President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok operational in the U.S. for an additional 90 days, allowing his administration more time to facilitate a deal that would transition the social media platform to American ownership.
This marks the third instance in which Trump has extended the deadline. The initial extension occurred via an executive order on January 20, his inaugural day in office, after the platform temporarily went offline due to a national ban that was sanctioned by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The second extension took place in April when White House officials believed they were on the brink of finalizing a deal to establish TikTok as a new entity with U.S. ownership. However, the deal collapsed after China withdrew following Trump’s tariff announcement.
The number of times Trump can, or will, continue to extend the ban remains uncertain as negotiations for a deal concerning TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, persist. Despite the lack of a definitive legal foundation for these extensions, there have been no legal contests to dispute them. Having acquired over 15 million followers on TikTok since joining last year, Trump attributes the platform with aiding his popularity among younger voters. In January, he expressed a fondness for TikTok, stating he has a “warm spot” for the app.
As the extensions continue, it appears less and less likely that TikTok will be banned in the U.S. any time soon. The decision to keep TikTok alive through an executive order has received some scrutiny, but it has not faced a legal challenge in court – unlike many of Trump’s other executive orders.
Jeremy Goldman, analyst at Emarketer, called TikTok’s U.S situation a “deadline purgatory.”
The whole thing “is starting to feel less like a ticking clock and more like a looped ringtone. This political Groundhog Day is starting to resemble the debt ceiling drama: a recurring threat with no real resolution.”
For now, TikTok continues to function for its 170 million users in the U.S., and tech giants Apple, Google and Oracle were persuaded to continue to offer and support the app, on the promise that Trump’s Justice Department would not use the law to seek potentially steep fines against them.
Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans said they supported a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Roughly one-third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they weren’t sure.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Trump administration is once again “flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks” posed by a China-controlled TikTok.
“An executive order can’t sidestep the law, but that’s exactly what the president is trying to do,” Warner added.
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