Trump reportedly considering executive order to circumvent TikTok ban

President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering an executive order to allow TikTok to continue operating despite an ongoing legal ban until new owners are found, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The possible executive order, reported earlier by the Washington Post, is under discussion as TikTok faces a Sunday deadline to be banned in the United States unless it finds a new owner. The popular video sharing app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Republicans have said for years that they view the app, downloaded on millions of smartphones, as a national security risk. It has become a rare issue that unites the two parties in Congress.

If the Supreme Court upholds the law, which will ban the app unless ByteDance sells it to a non-Chinese company, special treatment from Mr. Trump may be the only way for TikTok to continue operating in the United States. United in the short term. The law requires app store operators like Apple and Google and cloud computing providers to stop distributing TikTok in the United States.

An executive order could attempt to order the government not to implement the law or to delay its implementation to reach a deal, a measure that previous presidents have used to challenge laws. It’s unclear whether an executive order would survive legal challenges or persuade app stores and cloud computing companies to take steps that could expose them to huge penalties.

Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department and professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said an executive order should be “taken with a medium-sized rock of salt.” . Such an order is not law, he said, and would not legally alter legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Biden.

Although there is speculation that the application will still work if it has already been downloaded, the law also affects Internet hosting companies like Oracle and other cloud computing providers, and it is unclear how the Video loading times and app features may react.