TikTok Goes to Court
Plus: The media reacts to the second Trump assassination attempt.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard TikTok's defense on Monday, as the social media company sought to persuade the three-judge panel that Congress's attempts to ban the platform are a violation of the First Amendment.
It's not clear that the judges were persuaded. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, and Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee, both seemed skeptical of TikTok's argument that Congress lacked the authority to force a sale of the app to a U.S.-based company.
"I know Congress doesn't legislate all the time, but here they did," said Rao. "They actually passed a law. And many of your arguments want us to treat them like they're an agency."
The federal government's initial attempts to ban TikTok took place under the Trump administration. In August of 2020, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that required TikTok's Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a U.S.-based firm. President Joe Biden cancelled that executive order, but instructed his administration to investigate whether concerns about Chinese malfeasance on the platform were justified.
Then, in March of 2024, Congress passed legislation to again force the sale, and Biden signed it. Trump has since changed his tune on TikTok, and now claims—not wrongly—that banning TikTok would reduce competition and enhance Meta's dominance.
But unless TikTok prevails in court, the app will be banned by the end of the year unless it finds a U.S. buyer. Failing that, the iPhone app store will be forced to stop updating, and eventually carrying, the app. That's the real First Amendment question at stake: Can the U.S. government prohibit Americans from creating, viewing, and engaging with the speech on the platform?
"The speech on TikTok is not Chinese speech," said Jeffrey Fisher, an attorney for TikTok, during the Monday hearing. "It is American speech."
U.S. actors who claim that TikTok is a national security threat have generally failed to explain precisely what they mean, though it is of course possible that the Chinese government—a repressive, authoritarian regime—uses its influence over the company to promote propaganda or anti-American speech. That's bad, but censoring propaganda isn't the answer; let people view it, if they wish to.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has called the TikTok ban a "disturbing gift of unprecedented authority to President Biden and the Surveillance State that threatens the very core of American digital innovation and free expression." He's exactly right. The federal government cannot be trusted with the authority to police social media platforms. We already know what federal bureaucrats will do with such power: use it to censor contrarian and provocative speech.
No matter how the Court of Appeals rules, the case is likely to make its way before the Supreme Court.
A second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump inspired some truly awful takes. Rachel Vindman, wife of Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman, wrote on X, "No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon." She later deleted the comment.
Former Republican Congressman turned anti-Trump CNN commentator Adam Kinzinger seemed to imply that it the assassination attempt was Trump's own fault because he has used violent rhetoric.
Look violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place.
But MAGA pretending they didn't light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.
Literally just accused a group of people of eating our pets.
So stop
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) ???????????????????????? (@AdamKinzinger) September 16, 2024
Trump, for his part, lost no time in blaming the thwarted attack on his own political enemies, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
"Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out," Trump told Fox News.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle love to blame violent rhetoric for real-world violence. For years, Democrats wrongly attributed the horrific shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D–Ariz.) to conservative rhetoric. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and Trump and his supporters have unhesitatingly embrace an argument they correctly found ridiculous several news cycles ago.
When deranged lunatics do violent things, lay the blame on those who are actually responsible(the deranged lunatics)—not other people's speech.
Two of the worst headlines responding to the assassination attempt came from The Cincinnati Enquirer and TIME magazine. An opinion piece in The Enquirer held that "There is no place in politics for violence. That said, the former president, Donald Trump, brings a lot of this stuff on himself."
Meanwhile, TIME wrote that the alleged shooter—Ryan Wesley Routh—had an "unclear political ideology." This could not be further from the truth. Routh was outspoken on social media, was interviewed by the mainstream media—including The New York Times and Semafor—and self-published a book. He is very clearly a one-time Republican who now hates Trump, is fanatically pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia, and vigorously supports Biden and Harris. That doesn't mean Democratic anti-Trump rhetoric is to blame for the shooting, but no one should pretend that his ideology is some giant mystery. It's not.
Scenes from Washington, D.C.
Washington D.C. City Council Member Trayon White—who once claimed that the Rothschilds were responsible for a bad snow storm in the city—was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes.
QUICK HITS
- Police arrested Sean Combs for alleged sex trafficking.
- Richard Nixon, father of the war on drugs, apparently said privately that pot was "not particularly dangerous."
- Would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh hid in the bushes for nearly 12 hours before Secret Service apprehended him.
- Don't expect to know who won Pennsylvania on Election Night.
- Republicans are frustrated with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.).
