'Who's to say they're not going to do it again'

'I don't even know if I believe it'

At least one branch of the federal government is not prepared to make way for TikTok.  On Friday, a mere seven days after oral arguments in TikTok v. Garland, the Supreme Court in a per curiam opinion unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the divestment law against challenges that it violated the First Amendment.  SCOTUS TikTok 24-656_ca7dDownload The court did so even as President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to cut a deal to save the Chinese-owned platform, and outgoing President Joe Biden has stated that he will not enforce the law’s Jan. 19 divestment deadline, since he leaves office the next day. The law teed up a heavyweight fight in the courts between two of the least flexible demands of a modern liberal polity: free expression vs. national security.  But as Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in a concurring opinion, “Speaking with and in favor of a foreign adversary is one thing. Allowing a foreign adversary to spy on Americans is another.” The actual law in question is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, but it has been known colloquially as the TikTok divestment law because it would force TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell its interest in the platform or cease U.S. operations.  TikTok, nominally a U.S. entity, is tied to the Beijing-based ByteDance not only through ownership, but through technology.  Per the court, “ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, which is developed and maintained in China.” And because ByteDance has close legal and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party, Congress designated TikTok as a company “controlled by a foreign adversary.” At one time, the divestment law had the support of both Biden and Trump as well as a large bipartisan majority of Congress.  But since then, the will to enforce it has waned everywhere except the courts.  Back in December a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld the law.  The two-judge majority assumed that the law burdened speech and required the most exacting judicial review, “strict scrutiny.” A third judge thought that only intermediate scrutiny was needed.  But all three acknowledged that Congress had well-documented concerns about China’s access through TikTok to American user data and its ability to affect the sorts of things Americans saw on the platform.  Thus, all three found the law to be a constitutional effort to protect our national security. TikTok benefited from warp-speed consideration of its petition at the Supreme Court, where two of the nation’s top lawyers—former U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco on behalf of TikTok and Jeff Fisher on behalf of its users—insisted that despite all appearances to the contrary, this law targeted speech based on viewpoint.  True, the law targeted ByteDance, a foreign entity operating abroad and therefore without First Amendment rights. Yes, the law’s target was the non-expressive matter of ownership. And sure, the content on TikTok would not have to change because of the law. But counsel for TikTok’s users went so far as to say that the law reflected a “per se” “impermissible governmental interest,” and thus it had to give way to his clients’ preference for posting their speech on TikTok. SCOTUS TikTok2 24-656_1an2Download Counsel for TikTok and the creators paraded a litany of “What abouts?” before the court, suggesting that despite reams of evidence considered, Congress hadn’t really done its homework or that it should have chosen some less intrusive way of addressing its concerns. The court was unpersuaded. It assumed (without deciding) that the regulation of a non-expressive activity (i.e., ByteDance’s ownership) implicated the First Amendment because it burdened speech.  But the court reasoned that the law was content-neutral as applied to TikTok and users because it drew distinctions based on ownership, not the expression the platform engaged in or hosted. Furthermore, Congress’ desire to prevent Chinese collection of American data was itself a significant national security interest and a content-neutral justification for enacting the law. It’s worth pausing a moment on the data-security rationale. Congress determined that through its ownership of TikTok, ByteDance could access and give the Chinese Communist Party the “age, phone number, precise location, internet address, device used, phone contacts, social network connections, the content of private messages sent through the application, and videos watched” of any of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users.  Thus, it might be said that Congress was more concerned about the content of what Americans were giving up than the content Americans were seeing or saying online. Given the law’s evident neutrality, the court needed only to apply intermediate—not strict—scrutiny. And because the law furthered an important governmental interest without overly burdening speech, it did not offend the First Amendment. The court repeated several caveats throughout the opinion. It noted that, due to the uniquely short time frame for consideration, its decision should be interpreted narrowly by other courts. The court is also becoming a bit wary of applying the Constitution to relatively new technologies, such as the algorithms that undergird TikTok’s asserted speech rights. Given the relative novelty of that technology the court cautioned that it “should take care not to embarrass the future.” That’s a wise approach. Embarrassment might have been what certain justices felt earlier this week during oral arguments when they struggled to untangle themselves from the thicket of precedent turning the First Amendment into a conduit for digital porn. Although the decision was per curiam—meaning, it was issued for the whole court, not attributed to any single justice—it’s notable that Gorsuch, who sounded sympathetic to TikTok during oral argument, wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment. He praised the court for refraining “from endorsing the government’s asserted interest in preventing the covert manipulation of content,” a rationale which he saw as cutting too close to permitting the sort of outright censorship he criticized last term in Murthy v. Missouri.  Gorsuch expressed doubts that the divestment law was, in fact, content neutral.  Nevertheless, he concluded, like the D.C. Circuit, that the law would survive even strict scrutiny because of the well-documented concerns that “TikTok mines data both from TikTok users and about millions of others who do not consent to share their information” that the Chinese Communist Party could use for espionage or blackmail. Although the court acted with tremendous dispatch, its opinion does surprisingly little to clarify TikTok’s future in the U.S. Doubts are growing about the political will to enforce the law. In 2020, Trump concluded that TikTok’s entanglement with the CCP “continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Yet he has lately committed himself to negotiating a new deal with ByteDance that will allow TikTok to continue its U.S. operations. One is left to question what, if anything, has changed to diminish the risks posed by TikTok? If TikTok is allowed to operate under the new administration, then Trump owes the American people and their representatives an explanation for why that should be so.  The post For TikTok, Time’s Up: Supreme Court Upholds Divestment Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Biden Clemency Spree Continues with 2500+ 'Historic' Commutations

Senator Blumenthal to Kristi Noem: Ignore the 300,000 Missing Children...

Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell lashed out Thursday afternoon at SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly and blamed her for threats and ugly words being hurled her way after Kelly shelled her for smearing Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth as merely a “TV host” and thus tossing aside his 20 years of boots-on-the-ground military service. “[A]h, so this is why I've gotten a huge uptick in people calling me the c-word and telling me I should be raped. Thanks, Megyn,” she tweeted. This, dear readers, is what one would call stochastic terrorism or a heckler’s veto of sorts from the woman who once shouted “I’m not a Democrat! I’m a Journalist!” to shut down legitimate criticism. As for what Kelly actually said, she pivoted from soundbites of Democratic senators going after Hegsetht to “these absolutely smug...snide, overeducated, elite libs who are just sliding in the dagger on Pete in a way that, you know, ‘I’m just an elite’ know everything and so, I can tell you he’s an idiot. Um, you know, I totally respect your service. I believe you care. I, but what are you so afraid of?”  She set up Rampell as a frequent flier “on one of those insufferable CNN panels with the terrible Abby Phillip” on CNN NewsNight and then mocked Phillip, imitating her voice as “like, mild mannered but ‘has never seen a Republican who’s done the right thing. I just want to take control to say that Republicans are bad, they’re even worse than you thought.’”     Kelly then explained Rampell’s background as a New York Times theatre critic and a legacy child at Princeton and that her major was in “anthropology where, okay, I’m sure she learned a lot that would qualify her to be opining on the sec of defense or not, but in any event, CNN thought she’d be an adequate commentator.” In a clip of CNN NewsNight (aka CNN Thunderdome), Rampell said Hegseth’s “main qualification” is that he’s “very articulate and polished” as “a TV host,” leading to senior conservative commentator Scott Jennings to lambaste this smear:  Why do you denigrate this man’s service? I don’t understand, 20 years decorated, Ivy Leaguer. “He’s a TV host. That’s all he is.” That’s not his main qualification?...You’re denigrating his qualities here...She said his main qualification is that he’s a TV host, and I’m sorry, that’s just baloney...His main qualification is that he’s a warfighter and he’s going to be the closest warfighter we’ve ever had to the enlisted people running the Pentagon. Rampell doubled down and received help amid the cross-talk from Phillip, which Kelly pointed out included a scolding of Jennings. Her argument? Jennings denigrated the military service of the generals who’ve risen to lead the Pentagon...by complimenting Hegseth. Kelly shellacked Phillip’s feigned outrage and even said “fuck you” to Rampell for arguing “his main qualification for this job was his stint on Fox & Friends.” The former Fox News host pointed out how, if Rampell were right about TV being Trump’s only characteristic, Trump would have picked weekday Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade (click “expand”): In the longer clip, and Abby Phillip comes in and says, “you shouldn’t denigrate the service of the generals who have been at the top of the Defense Department before by saying that, Scott Jennings.” Scott Jennings is like, “how am I denigrating them by saying he is closer to the enlisted men than anybody who’s ever held this position?” But that’s Abby Phillip. There — there cannot be a discussion that doesn’t wind in “her fake fact checking with hard left spin, signed Abby Phillip.” Back to this woman, Catherine Rampell. All right, so she, the theater critic, would like us to know that the only reason — the reason — the main qualification, those were her words, for Pete to have been nominated is because he’s a TV host. So, Scott Jennings says, why do you denigrate his service? Then comes Abby Phillip. “She didn’t do that.” Okay, how is it not denigrating his — his tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo, the vast majority of his adult life, by saying his main qualification for this job was his stint on Fox & Friends? Fuck you, Catherine Randall, because that is denigrating his service. His service is the reason he got the job. I guarantee you Trump is more familiar with Brian Kilmeade than he is with Pete Hegseth. I get. Guarantee you he’s been watching Brian Kilmeade for longer, has probably called and texted Brian Kilmeade over the years longer and knows him a lot better, but he did not nominate Brian Kilmeade because he wasn’t just looking for a Fox & Friends morning host to run the Pentagon. Kelly said what has qualified Hegseth in Trump’s eyes was a “lifetime of service while in the armed services and afterward working for veterans that got him this job.”     Raising her voice, Kelly blasted Rampell’s pomposity as “so disrespectful and disgusting, but that is what the elite thinks of our military and certainly of any Trump supporter.” She saved some fire for former Fox colleague Gretchen Carlson who, with Kelly, were two of the women who’s stories alleging sexual misconduct against their then-boss Roger Ailes. Carlson went onto the far-left PBS NewsHour Monday because, in Kelly’s dismissive tone, they “decide[d] that Gretchen Carlson’s opinion would be really important to get.” After a clip of Carlson giving full weight to the discredited allegation of sexual assault against Hegseth as well as the anonymous smears about Hegseth’s drinking, Kelly went nuclear, starting with some basic facts Carlson must have ignored (click “expand”): He’s not been accused of sexually harassing anybody. Did that come up yesterday? No. The best they had was somebody at one of those veterans charities may have allegedly harassed somebody at a strip club trip that Pete wasn’t present for and — and I believe it was Sean Parnell, who was present and came out on the record saying Pete wasn’t there. He was not there. So what are you talking about Gretchen Carlson? You can only be talking about one thing and that is the alleged rape accusation. Did you go through the report line by line? Because you know as well as I do — you know better than anyone that I will stand up for women, even those I can’t stand if I think they’ve made a valid allegation. You know that better than anyone and I spent a day going through that woman’s police report, line by line and I’m telling you, that woman’s not telling the truth. That’s my strong legal and journalistic opinion and I’ve gone through it episodes and episodes ago in great detail to explain. Why have you? How dare you get out there and, and wonder why this fake, clearly fake allegation is not disqualifying for him. Get talking about it. What have you looked at? When was she drugged, Gretchen? She was fine at 1:30 in the morning. She was fined at 4 a.m. according to three eyewitnesses, two videos, and her husband on the back end. Are those not reliable for you? This is not Pete Heath’s word. It’s independent eye and videotape witnesses and her marital partner, saying she was fine. Not drugged. When did Pete date rape, drug her and then rape her? It is an impossibility, which is why he was not charged[.] Along with saying “how dare you” and “shame on you” for boosting such scurrilous charges, Kelly personally hit Carlson “for using the money you managed to extract out of Fox News for this nonsense to try to push these bullshit claims because you wanna see your face on television...I find that absolutely abhorrent.”     Continuing to get personal, Kelly revisited that tenuous time in her history as well as the Fox News Channel to correct the record that “when I came forward to talk about what happened between Roger and yours truly, it was not because” of Carlson, but “I was worried others might” have been as well. “I just want to be clear that it wasn’t her particular circumstances that inspired me or I think most people over there,” she concluded. Before going to ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel grossly smearing Hegseth, Kelly laid waste to Carlson’s lack of ethics and refusal to do her homework before commenting on Hegseth (click “expand”): KELLY: How dare she come out and try to disparage him this way, someone who’d been a colleague of hers for quite some time, and I guarantee you — you never — she never saw him drunk and if she says she did, it’s not true. All of his Fox & Friends co-hosts have said never, never ever, and we spent hours upon hours with him, right? I — like, all of the on the record. Character defenses of Pete have been under people’s actual names, stars that you would know, all the Fox & Friends morning crew, all the scurrilous allegations have been anonymous and behind the scenes. Too much time on her, she’s irrelevant. Jimmy Kimmel had his own little meltdown about the situation. Watch here. KIMMEL [on 01/14/24]: The main event in Washington today was the confirmation hearing of Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Former weekend Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth. The hearing started at 9:30 this morning, or as Pete calls it happy hour. Hegseth was hammered by Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who argue that he should be disqualified based on accounts of excessive drinking, allegations of sexual misconduct, which are two of the qualities Trump looks for in the nominee. KELLY: Ha ha ha. That’s hilarious. So funny. I mean, I don’t remember him making jokes about Kamala’s boozing, which was pretty obvious, both before and after she lost. Where — is that a funny joke? I’d love to see all the funny jokes about what her administration would look like. Is that gonna be surrounded by boozers, so she looks like the sober one, Jimmy? And again, like it’s just so fun to just sort of pretend that ha ha, like he’s a rapist, like some ha ha ha ha, like it’s, it’s super fun to rip on Pete Hegseth as though — yeah, we love serial harassers. That’s not what’s been alleged against Pete Hegseth. Sorry to burst your bubble. You know, there was a day and age in which you’d be more careful about that thing because you would be worried about getting sued and Trump is trying to bring that day back and the media’s having a meltdown over it, right? They don’t like it. “Oh, you’re gonna chill free speech.” I’m — oh, I’m gonna chill defamatory speech, right? Like, that’s — that’s what I’m gonna try to chill. Um, he’s not worried. Pete’s got better things to do, and yeah, he’s probably — he’s probably not going to — to sue Jimmy Kimmel. To see the relevant SiriusXM transcript from January 15, click here.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against communist Chinese government-tied TikTok, meaning a ban takes effect on Jan. 19. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has his own ideas for the platform. In a per curiam decision Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against TikTok. The Court upheld a bill passed by Congress last year that gave TikTok an ultimatum: divest from Chinese ownership or be banned from the U.S. The Court also rejected the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling that TikTok is entitled to Section 230 immunity as a publisher. MRC Vice President Dan Schneider particularly praised the three justices who have consistently ruled on the side of First Amendment rights. “I thank G-d for Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch who consistently stand for free speech rights,” Schneider posted on X. President-elect Donald Trump, however, indicated that a new development could be coming soon. Read the full blog on MRC Free Speech America’s site.

CNN host Fareed Zakaria tried to claim (a) Bidenomics was mind-boggling genius, and also (b) white working-class voters hated it and rejected it in November. So forget those unwashed, uneducated white voters. Democrats should stop trying for those voters and stick to college-educated women and minorities. The host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS bellowed in a January17 op-ed for The Washington Post that Biden’s spendthrift economic catastrophe was actually “a resounding success.” But, alas, as Zakaria lectured in his ridiculous headline, “Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.” Of course, Zakaria’s idea of Biden’s “success” was no different from the same tired list of factual obfuscations the media have been peddling lately, which obscure the damning context that ends up condemning Biden’s supposedly “working-class”-engineered policies for the economic wrecking machines they actually were. But, given the election results, snorted Zakaria, “Perhaps [Democrats] should lean into their new base and shape a policy agenda around them, rather than pining for the working class Whites whom they lost decades ago.”   Wow, talk about verbal diarrhea from an elitist snob looking down his nose at everybody else, which makes sense given that Zakaria is worth about $14 million. In Zakaria’s world, Democrats should just quit trying to court the working class voters from a “bygone era” and instead focus on the “advantages” they already have in their bag. “[Democrats]  have a solid base of college-educated professionals, women and minorities. Many of the swing voters who have helped them win the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential elections are registered independents and suburbanites.” Zakaria’s asinine theory for the dramatic shift of the blue collared base abandoning the Democrats over the years included — you guessed it: racism: There is an alternative theory that I would propose. Ever since the Democratic Party embraced civil rights in the 1960s, it has been slowly losing the votes of the White working class, largely on issues related to race, identity and culture, [emphasis added]. No, you didn’t misread that. As bad as Zakaria’s take was, it was compounded by his misleading spewage of White House talking points to bolster his argument that Bidenomics was the best thing since sliced bread. “Entering office as the pandemic still raged, he presided over the creation of almost 17 million jobs with inflation nearing the Fed’s 2 percent target. Productivity is up, wage inequality is down, small business formation is at record levels and wage growth is outpacing inflation,” Zakaria claimed. FactCheck.org and Snopes — two leftist fact-checkers — didn’t even let Biden get away with inflating his record on jobs, as Zakaria did. In fact, FactCheck.org tossed a bucket of water on the “17 million” talking point just a day before Zakaria’s piece went live. “But much of that job growth under Biden was due to jobs regained after millions of American jobs were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic,” FactCheck.org noted. Last year, when Biden and his acolytes were trotting out a “15 million” jobs created figure, Snopes slapped that down too. Anna Rascouët-Paz, the author of the fact-check, addressed the Biden propaganda on her personal Twitter account: “Did the US economy really add 15 million jobs under Biden? *squinty face* mmmm let's not push it.” No kidding. Of course, Zakaria also didn’t mention anywhere that there was a “widespread labor shortage” as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce disclosed Dec. 13. Second, the inflation situation is not as rosy as Zakaria made it appear, to say the very least. In fact, overall inflation surged back to 2.9 percent in December from 2.7 percent in November. In addition, consumer prices are now 21 percent higher on average than when Biden first took office. Also, Zakaria’s statement on wage growth outpacing inflation is grossly misleading. Even The Associated Press conceded in its Jan. 14 propaganda piece promoting Bidenomics that “consumer prices rose a combined 20.8% during the course of Biden’s presidency, but people’s average weekly earnings rose just 17.4% over the same period.” Oops.  Lastly, Zakaria’s celebration of “small business formation” under Biden is also wildly off the mark. Just two days before Zakaria’s piece was published, Fox Business reported on a new study from digital lender Biz2Credit, which the outlet said showed how “[t]he backbone of the U.S. economy – the American small business – may be breaking beyond repair without some serious intervention.” Specifically, Fox Business reported, “Data from the study was pulled from more than 100,000 financing applications submitted to Biz2Credit between January 2022 and December 2024, and it shows a sharp decline in the earnings of small businesses toward the end of 2024, a trend the lender sees continuing into 2025.” Your math isn’t mathing, Zakaria.

California officials may have the environment at the top of their minds — but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Conservative environmentalist Benji Backer has noticed that this has become a pattern, specifically in areas with leftist policies. “You look at Germany or California or any of the countries or states or places where they are trying this, it not only costs more but it also economically costs more, it also costs more environmentally. So it’s actually doing the opposite of what they say that they want to do,” Backer tells James Poulos of “Zero Hour.” “The countries that are reducing emissions the fastest in the world are the ones that are growing their economies the fastest, because when you innovate, when you have money to invest in cool technology and cool solutions, that ends up helping the environment,” he continues. “It increases efficiency; it helps people live their lives better,” Backer says, using Nest thermostats as an example. “There’s an incentive on your app to conserve energy so that you save money and that the grid doesn’t have to use as much energy, and therefore we take less from the earth. Those sorts of innovations drive down emissions, not these mandates,” he explains. “Looking at California, Germany, everywhere around the world, Venezuela, anywhere that there’s a government-first approach,” he continues, “emissions and the environment are always going in the wrong direction.” Want more from James Poulos?To enjoy more of James's visionary commentary on politics, tech, ideas, and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will reportedly announce a run for governor of Ohio after Republican Gov. Mike DeWine revealed his pick to succeed Sen. JD Vance.A Politico report said Ramaswamy, who is a Cincinnati native, was energetically seeking the Senate seat, but DeWine announced that he was choosing Lt. Gov. Jon Husted on Friday. His gubernatorial announcement is already drafted and ready to go, according to the source.Ramaswamy will announce his run for governor shortly, according to two sources who spoke to the Washington Post. The 39-year-old unsuccessfully ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and then endorsed President-elect Donald Trump. He and billionaire Elon Musk were chosen by Trump to run a new government spending accountability office called DOGE in the new administration. “Vivek’s base plan remains [the] same: to get accomplishments at DOGE and then announce a run for governor shortly,” the source said to the Post. His gubernatorial announcement is already drafted and ready to go, according to the source, said to be an Ohio insider. The entrepreneur might have lost the support of the anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party after he entered the debate over H-1B visas. He and Musk argued that the visas were pivotal to maintaining Silicon Valley's advantage in the technology industry. "Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer)," Ramaswamy wrote. "More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less 'chillin.' More extracurriculars, less 'hanging out at the mall.'" DeWine is being term-limited out of the governor's office. The next Ohio gubernatorial election is scheduled for Nov. 2026. A representative from Ramaswamy's office did not respond to a request for comment from the Post. He has not previously held an elected office. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!