Trump Signed Five Orders Not to Enforce the TikTok Law. Congress Allowed One Extension.

Congress gave the President one conditional extension of the TikTok deadline, capped at 90 days. Trump instead signed five orders telling the Attorney General not to enforce the law. He began after the law took effect and after the Supreme Court rejected its First Amendment challenge, postponing the protection Congress had chosen for Americans' data.

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Trump renewed the delay in April, June and September. A fifth order conditionally approved a proposed divestiture and directed non-enforcement for 120 days from September 25, overlapping the previous delay. The orders also told the Justice Department to forgo penalties for conduct during the delays, even after they ended.

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The Supreme Court upheld the law because TikTok's foreign control posed a risk to the personal data of 170 million U.S. users. Justice Gorsuch said TikTok also mined data about millions of people who had not consented. Trump's orders postponed Congress's remedy and told the Justice Department to forgo potential penalties of up to $5,000 per affected user for violating providers.

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Trump's strongest defense is that he needed time to protect national security without cutting off a platform creators and businesses depended on. Negotiations did produce a majority American-owned venture, TikTok announced in January 2026. But Congress had expressly limited extensions and required investigations, and approving a divestiture did not authorize the earlier delays.

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Petitioners allege that ByteDance continued receiving aggregated U.S. user data and that Trump favored buyers who had financed his political projects or enriched him. The challengers also claim losses on stock they hold in TikTok's competitors or ByteDance; the government argues that shareholders cannot sue over injuries to those companies. The government seeks dismissal as late, counting the 90 days from Trump's September 25, 2025 order, disputes whether petitioners showed personal injuries giving them a right to sue, and argues that a higher cash bid was not necessarily a better deal. According to the Clearinghouse's account of their June 1 response, petitioners instead count from his January 22, 2026 completion and announcement of the deal, which they argue made their March 5 petition timely. The case remained open on October 10, 2026. The charge is abuse of presidential power: Trump replaced Congress's rules with his own timetable.

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