Trump Puts Worst Person You Know in Charge of TikTok’s Next Steps

For some reason, President Trump has tasked JD Vance with handling the future of TikTok.

Along with national security adviser Michael Waltz, the vice president has been given the job of handling the social media platform’s possible sale to an American entity, Punchbowl News reports. Vance and Waltz will be overseeing the national security aspects of such a transaction.

Shortly after taking office, Trump said he would put a 90-day pause on forcing TikTok to be sold or banned, ignoring a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order ordering the Treasury and Commerce Department to create a “sovereign wealth fund” for the United States, and suggested the fund could be used to acquire TikTok.

Vance will have to navigate concerns from national security hawks in potentially brokering a TikTok sale, as many lawmakers in both parties have attacked the app’s connections to China. But the real reasons behind Congress’s vote to require a sale in April may not have been security concerns or threats to Americans’ personal information.

According to now-former Senator Mitt Romney, the bill passed with bipartisan support because of widespread pro-Palestinian advocacy on TikTok.

“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I’d note that’s of real interest, and the President will get the chance to make action in that regard,” Romney said last spring.

Now Vance will be in charge of a sale initially pushed by the right but enabled by Democrats, which they later came to regret. Billionaires Frank McCourt and his business partner Kevin O’Leary (of Shark Tank fame) have expressed interest in buying the platform, and McCourt has even met with Senator Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, regarding such a purchase, according to Punchbowl.

Meanwhile, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has not publicly pursued selling the platform.

A key Democrat on the Federal Elections Commission has hit back after President Donald Trump made a pathetic attempt to illegally remove her.

Ellen Weintraub, an opponent of corporate dark money who has served as a commissioner on the FEC panel for 20 years, on Thursday posted a letter that she had received, signed by the president himself. His message was brief.

“You are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effectively immediately. Thank you for your service on the Commission,” the letter said.

Weintraub wasn’t going to be so easily dismissed.

“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner & Chair of @FEC,” Weintraub wrote on X. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners—this isn’t it. I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”

A commissioner can only be removed after the president nominates a replacement, and that person is then confirmed by the Senate. Weintraub, whose six-year term as a commissioner technically expired in 2007 but who has remained on the commission, took the rotating position as FEC chair in January.

The FEC has received dozens of complaints accusing Trump of violating campaign finance law, but none of them has been pursued because of the panel’s bipartisan deadlock. Weintraub, who has made public statements about these complaints, told The New York Times she’s “not really surprised that I am on their radar.”

Weintraub is one of three Democrats on the panel of six commissioners, a structure that often leads to a deadlock as a bipartisan vote is necessary for the watchdog agency to do anything. But Weintraub helped to engineer a new system to make the deadlock work for the Democrats, instead of against them. In her scheme, the FEC fails over and over again to vote, appearing as dysfunctional as possible, thereby compelling the federal courts to act by enforcing federal election law in its stead.

Even the people closest to Donald Trump are suffering under Elon Musk’s sudden takeover of the executive branch, and they’re turning to an unexpected savior to intervene: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Vitali, Wired’s Jake Lahut revealed Friday that a slew of longtime Trump loyalists have turned to the so-called “ice maiden” to liberate the administration from Musk’s influence.

“You spoke to half a dozen Trump loyalists, Republican aides, and advisers inside and around the administration,” Vitali started. “I think many of them, even though they say they’re shocked to be saying this, the rift almost seemed inevitable. But how much of a rift actually is it? And what is the sense behind the scenes?”

“I still don’t have a clear sense of the factions at play here, but it’s happening,” Lahut said. “I wouldn’t call it a full-blown freak-out quite yet, but the folks I talked to have all been loyal to Trump and have been on the [Trump] train since before January 6, and it takes quite a lot to rattle or surprise these people.

“And these are folk who, you know, normally would be inclined to spin this in some sort of way,” Lahut continued. “Instead, they don’t know who to turn to. A lot of them want Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, to intervene in some form.”

Wiles, whose job it is to iron out the creases in Trump’s chaotic Cabinet and streamline his mission, has already butted heads with Musk. Last month, she refused the billionaire a coveted permanent office in the White House. That move came weeks after Wiles told Axios that anyone who wants to be a “star” would have no place on her team.

“I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles told Axios by email in early January. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”

The Justice Department is suing the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois for not caving to the Trump administration’s performative, fear-inducing immigration raids.

The DOJ wants to stop the city from enforcing its sanctuary city laws that they say “interfere with and discriminate against” Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown—yet another installment of the beef between the president and the city, which goes back to a canceled 2016 campaign rally.

Last month, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that immigrants would be protected, “whether you’re undocumented, whether you are seeking asylum, or whether you’re seeking a good-paying job.

“We’re going to fight and stand up for working people. That’s what Chicago is known for,” he continued. “We’re going to continue to do that regardless of who’s in the White House.”

Last week, “border czar” Tom Homan complained that Chicagoans were too knowledgeable for ICE to carry out effective raids.

“Sanctuary citizens are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For instance, Chicago, very well-educated. They’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE,” Homan said. “I’ve seen many pamphlets from many NGOs: ‘Here’s how you escape ICE from arresting you’; ‘Here’s what you need to do.’ They call it ‘Know your rights.’ I call it ‘How to escape arrest.’”

On Saturday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker let Trump know he was “not afraid” of any retaliation he may receive from the president for his actions.

“We’re not gonna have our police here locally coordinating with federal officials to have them taken away.… It’s a reckless set of policies that [Trump is] engaging in,” Pritzker said on MSNBC’s The Weekend.

In a statement responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Pritzker’s office, Alex Gough, said, “Instead of working with us to support law enforcement, the Trump Administration is making it more difficult to protect the public, just like they did when Trump pardoned the convicted January 6 violent criminals.”

Johnson said in his own statement that the “safety and security of Chicago residents remains the priority for the Johnson Administration. Chicago will continue to protect the working people of our city and defend against attacks on our longstanding values.”

Justice Department lawyers refused Thursday to ensure that a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases wouldn’t have their names revealed as retribution for investigating and arresting a violent cohort of Donald Trump’s supporters, according to a new report from NOTUS.

On Monday, FBI employees were forced to respond to a questionnaire probing their involvement in the nearly 2,400 cases that stemmed from the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

While the agents involved hadn’t committed any partisanship or wrongdoing by simply doing their jobs, it’s not clear that Trump, who pardoned 1,500 rioters upon returning to office, will see it that way.

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who was appointed wholly by accident, has emerged as a staunch defender of agents involved in the January 6 investigations and refused to turn over the list of names. Instead, he presented only their employee ID numbers.

FBI special agents have already filed two lawsuits to protect the identities of those on the list. In D.C. District Court Thursday, lawyers representing the FBI employees argued that the information could potentially be weaponized by Trump, Elon Musk, or the Department of Government Efficiency.

But lawyers for the Justice Department wouldn’t give a straight answer when asked by District Court Judge Jia M. Cobb whether the names would be kept confidential, noting that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for FBI agents to have their names made public in court papers.

“We need to consult with our superiors,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Simon, according to NOTUS. Later, in an email, prosecutors said simply that they currently had no “intention” to publish the names and would notify the federal judge if they changed their minds.

Pamela M. Keith, the attorney representing nine anonymous FBI employees, said that the department’s unwillingness to promise that the names wouldn’t be released was something that “stood out” to her, NOTUS reported.

A federal judge has suspended President Donald Trump’s mass federal employee buyout scheme until at least Monday, when arguments on the program will be heard at a court hearing.

“I make no assessment at this stage of the merits of the claims,” Judge George O’Toole Jr. said at the hearing in Boston on Thursday, NBC News reported. The Trump administration offered federal workers the choice of a return to full-time in-office work or to quit with a buyout and severance pay through September 30. An email sent at the time stated that there “will NOT be an extension of this program.”

The buyout plan, also known as the “Fork in the Road” initiative due to its similarity to Elon Musk’s offer to Twitter employees in 2022, has been sending shock waves throughout the federal government. Trump has been very clear that it is a direct attempt to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in his image. Over 60,000 employees, or about 3 percent of federal workers, have accepted the offer.

“We are grateful to the judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers who refuse to show up to the office can take the Administration up on this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Earlier on Thursday, a federal judge partially halted Musk’s DOGE henchmen from accessing government databases, making the Boston ruling the second setback of the day for the Trump administration. But the future of this “Fork in the Road” effort remains to be seen, as it has also been challenged by multiple federal employee unions.

A U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday partially blocked Elon Musk and his DOGE groupies from further accessing government databases.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved a temporary restraining order that prevents two DOGE-affiliated employees from accessing anything other than read-only records from the Bureau of Fiscal Service’s systems.

The restricted employees are Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who will be permitted access on an “as needed” basis, according to the filing. Prior to joining Musk’s federal team, Krause served as a chief executive of a Silicon Valley software company, while Elez is a 25-year-old engineer with experience at two of Musk’s companies: X and SpaceX.

“The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” the order reads.

The order was in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, alleging that the newly minted Trump appointee had provided Musk and his team “full access” to Americans’ personal and financial information.

The order barred “any person who is an employee (but not a Special Government Employee) of the Department of the Treasury and who has a need for the record or system of records in the performance of their duties.”

The agreement will stay in place until February 24, when both parties are expected to return to court for a long-term preliminary injunction, according to ABC News.

Senator Ron Wyden is calling out Donald Trump and Elon Musk for carrying out a “coup” in their slash-and-burn takeover of federal agencies.

During an appearance on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, gave a grim answer to host Nilay Patel’s intrepid question of “What the fuck is going on?”

“That is the question of the hour,” Wyden replied. “And it is almost impossible to divine an answer because it moves from minute to minute. Donald Trump essentially governs by whim.”

“I’m very troubled by the type of policies that they are pursuing that when you add them up, looks and feels like a coup,” Wyden said, noting that Democrats had been trying to stop Trump and Musk where they could.

“If I were to embrace it in a sentence apropos of ‘what the hell is going on here,’ is that Trump and Musk are ignoring the checks and balances of our republic, and for all practical purposes I’d call that a coup.”

After pillaging USAID over the weekend and illegally shuttering the agency, Musk then gained access to the Treasury Department’s payments system, which could affect programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments, all of which fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee. In a letter to Wyden Tuesday, the Treasury Department insisted that Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is merely performing an audit of the system, and not, as some sources have suggested, rewriting code. Wyden told The New Republic that the letter “reeks of a cover-up.”

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Wyden said to TNR.

Wyden has been sounding the alarm on the Trump-Musk takeover in other ways. In a statement Tuesday urging his colleagues to vote against the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Wyden said that what the U.S. is witnessing is nothing short of “an authoritarian takeover of our federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

“They’ve set their sights on a full purge of anyone in government that doesn’t bend the knee and follow their orders,” he said in the statement, saying that their actions had “dubious legal and constitutional authority, and flies in the face of Congressional authority.”

Decoder’s full interview with Wyden will be published Monday.

Democratic voters are begging their elected officials to wake up.

Axios reports that congressional Democrats’ office phone lines are being overrun with calls from distressed constituents goading their representatives to push back harder against the Trump administration. The callers are angry that President Trump is “flooding the zone” with a flurry of spiteful and potentially illegal policies targeted at, but not limited to, nonwhite immigrants, the LGBTQ community, Black Americans, the disabled, and the federal bureaucracy.

Members of Congress told Axios that they hadn’t received this many calls since events like the October 7 attack on Israel, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, or the Trump impeachment hearings.

“I can’t recall ever receiving this many calls,” Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern told Axios. “People disgusted with what’s going on, and they want us to fight back.”

Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan echoed McGovern’s sentiments: “We had the most calls we’ve ever had in one day on Monday in 12 years.” Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer said his office is receiving “hundreds, maybe thousands” of calls.

Democrats struggled to respond last week as Trump signed a flurry of destructive executive orders. But after a week of furious phone calls, Democrats are starting to fight back.

It looks like Elon Musk isn’t winning any popularity contests anytime soon. New polling has found that the billionaire technocrat has fallen out of favor with, well, everyone (including Republicans).

Republicans are reportedly losing faith in Musk, who Donald Trump appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is currently on a slash-and-burn campaign through several essential federal agencies.

At first, Republicans were on board with Musk’s radical plan to eradicate government agencies. In a poll from The Economist/YouGov taken in the days after the 2024 presidential election, 47 percent of Republicans said that they wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence in Trump’s administration. Twenty-nine percent said they wanted him to have “a little” influence, and just 12 percent said they hoped he’d have “none at all.”

But less than a month into Trump’s reign in the White House—and his shadow president’s nefarious efforts to ruin everything—it seems that Republican voters aren’t so sweet on the unelected bureaucrat running rampant through the federal government. A new poll published Wednesday from The Economist/YouGov found that now only 26 percent of Republicans want Musk to have “a lot” of influence, a drop of 21 points. By contrast, 43 percent of Republican respondents said they wanted Musk to have “a little” influence, and 17 percent said they wanted his hands out of government altogether.

So what exactly is happening?

It seems that the more people learn about Musk, the less they like him—at least, according to a new Hart Research survey published Wednesday by Groundwork Collective and Public Citizen. The poll asked respondents about how much influence they felt Musk should have in government, explaining aspects of his role in DOGE, his lack of oversight, and his far-reaching access.

By the end of the survey, 63 percent of voters reported having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, an increase of nine points from the beginning of the survey. Meanwhile, only 32 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion, which was down 7 percent from the start, and showed a major negative swing among non-MAGA Republicans.

As beloved as Musk may be among the MAGA crowd, it’s not clear that he appeals to voters in general, which could prove to be a problem for Trump, who claims to have a mandate from the American people to do whatever the hell he wants.

Respondents seemed disturbed by the extent to which Musk had permeated the Trump administration. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that Musk had too much influence and involvement in the government. Of the voters who were familiar with DOGE, 60 percent said Musk had too much power.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said that they were less favorable toward Musk’s role with DOGE because he was not bound by any rules about conflicts of interest. On Wednesday, the White House reaffirmed that the SpaceX CEO would self-determine when he had a conflict of interest.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they had an unfavorable view of Musk’s role with DOGE, considering the group’s unfettered access to all unclassified records, software systems, and I.T. systems across federal agencies.

Over the weekend, DOGE employees raided USAID offices for access to personnel files and payment information, shortly before every employee was placed on administrative leave. Every hour, it seems DOGE employees gain access to the files of a new federal agency. Musk’s team recently gained access to Treasury Department files for an “operational efficiency assessment.”

Two sources told WIRED that one of Musk’s twentysomething-year-old engineers had the ability not just to read but to write code on the Treasury’s extremely sensitive Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The Treasury Department insisted Tuesday that Musk’s access was “read-only.”

In general, a majority of voters just don’t like the DOGE czar at all. According to Hart Research, 54 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of Musk, including 40 percent who found him very unfavorable.

Lawmakers said they have been overwhelmed by calls from constituents across the country concerned about the Musk-Trump takeover.

“The U.S. Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute we usually receive, which has disrupted our call systems,” wrote Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski in a post on X Wednesday.