United States Supreme Court Building. Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Jan. 17, the Supreme Court voted to uphold the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA). Created to ban TikTok, PAFACA allows the government to shutter any app it determines to be controlled by a “foreign adversary” after giving it 270 days to divest to an American company. As I argued in a column last April, this ban is unjustifiable. No matter what you think about TikTok, giving the government the power to ban apps is a very bad idea. While the law targets “foreign adversary controlled applications,” it could easily be expanded to any app or website that poses “national security concerns” or just anything politicians don’t like.

However, when TikTok flickered back to life Jan. 19, an even more disturbing precedent was set. President Donald Trump, who hadn’t even been inaugurated, offered to give TikTok more time to find a settlement, even though the law had already taken effect. He then proposed his own alternate solution, where ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, would only have to sell half of its shares. In other words, the Executive Branch is refusing to enforce a law passed by Congress, approved by a previous president and supported by the Supreme Court.

I mean, I’m not complaining now, but…yikes.