The Congressional Ban On Chinese Control Of TikTok Will Stand: So Sez The Supremes. Yikes.

Of course, if Congress now feels it "got it wrong", in a bipartisan effort (under Mr. Biden -- and one Tangerine 1.0 tried to achieve by executive fiat, BTW). . . it may amend or repeal the law in the coming session. You see, it is the province of judges and Justices to simply read the law as written -- not rewrite it. Here's the full 27 page opinion, just published.

So the Sunday deadline is now real. TikTok will be closed to US users, unless the parent ByteDance can divest those assets by Sunday morning. [We've never used -- and don't now use TikTok, at all -- since we long knew Chinese state affiliated actors likely have access to everything one writes or posts there.] And to be clear, Tangerine 1.0's order (struck as beyond his Constitutional powers in 2020) was for the most venial of reasons: the kids embarrassed his rally in Tulsa.

But this time, it was an Act of Congress, firmly rooted in national security arguments -- and bipartisan at that. Here's the opinion, and a bit, below in blue. This all is not likely the last word, as Tangerine 2.0 now wants his 13 million TikTok followers to remain enthralled -- and some consortium of non-China billionaires may buy the US assets, and keep it open -- independently. Stay tuned -- but I'd expect some hot-footed M&A / divestiture activity this weekend:

. . .[W]e are conscious that the cases before us involve new technologies with transformative capabilities. This challenging new context counsels caution on our part. As Justice Frankfurter advised 80 years ago in considering the application of established legal rules to the “totally new problems” raised by the airplane and radio, we should take care not to “embarrass the future.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U. S. 292, 300 (1944).

That caution is heightened in these cases, given the expedited time allowed for our consideration. Our analysis must be understood to be narrowly focused in light of these circumstances. . . .

Because the Act itself designates applications operated by “ByteDance, Ltd.” and “TikTok,” prohibitions as to those applications take effect 270 days after the Act’s enactment—January 19, 2025. The Act exempts a foreign adversary controlled application from the prohibitions if the application undergoes a “qualified divestiture.” §2(c)(1). A “qualified divestiture” is one that the President determines will result in the application “no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” §2(g)(6)(A). . . .

[Please forgive me my very jumbled and chaotic graphic here -- there is much conflicted history to consider in the shaping of today's chapter in the long, and frankly weird. . . narrative.] What a strange reversal of positions we've seen here: Tangerine 2.0 seeing a way to grease his palm as he takes 1600 Penn back. Count on that being his motivation for now championing the platform. Hell, he may even try to get Truth Social to be the leveraged bidder for the assets. Damn. As I say, stay tuned.

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