By Gavin Boyle
Because a deal to divest TikTok from its Chinese-owned parent company has yet to be delivered, President Donald Trump decided to extend the deadline of the ban to provide for time for a deal to be made.
“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” said White House Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, per Deadline. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the same assurance that their data is safe and secure.”
The bill banning TikTok was originally signed in April 2024, providing the company a nine month window to procure a deal or be banned for American users. Throughout those nine months, TikTok refused to sell, believing the Supreme Court would rule that the ban went against the First Amendment. The court, however, did not rule in its favor, and TikTok went dark on Jan. 19.
Less than 24 hours later, though, Trump took office and issued a 75 day deadline extension, allowing the app to come back online for U.S. users. Since then, the company has become more serious about a sale of the platform with multiple groups working to secure a multi-billion dollar takeover. The entities that have made a bid to buy TikTok include Amazon, Oracle, Blackstone and a group of content creators led by YouTuber Mr. Beast.
The initial deadline extension expired in April, causing President Trump to sign another one which put off the ban until June. He has now passed a third deadline extension providing 90 more days for a deal to be made.
Related: Do Americans Support the TikTok Ban?
While it may seem like these extensions will continue on forever, experts agree that the Supreme Court has the power to put them to an end, which it may do if a deal does not develop soon.
“On the one hand, the president, of course, has to enforce the laws Congress has passed, but the TikTok case is a little interesting, because it isn’t just commerce,” John Acevedo, Emory University School of Law professor, told Spectrum News in April. “The law was targeting the fact that TikTok, as a Chinese corporation, poses security risks. As long as the president isn’t directly subverting the law, they do have leeway in how it’s implemented.”
“I could see there being a point where Congress could pass a new law giving him a firm deadline,” he added. “As of now, as long as this continues to be tied to foreign relations in the negotiations with China, he can probably delay it a fairly significant amount of time. There’s no bright line rule in the law, unfortunately, that says a president must start enforcing a law by a certain date.”
If a deal is not made, hopefully President Trump will take the danger TikTok poses to America seriously, rather than continuing to allow a Chinese-owned company to collects slews of data about the American public.
Read Next: Will the TikTok Ban Finally Go Ahead?
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