Take a Wild Guess Why Trump Had Sudden Change of Heart on TikTok Ban

Donald Trump wants to save TikTok, after trying to get it banned during his first administration.

Before leaving office in 2020, Trump attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order claiming the app was a threat to “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Now he is expected to halt a ban put in motion by President Joe Biden.

So what changed?

Kellyanne Conway explained the president-elect’s newfound support for the insidiously addictive video-sharing app.

“He appreciates the breadth and reach of TikTok, which he used masterfully along with podcasts and new media entrants to win,” Conway told The Washington Post.

“There are many ways to hold China to account outside alienating 180 million U.S. users each month. Trump recognized early on that Democrats are the party of bans—gas-powered cars, menthol cigarettes, vapes, plastic straws, and TikTok—and to let them own that draconian, anti-personal choice space,” she said.

Conway managed to describe the president promising to bring back his “travel ban” targeting people from predominantly Muslim countries, including refugees from Gaza, as being in opposition to the so-called “party of bans.”

As Conway said, Trump was able to use TikTok to appeal to younger voters, which helped propel him to victory. Trump’s social media team garnered 3.2 billion TikTok views since the president-elect started using the app in June, according to the Post. In one of his first videos on the app he declared, “I’m gonna save TikTok.”

But Trump’s affair with TikTok started before he ever used the app.

After Trump stated his intent to ban the app, TikTok altered its algorithm and content moderation so that pro-Trump content would do better, according to The Information.

Trump would go on to court Jeff Yass, a major Republican donor and one of the largest investors in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Yass also reportedly donated to Accuracy in Media, which funded the doxxing of pro-Palestinian college students.

The deadline by which ByteDance must divest from its U.S.-based TikTok operations is January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. The company has given no indication that it intends to comply, and challenged the ban as being unconstitutional.

Donald Trump has tapped former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to serve as the next ambassador to Israel.

“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said Tuesday in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

This will be the first time that the two-term ex-governor has held a diplomatic post, and the nomination gives little indication that Trump has legitimate intentions to deescalate the war. Huckabee has been a vocal defender of Israel amid its lopsided conflict against Palestine. In June, he came out against a potential ceasefire deal between the two countries, arguing to NewsNation that Hamas should not be negotiated with and that the only solution for the war would be their complete surrender.

“This is like trying to negotiate with the Nazis in World War II. You just don’t,” Huckabee told the network. “You beat them. You defeat them. You eradicate them.”

Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza in the more than yearlong war, with an additional 102,000 people injured in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A report by the United Nations Human Rights Office, published last week, found that close to 70 percent of those killed were women and children, with five- to nine-year-old children comprising the majority of the dead. Roughly 80 percent of the victims were killed in residential buildings or similar housing.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, first visited Israel in the early 1970s at the age of 17, and has since visited the country dozens of times. In 2011, Politico reported that the two-time Republican presidential candidate would make a meal out of his trips to Israel, often spending several weeks in the country, while other visiting politicos would simply stop there to “check a box” along their campaign trail.

Huckabee has argued that the term “West Bank” is offensive—he prefers referring to the region in the Old Testament terms “Judea” and “Samaria.”

And Huckabee has landed himself in the midst of a litany of other Middle East controversies for his staunch defenses of Israel. In 2015, the conservative drew ire for likening the Obama administration’s maneuverings on the Iran Nuclear Deal to the Holocaust, claiming that the president was “marching Israelis to the door of the oven.”

This story has been updated.

President Biden’s last appointment to the National Labor Relations Board has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and Democrats only have a small window of time until Republicans take control of Congress. 

Two of the board’s five members are Republicans, and two are Democrats, with its chairperson being chosen by the sitting president. In June, Biden nominated the current chair, Democrat Lauren McFerran, to a third term and Joseph Ditelberg to fill a vacant Republican seat. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not yet brought either nomination up for a vote. 

The NLRB protects the right to form a union and enforces labor law, and McFerran’s confirmation in particular would ensure a Democratic board until late 2026. This would allow for more pro-labor decisions and policies and protect against right-wing attacks on unions and workers’ rights. But Schumer and Senate Democrats have to act quickly before January, when a new Republican Senate majority is sworn in. 

The NLRB is a frequent target of conservatives and powerful executives, who are seeking to cripple and even dissolve the labor body. In September, a judge appointed by Donald Trump granted a request in a legal case seeking to demolish the National Labor Relations Board. Tech CEO and close Trump ally Elon Musk is working with Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s in another legal challenge seeking to destroy the agency on constitutional grounds. 

Unions have praised Biden’s record on labor, calling him the best president on workers’ rights since Franklin D. Roosevelt. But he was unable to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO, Act and he was criticized for breaking a railroad strike in 2022. Filling this appointment may protect the gains he has made for working people at least in the short term while Democrats regroup for the 2026 midterm elections. But Schumer and the rest of the Democrats have to act soon, or it will be too late. 

It looks like the guy who has made it perfectly clear he doesn’t care about federal law is violating federal law. Oh, and also he’s about to be the president of the United States.

Donald Trump and his campaign are currently in violation of the Presidential Transition Act, a federal law that coordinates and funds the transition of power from one administration to the next.

The PTA has a few components that must be submitted by the Trump campaign—and so far, the president-elect’s team hasn’t handed over a single one.

Trump has yet to submit a Memo of Understanding to the General Services Administration, which would theoretically articulate an ethics policy pledging not to hire individuals with conflicts of interest to assist with its transition. The document would provide $7.2 million to fund Trump’s transition, and was due at the beginning of October.

It’s become increasingly clear the president-elect has no intention to submit one. That’s possibly because the PTA also requires candidates to disclose all of their private donors, and places a $5,000 cap on individual donations to the transition.

Trump will be sworn in regardless of whether he complies with the Presidential Transition Act, but his noncompliance will likely stall and disrupt the transition process. In lieu of federal funding, Trump might look elsewhere for big dollar donations, such as his inaugural committee, which is set to be headed by millionaire real estate investor Steve Witkoff and Kelly Loeffler, a former Republican U.S. senator.

Trump has also failed to submit security clearance requests for members of his administration, with each appointment more disturbing than the last.

Last week, the Department of Justice said that it was ready to “process requests for security clearances for those who will need access to national security information.” Trump’s top advisers have previously suggested that the president-elect hand out security clearances without FBI vetting.

InfoWars host Alex Jones appears to have issued his final broadcast.

On Tuesday, the virulent conspiracy theorist—who lost a $1.5 billion case for claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six adults was a hoax—announced that his right-wing media empire, InfoWars, was being staged for a federal auction.

“Wednesday afternoon, Infowars, the equipment, InfoWars.com, InfoWarsStore.com, and a whole bunch of other stuff, is at a federal bankruptcy auction, from the fake judgements and the rigged trials where I was found guilty beforehand, and they had literal show trials like out of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany,” Jones said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter).

“I saw the auctioneers inside the building, going around and surveying to make sure all the stuff is here,” Jones continued. “Everything tagged, everything marked.”

Jones appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” would buy the fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. In the run-up to the auction, several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, including Donald Trump ally Roger Stone.

Jones has sacrificed practically every element of his life in order to hock his conspiracies.

In 2017, the InfoWars host lost primary custody of his children in a case that pinned him as a “cult leader” of an online conspiracy network.

Jones filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after losing his case against the families of victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Jones himself filed in June to liquidate all of his assets (which, at the time, amounted to roughly $9 million in personal assets, $6 million in InfoWars’ parent company Free Speech Systems, and $1.2 million worth of inventory—all a relative drop in the bucket for paying off his massive debt). A year later, the victims’ families took mercy on Jones, agreeing to settle the outstanding debt for a minimum of just $85 million over the course of 10 years.

Jones is still working to appeal the judgments against him. He now admits that the shooting was actually “100 percent real” but argues that his First Amendment rights should permit him to say that it wasn’t.

Mark Meadows tried to appeal to the Supreme Court over his election interference charges in Georgia, and was swiftly shut down.

Hoping to have his case moved to federal court, Meadows appealed to the Supreme Court, but on Tuesday the court denied his request. A former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, Meadows faces two charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the Peach State.

Meadows’s legal team argued that since he was a “federal officer” at the time, the case should be moved to federal court, where he likely hoped to claim immunity from prosecution. Meadows was rebuffed in the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against the former Trump staffer because he doesn’t work for the federal government anymore. The lower court also ruled that even if he was still a federal officer, “the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties.”

In total, 19 people, including Meadows and Trump, face criminal charges in the effort to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. They have all pleaded not guilty. But Trump’s reelection last week makes any prosecution of him in the next four years unlikely. It’s not yet clear what effect his victory has on his co-defendants.

The Georgia Court of Appeals is expected to hear oral arguments on December 5 on Trump’s appeal to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis thrown off the case, but that may change now that Trump is the president-elect. The Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity affirmed that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted for any crimes, meaning that the Georgia case against Trump will at best be in limbo for several years and at worst disappear altogether.

That will be of little comfort to Meadows and the other defendants in the case, especially since Willis was reelected last week. He and his fellow 2020 election conspirators will be hoping that the Fulton County prosecutor is eventually kicked off the case, or that it gets dismissed altogether.

Justice Samuel Alito has slammed the door on overeager Republicans’ hopes for a Trump-packed Supreme Court. 

With Republicans inching toward trifecta control of the House, Senate, and White House after their sweeping victory last week, the party has now turned its attention to the nation’s highest court. Republicans will have at least two years of uninhibited ability to mold the Supreme Court in their image, especially if conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito—76 and 74, respectively—get the message and step down. 

But Alito quickly shut down rumors of his retirement. 

“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” a friend of Alito told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is.”

Alito was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and has been a bastion of conservative originalism ever since. He penned the opinion on the devastating overturning of Roe v. Wade, something that was made possible in part thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing away in 2020, after stubbornly refusing calls to step down during President Barack Obama’s term—giving President Donald Trump the conservative majority needed to overturn the crucial reproductive rights law.  

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 70, has also faced calls for her to step down, but she has no plans to retire either.

Donald Trump’s pick for his administration’s “border czar” suggested that immigrants should “self-deport” ahead of the president-elect’s massive deportation scheme.

During an interview Monday with Tom Homan, Trump’s former director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement, Fox News’s Sean Hannity pitched the idea of a two- or three-month “grace period” for undocumented immigrants to self-deport.

“If you don’t self-report-deport, then you will never be given an opportunity at citizenship and when you leave, you will never be invited back, you will never be able to apply to come into the country,” said Hannity. “Sound like a good idea or no?”

“Criminals and gang members get no grace period,” Homan, the incoming border chief, said. “But, while we’re out prioritizing the public safety threats, and national security threats, if you want to self-deport, you should self-deport. Because, again, we know who you are, and we’re gonna come and find you.”

“So, if you want to self-deport, that’s fine. But criminals and gang members, they get no favors from this administration. You came to this country illegally which is a crime. You committed crimes against United States citizens, some heinous crimes, you get no grace period, so we’re coming for you.”

“But for those others, the non-criminals, you wanna self deport I’m all for it,” Homan said. “Because when they self-report they can put everything in order, their family business that they got, homes, or whatever. They can put all that in order and leave with their family all together. It makes perfect sense for the ones that are not criminals.”

Homan’s rambling response leaves room for interpretation, resting on the administration’s definition of “non-criminal,” which would likely include both undocumented and legal immigrants.

JD Vance has previously suggested that Trump would deport immigrants who are in the country under legal programs such as temporary protected status, or TPS. There were 863,880 foreign nationals in the United States under TPS as of August. Vance has also refused to rule out deporting immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status.

The details of Trump’s plan to execute the largest mass deportations in history are still unclear. Homan said Tuesday he expected support from the U.S. military and special operations.

Donald Trump may have secured a second term in the White House, but his Russia problems are far from over—at least according to suspiciously phrased comments by some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies.

Speaking with Russian state media on Monday, Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev noted that while the U.S. election may be over, Trump is still beholden to “certain forces.”

“To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations,” Patrushev told the business daily Kommersant in response to a question about whether the outcome of the presidential election would bode well for Russia. “As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”

That statement was elevated by Tass, the Russian news agency.

In a curious follow-up about Trump’s susceptibility to being pressured and influenced, Patrushev made another eyebrow-raising comment: Rather than answer the question directly, the Putin aide made a point to bring up assassination attempts against the president-elect.

“We know of two cases of attempts on his life during the election campaign,” Patrushev told Kommersant. “In general, throughout the history of the United States, attempts have been made on the lives of presidents and candidates regularly—more than 20 times. Four U.S. presidents have died at the hands of assassins while in office. Therefore, it is extremely important for U.S. intelligence agencies to prevent a repetition of such cases.”

Trump’s history with Russia goes way back to the early days of his first campaign. In 2019, former FBI director and Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller noted that Russia had blackmail material on Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

And that relationship appears to be ongoing. On Wednesday, veteran journalist Bob Woodward revealed that he had spoken about the unusual relationship between Trump and Putin several months ago with Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

“It’s so close, it seems like it might be blackmail,” Coats said, according to Woodward.

Woodward also recounted a separate conversation he had with CIA Director Bill Burns, who reportedly emphasized that “Putin manipulates” and is “professionally trained” to do so. According to Woodward, Burns believed that Putin has “got a plan” to repeat what he did during the forty-fifth presidential administration by “playing Trump.”

Senator Tom Cotton will be gaining a lot more power in the Senate thanks to Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointments.

On Monday night, The New York Times reported that Trump will appoint Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, allowing Cotton to move up and become chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee as Republicans take control of the Senate.

Cotton was initially reportedly in the running to be Trump’s vice president, but ultimately was passed over in favor of his Senate colleague JD Vance. If he does take over the Senate Intelligence Committee, he will bring his record of foreign policy hawkishness and support for violent solutions with him.

Before his political career began, Cotton called for American journalists to be jailed for reporting on classified information, and in the Senate, he made a name for himself by constantly calling on the United States to attack Iran.

In 2020, the Arkansas senator called for invoking the Insurrection Act and sending in federal troops to crush Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Later that year, he claimed that America’s Founding Fathers saw slavery as a “necessary evil upon which the union was built.” Recently, Cotton has made headlines for again calling for the military to be used against protesters, this time against opponents of Israel’s brutal massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, which he staunchly supports.

As the Intelligence Committee chair, we can expect more sound bites like his racist badgering of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in January, where he repeatedly asked the Singaporean social media executive if he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and ignored Chew’s protests about his actual place of birth.

Cotton’s support of military force against Americans probably endears him to Trump, who has also called for military force against his domestic enemies. The Arkansas senator will also be pushing to use the full force of America’s intelligence apparatus against Americans he disagrees with. Cotton and Trump will very likely be working together to stamp out any dissent, especially if Congress grants the presidency unprecedented new powers.