FOIA.
The Justice Department is advancing a radical theory of presidential power, nullifying Congress’s foreign affairs powers whenever the president finds them inconvenient.
These letters provide a legal rationale (if it can be called that) for the Trump administration’s commitment not to enforce the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA), the divestment-or-ban law that the Supreme Court upheld in January. The letters make two central claims, both of which are astonishing in their breadth and implications for executive power.
- Akamai Technologies
- Amazon
- Apple Inc.
- Digital Realty Trust, Inc.
- Fastly, Inc.
- Google, Inc.
- LG Electronics USA, Inc.
- Microsoft Corporation
- Oracle Corporation
- T-Mobile US, Inc.
ELI5 please, went over my head as I am not following this issue.
Several years ago at this point, Congress passed a bill, and that bill was signed into law by the President. What that law says, is that TikTok cannot continue under Chinese ownership. Byte Dance either have to sell the American video app business so that it is controlled by Americans, or they have to shutdown Tiktok.
Byte Dance did not sell the business, so under the law TikTok has to shutdown. This law was lawyered all the way to the supreme court, and the court said it’s a valid law, and must be followed.
Despite all of these facts, the law is not actually being followed. And Tiktok is still operating in the United States. There is no legally valid reason for it to do so. President Trump has issued extension after extension, even though he has no legal authority to do so.
The latest here is the top law enforcement officer in the US telling the app stores, “yes we know it’s illegal to keep Tiktok in your app store, but I am pinky promising we won’t go after you.”