Senators urge Biden to grant ByteDance 90-day reprieve from law requiring sale
Source: Reuters
December 19, 2024 9:12 PM EST Updated 12 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Democratic Senator Ed Markey and Republican Senator Rand Paul on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to extend by 90 days a Jan. 19 deadline for China-based ByteDance to sell the U.S. assets of its short-video app TikTok or face a ban.
The Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will consider the legal challenge of TikTok and ByteDance, seeking an injunction to halt the looming ban or sale and will hold arguments on the matter on Jan. 10. "Given the laws uncertain future and its consequences for free expression, we urge you to trigger the 90-day extension before January 19," the senators wrote Biden.
The White House and TikTok did not immediately comment. The challengers are appealing a lower court's ruling that upheld the law. TikTok is used by about 170 million Americans. Congress passed the measure in April and Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law. The Justice Department had said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses "a national-security threat of immense depth and scale" because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app. TikTok has said it poses no imminent threat to U.S. security.
TikTok and ByteDance say the law violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/senators-urge-biden-grant-bytedance-90-day-reprieve-law-requiring-sale-2024-12-19/
Autumn
(46,643 posts)FB is way worse.
Bluetus
(271 posts)But that will happen. If there were transparency, we would find that Trump is well on the way to gathering a half-billion dollars in tribute payments, and he hasn't even taken office yet.
Did I say "tribute"? Sorry, I meant to say perfectly legitimate donations to the success of the inaugural ball.
Jose Garcia
(2,911 posts)turn over any all date to the Chinese government.
orleans
(35,205 posts)oh thank god reuters told me "biden" is a democrat.
did anyone else know biden is a democrat?
and who is the "biden" they are referring to? joe? joyce? janet? harvey?
such phrasing crap.
in the future i don't want to see reuters saying: "president trump" or "donald trump"
i just want to see "trump, a douche bag, blablabla..."
Igel
(36,210 posts)It's time-sensitive--there's a real reason to produce a response quickly, one reason that the arguments will be heard on an expedited schedule--so we should expect an injunction or lack thereof before 1/19/25.
If there's an injunction, then the request and waiver would be Biden's waiving something he recently signed for no good reason. "I approve this! ... Uh, wait. What? Um. No ... Did I. No, let's just wait a little while until somebody else can make the decision." Truly presidential. Cross that bridge when it's there to be trod upon, no reason to cross it when it's still a few week's travel ahead.
If there's no injunction, then perhaps the waiver would be justified. Then again, a lot of this is a minority seeking to overturn the will of the majority, to some extent to play to the vote of the drooling youth.
I seriously regret that Congress, in it's infinite (or infinitely small) wisdom banned cell-phone jammers nationwide. I'd love for there to be an exception in some places, with proper notification. Theaters and concert halls, for example. Or high schools. (I'm still considering having my classroom copper-themed and lining it with copper cloth, but the damned fool district decided to let kids use the district's wi-fi so they don't need to use their cell phone data; in other words, put them in a faraday cage and there's a nice free multimodal hotspot for them to log into and swipe ... swipe ... swipe ... I'd get a sniffer, but the school's a microwave fog, between student, teacher devices, phones and security cameras and environmental controls ...