Ajit Pai, who was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during Donald Trump’s first term, is breaking with his old boss and is urging the Supreme Court to allow the ban on TikTok to go forward. According to Business Insider, Pai and former Treasury Secretary Thomas Feddo filed a brief last week urging the justices to uphold the law that would end TikTok’s operations at US borders despite Trump’s push to end the ban.
Pai’s main argument is that there is an existing legal precedent to support the legality of the law, passed by Congress last year that would require TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the platform or cease operations in the US. Case in point: Pai’s attack on Chinese companies.
Back when Pai was head of the FCC, he singled out two companies headquartered in China as national security threats. The agency has banned mobile phone providers from using government subsidies to buy telecommunications equipment from manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, on the grounds that those companies could collaborate with the Chinese government to spy on Americans – a concern at least supported by the findings. journalists and the intelligence community.
Pai called the approach taken to restrict apps like TikTok in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “very similar” to his efforts to deal with Chinese telecom providers, noting that “Congress and the Executive Branch have consistently identified in law or regulation certain regulatory. companies under the control of China that pose a threat to the country’s security.”
While Pai finds himself at odds with 2024 Donald Trump, who has filed his own petition asking the court to delay the January 19 deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok, he remains largely aligned with Trump for 2017-2021. It was Trump who first floated the ban and tried to implement it all by himself with an executive order in 2020, which was eventually blocked by a federal judge. Trump has also supported regulations that restrict the sale of equipment to companies such as Huawei and ZTE in an effort to cut off Chinese firms’ access to American technology.
But Trump had a change of heart on his attack on TikTok earlier this year after meeting with Jeff Yass, TikTok’s biggest investor and—you won’t believe this!—a big-time Trump supporter who poured nearly $100 million into consistency issues. this past election cycle. His support for the app was further strengthened following his victory in the 2024 presidential election, which he attributed in part to his popularity on TikTok. This is also going to come as a big surprise but, TikTok started consulting with Trump support and suddenly, in what is a really unrelated incident, the app became very friendly to Trump related content. How did that happen.
Still, there’s been no indication that Pai will return to the Trump administration (he seems more than happy to play a role at a private equity firm that’s busy buying phone companies), so it’s safe to say he’s taking action against his own company. former manager. If anything, Pai’s position is more objective than Trump’s, so get credit where it’s due.
Source link
