Congress
Trump’s TikTok Dance Is a Constitutional Farce
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.
The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.
The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.
“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”
In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.
The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.
“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.
When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.
“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”
She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.
In the more than three years since he became the top House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries has sometimes struggled to escape the shadow of his esteemed predecessor.
He stood alone in the limelight Wednesday, however, after engineering a feat of political hardball — a statewide vote paving the way for new Virginia congressional maps that could wipe out four GOP-held seats — that earned praise from Nancy Pelosi herself.
“I’m very proud,” the former speaker said in an interview, adding Jeffries has handled redistricting “fabulously.”
Tuesday’s vote was the culmination of months of lobbying from Jeffries to counter the mid-decade redistricting push launched by Trump and his allies in Texas. He barnstormed the country, pressing Democratic state legislators to match the GOP blow-for-blow.
Not all of his entreaties were successful, but he found partners in the Virginia state house who were willing to tee up a plan that would turn the Commonwealth’s 6-5 Democratic map into a 10-1 advantage. Jeffries backed the effort with $38 million in funding from a leadership-aligned group, House Majority Forward — the biggest single expenditure in the fight.
“Donald Trump and Republicans launched this gerrymandering war,” Jeffries told reporters Wednesday. “And we’ve made clear as Democrats that we’re going to finish it.”
Now that his bet has paid off, Jeffries has concrete proof of his political savvy — and muscle — as he moves to secure the speaker’s gavel in November.
That could help quiet concerns from some Democrats about whether the infamously careful Jeffries is the man for a moment when Trump is pulling every possible lever of his power to gain advantage for the GOP.
His allies say he has now proven he can match the Trump administration stride for stride in strategy and rhetoric.
“He did a damn good job, and we got it,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan said in an interview. “And if people are going to screw around, we’re not afraid to push back.”
Jeffries showed some swagger in the immediate aftermath Wednesday. During a morning news conference, he employed language more befitting of a battlefield than Capitol Hill.
Flanked by other top party leaders, he called DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene of Washington a “field general.” He said Democrats would “continue to fight one battle after another.” And Jeffries warned Republicans in Florida that if they embark on their own redistricting scheme, they will “F around and find out.”
Jeffries’ other favorite slogan of late is a direct jab at Trump: “Maximum warfare. Everywhere. All the time” — a quote from an August New York Times article attributed to a person close to the president describing the MAGA approach to redistricting.
The aggressive approach is not only aimed at Republicans, however, but at doubters in his own party who have compared him unfavorably to Pelosi — who spent the final four years of her speakership in daily battles with Trump, often getting the best of the president.
For better or worse, Jeffries is nowhere as well-known as Pelosi was at the height of her power. About a quarter of Americans polled last month by BLN had no idea who Jeffries is — significantly trailing his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer in name recognition. And those who do know him haven’t been especially impressed, even inside his own party: A November YouGov poll — taken shortly after the end of a record government shutdown — found that 23 percent of Democrats held an unfavorable view of the House minority leader.
But members of his caucus — who have been eager to aggressively counter GOP power grabs in the post-Pelosi era — showered their leader with praise Wednesday.
“Those of us who’ve been here with him over his career never had even a moment of regret,” Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is being targeted in a GOP-led redistricting effort in Missouri, said in an interview. “And he is going to lead us out of the wilderness, and I look forward to him becoming a speaker.”
Still, some in his caucus and on the campaign trail to join it — mainly on the progressive wing — have openly called on Jeffries to do more to counter Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans. That sentiment has not entirely faded.
“I think every leader should always be doing more,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said in an interview. “And he hears me say this all the time.”
In response to the demands, Jeffries pointed to the ousters of “toxic” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi in a brief interview as proof that Democratic lawmakers were getting results. Jeffries has also found major success using discharge petitions and other unorthodox legislative maneuvers to commandeer the House agenda from Speaker Mike Johnson.
“We’re going to continue to push back aggressively against the Trump administration,” he said. “There’s certainly more work to be done in that regard, and we’re continuing to lean in.”
Ramirez conceded that the redistricting wins have gone some way to proving his abilities as a party leader.
“Yesterday was a good step forward for him,” she said.
Progressives might still seek to mount an alternative to Jeffries if Democrats can retake the House majority in November. But most members of the caucus are mostly relieved that, with the four new Virginia seats in hand, they appear to have successfully parried the GOP redraw effort.
“I hope it means we have a greater likelihood of Speaker Jeffries,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said of the vote in his home state. “A strong leader with a clear agenda for the American people.”
Members on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are divided over whether President Donald Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation, chair James Comer said in an interview Wednesday.
Maxwell, who was deposed by the Oversight Committee as the sole convicted accomplice in the Epstein sex trafficking scheme, previously invoked her Fifth Amendment right in declining to answer the panel’s questions. Her lawyer has said that she would only speak if granted clemency — a power available solely to Trump, who has not ruled out the prospect of a pardon.
When asked whether he believed it was a favorable deal to issue a pardon in return for Maxwell’s testimony, Comer said, “A lot of people do.”
“My committee’s split on that,” he added, declining to name who on the panel supported granting a pardon. “I don’t speak for my committee.”
Comer himself wasn’t in favor. “I think it looks bad,” he said. “Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell.”
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Oversight panel’s top Democrat, emphasized that Committee Democrats unanimously opposed a pardon for Maxwell.
“That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors,” he said in an interview. “She is a known abuser. She is a known liar.”
“If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon that is … not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public,” he added. “It’s a part of a massive cover up.”
Pressure has been mounting on the Justice Department to pursue new prosecutions in the Epstein case, particularly after the United Kingdom arrested former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former ambassador Peter Mandelson for crimes related to their association with the disgraced financier.
The Oversight Committee’s probe’s work has been complicated by the fact that Maxwell is unwilling to answer questions and the central figure, Epstein, died behind bars years ago. Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus told Blue Light News in an extended interview last month that he believed there was a good chance his client would ultimately be pardoned by the president.
Markus said he reached out to then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche last year to help facilitate Maxwell’s interview with the Department of Justice. She was granted limited immunity for that two-day conversation and moved to a minimum security prison camp shortly afterward.
In her interview with Blanche, she emphasized that she had not seen Trump engage in impropriety with Epstein. The president’s relationship with Epstein has been the source of much intrigue, as Trump has maintained the two had a falling out years ago.
Garcia said the Oversight Committee should investigate why and how Maxwell was moved to a different facility after her interview with Blanche.
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