Trump Issues An Executive Order Delaying TikTok Ban.

President Donald Trump suspended Tiktok’s ban for 75 days with an executive order on his first day in office.

According to Trump’s order, the state attorney general “shall not take any action to enforce the Act” passed by Congress.

This order not only pauses the ban on TikTok but also shields the app’s parent company.

According to the order’s text, this will allow Trump’s administration adequate time “to pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans.”

Under the order, the justice department is also instructed to send letters stating that “there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred during the above-specified period.”

These letters are to be sent out to significant tech firms that collaborate with TikTok, such as Apple, Google, Akamai, and Oracle.

Trump suggested that the US would hold “a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” with TikTok before his inauguration, and as he signed the order, he reaffirmed that possibility.

When asked by a reporter what the aim of the executive order was, Trump said the order “just gave me the right to sell it or close it,” adding that he had yet to decide on the right path forward.

Reactions to the order

During his first term in office, Trump attacked TikTok and attempted to have it banned, but after his popularity on the platform and his use of it during the previous presidential campaign, he has recently shifted his stance.

However, Republicans in Congress remained loyal to their stance, and a bipartisan measure was signed by Joe Biden last April.

This measure required TikTok to sell its assets to a US-based business by January 19 of this year, and according to the law, if a sale is underway, the deadline may be extended by ninety days.

After Trump’s executive order, TikTok turned its servers back on and notified every user, attributing TikTok’s comeback to Trump, and so did Akamai and Oracle restore their web support.

Constitutional historian Alan Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School stated that attempting to prolong the law’s start date and shield corporations from responsibility does not alter an act of Congress.

“Those actions do not stop the law from being in effect. And it does not stop, let’s say, Oracle, from violating the law, which, as far as I can tell, it is doing right now,” Rozenshtein stated.

But Google and Apple, on the other hand, are at bay because restoring a TikTok owned by ByteDance to app stores would be against the law, and doing so might result in billions of dollars in fines.