government funding for four weeks while attaching other demands.

The meeting comes after Schumer and Jeffries, frustrated with GOP congressional leaders refusing their two previous attempts to set up a meeting, sent a letter to Trump on Saturday asking for a sitdown. Trump told reporters over the weekend that he would be happy to meet but warned “I don’t think it’s going to have any impact.”

Democratic leaders, under intense pressure from their base to mount a visible resistance to Trump, are angling to make the government shutdown fight about health care. They are pushing for concessions from Republicans on an extension of health insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as a rollback of the Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s recent domestic policy megabill.

But Republicans have warned they won’t agree to attach any of the Democratic demands to the stopgap bill. While there is some GOP support for an extension of the expiring subsidies, party leaders argue that is an issue to tackle later this year.

Punchbowl News first reported the planned meeting.

Myah Ward contributed to this report.