Trump Defies the Law to Keep TikTok Alive

One of Donald Trump’s first acts in office is saving TikTok from a ban passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. The problem: There is no provision in that law that gives the president the power to suspend it. TikTok is still illegal and remains available only by Trump’s say-so.

Politico explains:

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—whose app should have gone dark in the U.S. by now—after a wealthy donor supported the move and amid some belief that TikTok helped him get reelected.

The president is responsible for executing the laws and has no separate power to suspend them. Notice that Trump’s obvious motives are corrupt and authoritarian. He reversed his stand on TikTok in response to the pleas of Republican mega-donor Jeff Yass, and because TikTok favors him politically.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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