Appeals Court Upholds TikTok “Divest Or Ban” Law

CBS News reports:

A federal appeals court upheld a law that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest or face a ban in the U.S., dealing another setback to the widely popular video-sharing app in its battle with the federal government.

A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the Justice Department in declining to review the petition for relief from TikTok and ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, saying the law is constitutional.

“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore deny the petitions.”

Read the full article. Trump used to regularly call for banning TikTok as Chinese spyware. But that was before he learned that GOP megadonor Jeff Yass owns a $15 billion stake in the platform. Now Trump is all-in on TikTok, where he has 15 million followers. TikTok currently has around 170 million “active monthly users” in the US.