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| Nine assholes. The Supreme Court is out of touch like Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump. The justices reject TikTok’s request to hold off ban. The Court allows free speech to be stifled. |
Y'all voted for this.
If anyone trolls you about condemning Hamas for Oct. 7, 2023, kindly ignore them or respectfully tell them that Israel has committed an illegal occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights and the West Bank. They shoot innocent civilians and indiscriminately bomb heavily populated areas in Gaza and the West Bank.
Will you condemn the actions of Israel if I have to condemn Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas?
If you're upset over protests, why are you not upset over the treatment of innocent people being killed by Israel?
If you're upset over TikTok being a danger, why are you not upset over X, Instagram, Facebook, Rumble, Threads, YouTube and Truth Social?
The U.S. Supreme Court, President Joe Biden, President Donald J. Trump, Israel and the Congress can go fuck themselves.
It’s unclear what options are open to Trump once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed for a 90-day pause in the restrictions on the app if there had been progress toward a sale before it took effect. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it’s uncertain whether the prospect of a sale once the law is in effect could trigger a 90-day respite for TikTok.
At arguments, the justices were told by a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese technology company that is its parent, how difficult it would be to consummate a deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that has made the social media platform wildly successful.
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
The risk to national security is the silencing of the freedoms.
Republicans do it.
Democrats do it.
The ones who voted against the ban include some of the insufferable members.
Republican Andy Biggs of Arizona
Republican Dan Bishop of North Carolina
Republican Lauren Boebert of Colorado
Republican Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma
Democrat Greg Casar of Texas
Democrat Joaquin Castro of Texas
Republican Michael Cloud of Texas
Republican Andrew Clyde of Georgia
Republican Eric Crane of Arizona
Republican Warren Davidson of Ohio
Democrat Danny Davis of Illinois
Democrat Maxwell Frost of Florida
Democrat Jesús García of Illinois
Democrat Robert Garcia of California
Republican Bob Good of Virginia
Republican Paul Gosar of Arizona
Democrat Al Green of Texas
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
Republican Harriet Hageman of Wyoming
Republican Andy Harris of Maryland
Democrat Val Hoyle of Oregon
Democrat Jonathan Jackson of Illinois
Democrat Sara Jacobs of California
Democrat Pramila Jayapal of Washington
Democrat Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California
Democrat Ro Khanna of California
Democrat Andy Kim of New Jersey
Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington
Democrat Summer Lee of Pennsylvania
Democrat Zoe Lofgren of California
Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina
Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky
Republican Tom McClintock of California
Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusetts
Republican Barry Moore of Alabama
Democrat Gwen Moore of Wisconsin
Republican Troy Nehls of Texas
Republican Ralph Norman of South Carolina
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
Democrat Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
Democrat Mark Pocan of Wisconsin
Democrat Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts
Democrat Delia Ramirez of Illinois
Republican Matt Rosendale of Montana
Republican Chip Roy of Texas
Republican Keith Self of Texas
Republican William Timmons of South Carolina
Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
Democrat Juan Vargas of California
Democrat Nydia Velázquez of New York
Democrat Maxine Waters of California
Democrat Nikema Williams of Georgia
18 Senators voted against the ban.
A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users’ phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
The decision came against the backdrop of unusual political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed that he could negotiate a solution and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has signaled it won’t enforce the law beginning Sunday, his final full day in office.
So we ban things based on allegations!
We stifle free speech because of an app that is financed in another country.
I guess that means all the other apps based out of countries outside the U.S. will be forced to sell or be banned. Trust me, the Court is clearly out of touch.
Trump, mindful of TikTok’s popularity, and his own 14.7 million followers on the app, finds himself on the opposite side of the argument from prominent Senate Republicans who fault TikTok’s Chinese owner for not finding a buyer before now. Trump said in a Truth Social post shortly before the decision was issued that TikTok was among the topics in his conversation Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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| So much for saving the soul of the nation. |
It’s unclear what options are open to Trump once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed for a 90-day pause in the restrictions on the app if there had been progress toward a sale before it took effect. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it’s uncertain whether the prospect of a sale once the law is in effect could trigger a 90-day respite for TikTok.
“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,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, adding that the law “does not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch filed short separate opinions noting some reservations about the court’s decision but going along with the outcome.
“Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was persuaded by the argument that China could get access to “vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”
Some digital rights groups slammed the court’s ruling shortly after it was released.
“Today’s unprecedented decision upholding the TikTok ban harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world,” said Kate Ruane, a director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which has supported TikTok’s challenge to the federal law.
Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the effect on their business if TikTok shuts down. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner mechanic shop in Conyers, Georgia. “And very scared about the decrease that I’m going to have in reaching customers and worried I’m going to potentially lose my business in the next six months.”
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| Y'all voted for this. Democrat and Republican lawmakers are getting too comfortable. It is time to shake them up a bit. No more backing long term candidates. |
At arguments, the justices were told by a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese technology company that is its parent, how difficult it would be to consummate a deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that has made the social media platform wildly successful.
The app allows users to watch hundreds of videos in about half an hour because some are only a few seconds long, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky complaining that TikTok is designed to be addictive and harms kids’ mental health. Similar suits were filed by more than a dozen states. TikTok has called the claims inaccurate.
The dispute over TikTok’s ties to China has come to embody the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.
“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments.”
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
TikTok points out the U.S. has not presented evidence that China has attempted to manipulate content on its U.S. platform or gather American user data through TikTok.
Bipartisan majorities in Congress passed legislation and Biden signed it into law in April. The law was the culmination of a yearslong saga in Washington over TikTok, which the government sees as a national security threat.
TikTok, which sued the government last year over the law, has long denied it could be used as a tool of Beijing. A three-judge panel made up of two Republican appointees and a Democratic appointee unanimously upheld the law in December, prompting TikTok’s quick appeal to the Supreme Court.
Without a sale to an approved buyer, the law bars app stores operated by Apple, Google and others from offering TikTok beginning on Sunday. Internet hosting services also will be prohibited from hosting TikTok.
ByteDance has said it won’t sell. But some Zionists have been eyeing it, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt. McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative has said it and its unnamed partners have presented a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s U.S. assets. The consortium, which includes “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, did not disclose the financial terms of the offer.
McCourt, in a statement following the ruling, said his group was “ready to work with the company and President Trump to complete a deal.”
Prelogar told the justices last week that having the law take effect “might be just the jolt” ByteDance needs to reconsider its position.
So in the final days of Biden-Harris, he ends his term as one of the most unpopular presidents in the 21st Century. He joins Trump in being a terrible decision maker.
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