A Google shareholder lawsuit accusing the DOJ of violating a U.S. patent-violating extension of TikTok’s app license
For the third time, President Donald Trump will extend the deadline for TikTok to spin out from its Chinese parent company or face a US ban. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a statement Tuesday that Trump will sign an executive order this week extending the deadline another 90 days, landing the new deadline in mid-September.
The ban was slated to go into effect on January 19, 2025, the day before Trump took office. Just before midnight on January 18, TikTok took itself offline and disappeared from app stores. The following morning, although still not yet in office, Trump promised he’d pause enforcement of the ban, and the app came back online.
A court could evaluate whether Trump’s actions are legal, but only if somebody sues to stop the extension — and so far, nobody has. Earlier this month, though, a Google shareholder filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly failing to share internal records about its decision to flout the law under the Justice Department’s assurances. The shareholder in question filed a suit against the DOJ for allegedly not sharing information about its decision not to enforce the law.
Trump’s extension of the ByteDance deal in the wake of the Air Force One High-stakes Summit: Commentary on Calo
As The Verge previously reported, ByteDance and an Oracle-led coalition had nearly hammered out a deal in April, but Trump’s tariffs abruptly blew up the tentative agreement. While trade tensions between the US and China have simmered down, there’s been no recent news about resurrecting that deal or another one. Even when a sale seemed likely, it was unclear whether China would allow ByteDance to sell the valuable algorithm that powers TikTok’s video recommendations.
is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
We’ll be extending it for a longer time. “We’re going to extend it”, Trump told reporters at the White House. We are going to make a deal and I think we’ll need China’s blessing on it.
There is a promise of a reprieve following the high-stakes meeting between US and Chinese officials in London last week.
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order effectively pushing back the start of the ban by 75 days, and promising immunity for other tech companies that provide back end services for the app, such as Apple and Google, which offer it in their web stores.
Speaking before the latest promise of an extension, Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington law school who follows tech, says Trump has operated outside the statutory framework so far.
“This president is not operating within Congress’s intent,” he said. “It sets a bad precedent, wherein the president feels like he can simply ignore a congressional statute.”
For his part, Trump contends that he is operating within the bounds of the law. Trump said he had the legal basis to prolong the reprieve, when he was asked on Air Force One. Yeah, we do.”