Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Free Speech With TikTok Ruling

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld Congress’s ban on TikTok, marking the end of the popular video-sharing platform’s presence in the United States.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court wrote in its per curiam. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch added that while the case’s expedited timeframe had left him less than certain about its details and its outcome, “the question we face today is not the law’s wisdom, only its constitutionality.”

“Whether this law will succeed in achieving its ends, I do not know,” Gorsuch wrote. “A determined foreign adversary may just seek to replace one lost surveillance application with another. As time passes and threats evolve, less dramatic and more effective solutions may emerge. Even what might happen next to TikTok remains unclear.”

TikTok is reportedly prepared to shut down its app on Sunday, when the ban is scheduled to take effect, though the actual language of the law technically only mandates that the social media platform be taken off of app stores to prevent new users from downloading it.

On Thursday, U.S. officials revealed that President Joe Biden would not enforce the ban through the end of his presidency, handing the responsibility of interpreting the law to President-elect Donald Trump.

Experts have said the app will not disappear from users’ phones, though it will be restricted from the app store, and new updates will no longer be available—eventually rendering the app unusable, reported the Associated Press.

In oral arguments before the court, TikTok said that the law banning its presence in the U.S. was a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights. The government claimed the app’s erasure from the American market was a matter of national security, arguing that its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, could share data with the Chinese government or spread Chinese propaganda to American consumers. But that concern belies the fact that TikTok, which is headquartered in California and Singapore, has never operated in mainland China. (A sister app to the platform, Douyin, has captured the attention of the Chinese market.)

Justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum appeared skeptical of TikTok’s arguments, pointing out that the law did not target free expression on the app itself but rather ByteDance’s foreign ownership and the residual implications of a powerful foreign algorithm in the U.S.

At one point during the proceedings, Justice Elena Kagan pressed the government on what it meant by labeling TikTok’s manipulations as “covert,” pointing out that the content algorithms fueling all social media companies are a “little bit of a black box,” and something that wouldn’t differentiate it from any other tech company operating in America.

Some members of the court acknowledged the ban was a draconian approach to firewalling information from a foreign government.

Trump has pledged to save the platform, though it’s unclear how his team intends to do so. The incoming 47th president filed a brief with the court last month, urging the bench to pass on ruling on the ban until he takes office, when his lawyers argue he could “pursue a political resolution that could obviate the Court’s need to decide these constitutionally significant questions.”

Once inaugurated, Trump could issue a 90-day pause on the ban so long as a sale is in progress. But that could be difficult, as Chinese law restricts the sale of TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, according to Bytedance’s attorneys. And Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar—who represented the Biden administration in the case—told the court last week that the 90-day respite isn’t a guarantee.

But Trump has not always been on TikTok’s side. Before he left office in 2020, Trump attempted to eradicate TikTok via an executive order. He claimed that the video-sharing platform “[threatened] the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

ByteDance announced shortly after President Joe Biden signed the ban—which gave TikTok an ultimatum to either sell its IP to an American owner or stop operating within the U.S.—that the company didn’t “have any plans to sell.” But that may have changed since the law passed at the start of the year. Last month, James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told NPR that China could be willing to trade off TikTok and its proprietary algorithm to American investors in exchange for a better deal from Trump on his massive tariff proposal.

Some of Trump’s allies could be waiting in the wings for that to happen. Major Republican donor Jeff Yass reportedly owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has business ties to the Chinese media industry, and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin revealed his own plans to acquire the social media company via an investor group just a day after the ban passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House.

But other options remain, should TikTok never return. When the Indian government pulled the plug on the social media app due to a violent feud with China on their shared border, TikTok dropped its 200 million users. In the app’s wake, companies with format competitors to TikTok, including Youtube and Instagram, absorbed many of TikTok’s influencers onto their own platforms.

This story has been updated.

It didn’t take much to get Mark Zuckerberg to go along with Donald Trump’s aims.

According to The New York Times, Zuckerberg met with Trump adviser Stephen Miller in late November and was told by Miller that he could help America, but on Trump’s terms. Miller said that Trump was taking on diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, as well as cracking down on immigration.

Zuckerberg didn’t have a problem with any of it, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources. The Meta CEO told Miller and other Trump officials that he wouldn’t get in the way of Trump’s agenda and would focus on making tech products. He blamed the DEI initiatives at his company Meta on Sheryl Sandberg, his former chief operating officer, and said that things were changing at the company. This meant a reset, including layoffs.

In early January, Zuckerberg even gave Miller a private meeting where he explained the upcoming changes at Meta, and on January 10, the tech mogul announced to the public that Meta would be getting rid of its DEI policies.

The whole series of events indicates that Meta’s overhaul seems to have occurred in close coordination with Trump and his team, who are much more emboldened than they were eight years ago. Miller is more powerful now than he was in Trump’s first term, and has fewer internal opponents.

All of this doesn’t bode well for the next four years. Miller’s pet issue is immigration, and Trump has already pledged to begin mass deportations shortly after he is sworn in. Miller will be helping the president-elect draft many executive orders in the early weeks and months after the inauguration, and Republicans in Congress will only be too happy to help with extreme bills like the Laken Riley Act.

Zuckerberg isn’t the only tech baron falling in line behind Trump, as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others are changing their policies and sending the president-elect money. With loyal extremists like Miller in Trump’s inner circle, and the country’s powerful tech oligarchs staying out of his way, there aren’t many people capable of checking the next president.

It isn’t enough for the FBI’s DEI office to be shut down—Donald Trump wants it gutted, and with receipts.

“We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office—Never should have been opened and, if it was, should have closed long ago,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social. “Why is it that they’re closing one day before the Inauguration of a new Administration? The reason is, CORRUPTION!”

The FBI began phasing out the office, officially titled the “Office of Diversity and Inclusion,” or ODI, in December, the agency first confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

The FBI came under fire recently as many on the right openly blamed the deadly truck attack on New Year’s Day in New Orleans on the agency’s DEI policies.

“The priority of the last four years has been DEI, not IEDs,” New York Republican Representative Dan Meuser told Fox News at the time. “You talk to anyone who’s willing to speak within these agencies, that’s what their focus has been.… President Trump’s a serious guy, he’s bringing in serious people. It’s not about DEI; it’s about the safety and security of the American people.”

“An FBI Agent with a nose ring who can barely speak coherent English sentences told the media that a terrorist driving a truck with an ISIS flag killing 10 Americans is NOT a terrorist attack!?!” conservative YouTuber and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson wrote on X, referring to a video of FBI Special Agent Alethea Duncan, who is Black, speaking perfect English at a press conference. “Seriously. Listen to this. We need Kash Patel NOW!”

The ODI office isn’t closing because of corruption, like Trump is claiming in all caps on Truth Social. It’s likely closing for the same reason Walmart, Meta, McDonald’s, and others are reneging on DEI policy: Trump is back. Either they’re caving to Trump in advance, or they’re excited to go mask-off again with their everyday bigotry.

“I feel liberated,” one top banker told the Financial Times on Tuesday. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled.… It’s a new dawn.”

It’s also why the historically lauded Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is in jeopardy too.

Republicans’ prized immigration bill, the Laken Riley Act, is apparently too expensive to implement, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A new memo from ICE has been circulating in Senate offices that spells out the staggering cost of carrying out the bill if it were signed into law: $86 billion over three years, far exceeding House Republicans’ estimate last week of $3 billion per year. The memo gives a line-by-line assessment of the agency’s capacity to implement the act, saying that “full implementation would be impossible for ICE to execute within existing resources.”

If passed, the bill would allow the detention of undocumented immigrants merely suspected of committing a nonviolent crime, with no protections for children or DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers. The House has already voted to approve the bill, with 48 Democrats joining every Republican to send the bill to the Senate, where it is currently being debated after a Thursday vote was postponed.

More than 70 amendments to the bill have been filed, delaying its passage further. The bill enjoys support from Senate Democrats as well, and even has two Democratic co-sponsors in Ruben Gallego and John Fetterman. Among some of the most egregious (and expensive) parts of the bill is the power it grants to state and local governments to help carry out immigrant detention, and some of the amendments concern that provision.

In Republican-led states, such as Florida, Republican leaders are offering their resources to assist in detaining immigrants in accordance with this bill, as well as Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation. But as this memo from ICE shows, the Laken Riley Act will result in chaos and massive costs for the U.S. immigration system, no matter how many states are on board. Ultimately, conservatives’ immigration dreams are just expensive fantasies.

Trump is appointing a group of aged action movie actors to serve as “ambassadors” to Hollywood.

“It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE! These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!”

Stallone, Voight, and Gibson have each come out in support of Trump in recent years. Stallone even called him the “second George Washington,” while Voight proclaimed him to be the “greatest president since Lincoln.” And Gibson, who happens to have a long history of antisemitism and racism, said Kamala Harris had the “IQ of a fence post.”

The announcement had mixed reactions. Trump supporters appeared to be giddy.

“Trump made Rocky and Braveheart ambassadors to Hollywood. We’re living in the best timeline,” said a large pro-Trump X account.

“A week ago, an action movie written by Sylvester Stallone dropped their trailer. It’s about human trafficking, run by corrupt government officials and the mob. It looks like Trump is expanding his influence to Hollywood, and I expect the Left to vehemently oppose this movie, just like they did with ‘Sound of Freedom,’” wrote another, making a blatant argument for state-sponsored conservative media propaganda.

Others noted the fitting selection of the three MAGA stars.

“Sylvester Stallone was a nightmare on set for decades, Mel Gibson is a racist antisemite, Jon Voight is estranged from his family and isn’t allowed to see his grandchildren. Perfect fit!” the Reverend John Donnelly wrote.

What Stallone, Gibson, and Voight will actually do as “special ambassadors” and how much influence they’ll actually have over the industry remains to be seen.

Donald Trump and JD Vance debuted new presidential and vice presidential portraits Thursday and, boy, are they weirdly sinister.

Daniel Torok, the president-elect’s chief photographer, revealed the portraits on X Wednesday evening. “We are entering the GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA,” Torok wrote.

“They go hard,” wrote Trump’s transition team in a press release hyping the official portraits.

Clearly, the purpose of these photographs was to evoke some kind of masculine energy that would delight the manosphere. In Trump’s portrait, the president-elect went for a glowering stare reminiscent of his unsettlingly viral 2023 mugshot taken in Fulton County jail, which has appeared on everything from a commemorative $2 bill to NFT trading cards sold by the president-elect and his buddies.

This marks a significant departure from the toothy grin he sported in his portrait from 2017, signaling a new strongman Trump who wants everyone to think he’s really tough. To be sure, he does look kind of scary scary—but mostly because his partially cocked eyebrow manages to make his other eye appear somewhat collapsed.

There is also the shock of bright white light that makes the 78-year-old’s eyes appear the same color as his hair.

Meanwhile, Vance’s portrait showed off his startlingly blue eyes. Almost too blue, some felt.

Like Trump, Vance’s face also reflected a supernatural glow and a ghoulish gleam that painted his face in an entirely different color than his hands—something he could have in common with Trump, whose face is typically darkened to a burnt orange.

Despite their technical similarities, some online noted that the two portraits had extremely different vibes.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held his final press conference on Thursday, during which he kicked out a journalist for asking questions about Gaza. 

Reporter Sam Husseini tried to ask questions about U.S. policy regarding Israel’s war in Gaza early during the press conference, only to be told to wait until the end. When he persisted, he was physically removed from the room by three security guards.

Husseini posted on X after the incident, saying he was fine but had planned to ask several different questions, including about the Geneva Convention’s application to Gaza and Israel’s Hannibal directive, among other topics. But he never got the opportunity, and the whole  incident unfortunately encapsulates the Biden administration’s approach towards Israel and Gaza, especially in responding to questions from the press. 

For more than a year, following the October 7, 2023, attacks, the White House and State Department repeatedly masked Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza, ignoring and covering up possible war crimes while even lying to Congress. Alternative courses of action were dismissed, and deadlines made to the public were ignored. Even given the opportunity, Vice President Kamala Harris refused to break with White House policy while running for president, which may have cost her the 2024 election. 

Ultimately, Israel’s war, fueled by American weapons and protected by American diplomacy, officially killed more than 46,000 Palestinian civilians, likely a massive undercount according to analysts and human rights groups. Thursday’s press conference was a reminder that under Joe Biden, the United States has refused to acknowledge its role in the conflict or stand up to any scrutiny. And when Donald Trump is sworn into the White House on Monday, that’s not likely to change. 

Google announced its intention Thursday to flout European Union standards for digital fact-checking, opting not to build an internal department to moderate and verify YouTube content despite requirements from a new law.

The European Commission’s Disinformation Code of Practice has remained a voluntary policy, leaving the ball in the tech industry’s court. Companies that opted in to the code—including Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and X—are supposed to self-regulate while submitting reports on their platform’s compliance with the code.

But a 2024 study published in the Internet Policy Review found that, by and large, companies were “only partly compliant” with the EU code, with reports data lacking detail and offering “missing, incomplete, or not robust” data. The EU has since urged companies to convert the voluntary guidelines into an official policy under the union’s newer content moderation law, the Digital Services Act of 2022.

Google has never had a fact-checking department to oversee content on YouTube, where users reportedly upload more than 500 hours of video content every minute, and on average consume a collective one billion hours of content per day, according to YouTube’s blog. The law would require Google to build fact-checking into its search function, its ranking systems, and its algorithm, as well as adding fact-checked results alongside YouTube videos.

The search engine behemoth’s global affairs president Kent Walker rejected the mandatory new standards in a letter to deputy director general Renate Nikolay, claiming that the code “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services,” according to Axios. Walker instead pointed to a new feature that was implemented on YouTube in 2024, allowing users to communally verify information themselves, akin to X’s “Community Notes.”

Google will “pull out of all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct,” Walker wrote.

But Google isn’t the only company skirting its disinformation commitments. Meta and X have heavily reduced their content moderation policies, allowing disturbing language to circulate openly on their platforms.

Earlier this month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media company would rid itself of its third-party fact-checkers, opting instead to replace them with user-generated corrections.

“Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcement posted to Facebook. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”

In the background of their internal decisions, a cohort of Silicon Valley’s most successful figures have donated millions to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, seemingly caving to the incoming forty-seventh president in an apparent bid to make Trump’s second term as friendly to their massive tech and AI corporations as possible.

Rudy Giuliani might’ve finally caught a break.

After being sued for everything he had—his watches, his diamond ring, his Mercedes-Benz, his home, and $148 million—by defamed Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the former mayor has apparently come to a settlement.

“I have reached a resolution of the litigation with the Plaintiffs that will result in a satisfaction of the Plaintiffs’ judgment. This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the Parties,” Giuliani announced on X on Thursday. “I am satisfied with and have no grievances relating to the result we have reached. I have been able to retain my New York coop and Florida Condominium and all of my personal belongings. No one deserves to be subjected to threats, harassment, or intimidation. This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. This whole episode was unfortunate. I and the Plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.”

Though the terms of the settlement are not yet public, a statement from the defamed mother-daughter duo confirmed the news.

“The past four years have been a living nightmare. We have fought to clear our names, restore our reputations, and prove that we did nothing wrong,” said Moss and Freeman in a joint statement. “We have agreed to allow Mr. Giuliani to retain his property in exchange for compensation and his promise not to ever defame us.”

The settlement comes after Giuliani failed to appear in court Thursday morning. Both parties are now asking the judge to adjourn the trial so that their settlement agreement can be executed.

Moss and Freeman testified that Guiliani’s claims that they’d engaged in election fraud in 2020 led to a wave of racist threats and hatred toward them.

Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, made it clear during his confirmation hearing Thursday that he’s only interested in protecting the interests of the rich and powerful.

The hedge fund manager with a net worth of at least $500 million repeatedly spiked down questions about whether he would support working-class priorities. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked Bessent about his position on raising the minimum wage.

“Shamefully, the federal minimum wage, despite the efforts of myself and other people here, [has] not been raised since 2009, and remains an unbelievable $7.25 an hour,” said Sanders. “Will you work with those of us who want to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage, to take millions of Americans out of poverty?”

“Senator, I believe that the minimum wage is more of a statewide and regional issue,” Bessent responded.

“So you don’t think we should change the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?” Sanders pressed.

“Uh, no sir,” Bessent replied. Four years ago, Trump said he would consider raising the minimum wage to $15, if it didn’t hurt small businesses. More recently, he’s dodged the question altogether.

Later, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock asked whether Bessent would be interested in ending tax cuts for the rich to help reduce the national deficit—but the two didn’t quite see eye to eye on the policy.

“Do you agree that ending the tax cuts for those making more than $400,000 would help close the deficit and reduce our national debt?” Warnock asked.

“Senator Warnock, I do not,” Bessent said. “I believe that you would capture an inordinate amount of small-business people who largely are in that cohort of $400,000 to $1 million—”

“So you wouldn’t cut it off at $400,000,” Warnock replied. “What about $1 million?”

“Again, I believe these are small-business pass-through owners. And I believe that we, as I said before, Wall Street’s done great, it is time for Main Street to do well. And small businesses need to drive what I call the reprivatization here away from this government spending.”

Warnock kept pressing him, and Bessent quickly revealed that was hoping to keep tax rates the same as in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Warnock asked about those making more than $10 million.

Bessent insisted that it was more important “that we put in incentives for them to invest.”

“What about $1 billion?” Warnock asked.

Bessent replied, “Again, I think that these are the job creators.”

“So there’s no income level for which you would support raising taxes?” Warnock said.

Bessent replied that there was “no income level” for which he would support raising taxes.

While Trump has not said that he would raise taxes, his plan to enact sweeping tariffs on imported goods from Mexico, Canada, and China will function as a sort of sales tax, driving up prices on consumer goods.

On Thursday, Bessent also refused to specify where exactly he stood on the future of Medicaid, and claimed that he would leverage negotiations to maintain the critical health care program to “empower” states.