Trump Signs Executive Order To Give Tiktok Extension

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to delay enforcement of a TikTok ban by 75 days, hours after his swearing in ceremony and a day after a federal ban took effect.

His order directs his attorney general to not levy fines against app stores and service providers that continue helping TikTok stay up.

Trump will also order his administration to “issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct that occurred.”

Experts and some Republican lawmakers have said the measures could be legally dubious.

Signing the order on his first day was a theatrical snub to Republican China hawks who have maintained the app must be sold over concerns that TikTok’s Beijing-based owner ByteDance poses a threat to national security.

Earlier in the day, TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration, seated next to Tulsi Gabbard, who is nominated to serve as director of national intelligence. The company also sponsored a Washington party to celebrate the inauguration.

The executive order capped off a tumultuous weekend. The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the sell-or ban law. Then TikTok preemptively shut down Saturday, despite not being required to under the ban. It restored service to U.S. customers a day later after Trump promised he’d pass a executive order to save it.

Trump had vowed to intervene to save TikTok, and over the weekend proposed in a post on Truth Social a “joint venture” in which “the U.S. gets a 50% stake”.

On Monday, Trump reiterated his idea for partial government ownership of TikTok, saying “

“If I do the deal for the united states, then I think we should get half.”

He added that, “TikTok is worthless, worthless if I don’t approve it. It has to close.”

Trump said the deal had to be reached in 90 days, a deadline not written in the order he signed.

The joint venture Trump described would raise First Amendment concerns and likely require agreement from China, according to Alan Rozenshtein, a former national security attorney at the Justice Department and University of Minnesota law professor. Trump said as part of its stake, the U.S. would “police” TikTok “a little bit or a lot.”

“The nature of government ownership of a social media platform would raise truly insane First Amendment problems,” Rozenshtein said on the POLITICO Tech podcast. “What I worry is that we have now created a situation … where we have just given the leader of China huge leverage over American foreign policy because of some short-form video app.”

Trump and Xi have spoken about TikTok on a call ahead of his inauguration.

Beijing suggested on Monday that it was open to working with Trump but would let TikTok and ByteDance, which have refused to consider a sale, decide.

TikTok’s fate has roiled the Republican party less than a year after Congress passed the law to force its sale or ban with overwhelming bipartisan support.

On Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to introduce a bill to repeal the law. Their solution would require a filibuster-proof majority to pass it – a herculean task.

Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say whether she would enforce the law in her confirmation hearings.

Republican China hawks have said they would settle for nothing less than a total split from ByteDance. However, lawmakers are split over whether Trump should delay enforcement now that the ban is in effect.

“The upheld law creates a clear and unambiguous pathway for TikTok to continue operating in the US: a full divestment that cuts the [Chinese Communist Party]out,” House Select China Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) said Sunday. “The time is now for ByteDance to come to the table, and if they do, I’m confident that President Trump will ensure TikTok is sold to a company the American people can trust.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) toldNBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that Congress “will enforce the law” and that there must be “a full divestiture” of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, not just a 50% sale.

“The law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works,” the speaker added, noting Trump allies Kevin O’Leary and Elon Musk have separately discussed possible bids. O’Leary and billionaire Frank McCourt met with Moolenaar Sunday about TikTok.

Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) sent a warning to service providers on Sunday that if they continue to host TikTok in their app stores, they could find themselves in serious legal and financial trouble.

Apple and Google were still not hosting the app Monday even after Trump demanded that U.S. companies “not let TikTok stay dark,” while Oracle reportedly turned TikTok servers back on. The law punishes them with a $5,000 daily fine for every user that accesses TikTok — a sum that could balloon into trillions given the 170 million American users.

But it’s unclear who would bring those charges in lieu of the Justice Department — possibly shareholders or state attorneys general — and if there’s a way to do that without inflicting massive damage on the American economy. The penalties would be enough to wipe out the $3.4 trillion market cap of Apple, the most valuable company in the world, in mere days.

The issue is splintering more than Congress. Trump ally and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, his executive order went too far in disregarding the other branches of government. “Today he becomes president of the United States, which is a republic, and republics do not have kings,” Lonsdale wrote in an op-ed. “In America, we abide by the rule of law. Even when the law comes for a popular app—TikTok—that the MAGA king likes.”