Politics
Trump Signs Executive Order in Attempt to Delay TikTok Ban
President Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay enforcing a federal ban of TikTok for 75 days, even though the law took effect on Sunday and it is unclear that such a move could override it.
The order, one of Mr. Trump’s first acts after taking office, instructs the attorney general not to take any action to enforce the law so that his administration has “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.” The order is retroactive to Sunday.
As he signed the order, Mr. Trump told reporters that “the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok” if a deal for the app is reached, without going into detail. He said he thought TikTok could be worth a trillion dollars.
The order could immediately face legal challenges, including over whether a president has the power to halt enforcement of a federal law. Companies subject to the law, which forbids providing services to Chinese-owned TikTok, may determine that the order does not provide a shield from legal liability.
The federal law banning TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, mandated that the app needed to be sold to a non-Chinese owner or it would be blocked. The only workaround provided by the law is a 90-day extension if a likely buyer is found. Even then, it is unclear if that option is viable, given that the law is already in effect. The law also restricts how much of a TikTok stake can remain under foreign ownership.
By seeking to override the federal law, Mr. Trump raised serious questions about the limits of presidential power and the rule of law in the United States. Some lawmakers and legal experts have expressed concerns about the legality of an executive order, particularly in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law on Friday and the national security concerns that prompted legislators to draft it in the first place.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had signed the law, which passed overwhelmingly in Congress last year, forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban. TikTok had faced security concerns that the Chinese government could use it to spread propaganda or collect U.S. user data. The law levies financial penalties on app stores and cloud computing providers unless they stop working with the app.
TikTok briefly went dark for U.S. users over the weekend, but returned Sunday following Mr. Trump’s social media announcement that he was planning an executive order. While the app was working again for people who have already downloaded it, it vanished from Google’s and Apple’s app stores on Saturday and remained unavailable on Monday.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep TikTok online have major implications for its users. The app has reshaped the social media landscape, defined popular culture and created a living for millions of influencers and small businesses that rely on the platform.
In the executive order, Mr. Trump said that his constitutional responsibilities include national security. It says he wants to consult with advisers to review the concerns posed by TikTok and the mitigation measures the company has taken already.
The administration will “pursue a resolution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans,” according to the order, which called the law’s timing “unfortunate.”
The attorney general will send letters to companies covered by the law to tell them “that there has been no violation of the statute” and they won’t be held liable for providing services to TikTok during the 75 days, the order said.
That might not be enough reassurance, some legal experts said.
“I don’t think it’s consistent with faithful execution of the law to direct the attorney general not to enforce it for a determinate period,” said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. “And even if that’s OK, the president doesn’t have the authority to eliminate the law itself and remove liability for the people who violate it while it’s not being enforced.”
TikTok and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Google declined to comment.
TikTok’s ties to China have long raised national security concerns, including with Mr. Trump. Near the end of his first term in 2020, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that would bar app stores from making TikTok available for download. He then pushed for an American company to buy the app, but those efforts fizzled when he lost re-election.
Last year, the effort was revived by Congress and Mr. Biden signed it into law in April. The law targeted app stores, like those run by Apple and Google, and cloud computing companies. It said those companies could not distribute or host TikTok unless the app was sold to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19.
Mr. Trump then reversed positions. He joined the app in June and said on television in March that there are young people who would go “crazy” without TikTok.
“I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Mr. Trump said as he signed executive orders Monday evening.
TikTok challenged the law in federal court, saying it impeded its users’ rights to freedom of speech as well as the company’s own First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the law in December. TikTok appealed to the Supreme Court, which on Friday also upheld the law.
TikTok and some Democrats made a last-ditch effort to stop the law from taking effect. But on Saturday, TikTok stopped operating in the United States and disappeared from Apple’s and Google’s app stores a few hours before midnight. Users grieved its disappearance.
On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social that he would “issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” He said he would not punish companies that had violated the law to keep the app online.
Hours later TikTok restored its service to U.S. users and welcomed them back with a message: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
As he signed executive orders in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump was asked why he had changed his mind about the app.
“Because I got to use it,” he said.
Tripp Mickle and Nico Grant contributed reporting.
Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting
Government lawyers told a federal judge on Wednesday that the Trump administration intends to deport a Harvard scientist back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there over her protest of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Kseniia Petrova, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, has been held in a Louisiana immigration detention facility since February, when she was detained at Boston’s airport for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage.
This is the first time the government has formally stated its plan to deport her to Russia.
In Wednesday’s hearing, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the United States District Court in Vermont, quizzed the government lawyers about their grounds for canceling Ms. Petrova’s visa and detaining her. Judge Reiss went on to schedule a bail hearing on May 28, potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release.
The case has drawn the attention of elite scientists around the world, and sent a chill though the community of international academics that surrounded Ms. Petrova at Harvard. Several dozen Harvard students and faculty made the drive to Burlington, Vt., for the hearing.
“For every person that they detain, thousands of others are going to be scared of coming to the country,” said Leo Gerdén, a Harvard senior from Sweden.
Ms. Petrova was detained at Logan Airport on Feb. 16 as she returned from vacation in France, carrying with her sections of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory, at the request of her supervisor at Harvard.
She has admitted that she failed to declare the samples, but her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s J-1 visa on the spot and initiated deportation proceedings.
When Ms. Petrova explained that she had fled her native Russia for political reasons and could not return there, she was processed as an asylum seeker, and sent to Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., where she has remained for nearly three months.
In remarks from the bench, Judge Reiss seemed skeptical that the airport customs agent had possessed the authority to cancel Ms. Petrova’s visa.
“Where is that authority?” she asked. “Where does a customs and border patrol officer have the authority on his or her own to revoke a visa?” she said. “It’s got to be somewhere. Because there is no way that person has kind of an unlimited determination.”
The judge noted that the she had reviewed the statute laying out the grounds for customs officers to find someone inadmissible to the United States, and “I don’t see anything about customs violations.”
Jeffrey M. Hartman, an attorney representing the Department of Justice, said “it’s the secretary of state’s authority” to cancel a visa, and that the secretary has delegated that authority to customs officials.
Judge Reiss asked the government to clarify whether or not it planned to deport Ms. Petrova to Russia.
“You are asking for her removal to Russia?” she asked.
“Yes, your honor,” Mr. Hartman replied.
Ms. Petrova’s attorney filed a petition challenging her detention with the federal court in February, when she was held briefly at a Vermont detention center before being transferred to the immigration detention center in Louisiana.
Mr. Hartman argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction over Ms. Petrova’s detention. He said Ms. Petrova may contest her detention, but only in a Louisiana immigration court.
“It’s not something that a district court can entertain,” he said. “We think the proper venue for that question is Louisiana, where she is detained and where her custodian is.”
“But she is only detained there because you moved her,” said the judge.
Mr. Hartman said that when Ms. Petrova had been asked whether she was carrying biological materials, that she “failed to disclose their full contents,” and was carrying “a baggie with loose vials of this experimental material.”
“The C.B.P. office was our first line of defense against unknown biological materials from a foreign national out of a port of entry,” he said.
Over the past few weeks, federal courts in Vermont have handed down a series of decisions favoring noncitizen academics caught up in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On May 9, Tufts doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was released from detention on the orders of a judge, William K. Sessions III, who said that her continued detention could chill “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
And on April 30, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University who was detained by immigration authorities during an interview for his naturalization. Both Ms. Ozturk and Mr. Mahdawi were singled out because they had vocally protested Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Ms. Petrova’s case has no apparent basis in any political activism. But the attorney general of Massachusetts, Andrea Joy Campbell, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said Ms. Petrova’s detention, like that of Ms. Ozturk, represented “reckless and cruel misuse of power to punish and terrorize noncitizen members of the academic community.”
Ms. Campbell argued that international students bring significant revenue into Massachusetts, and that by creating “an atmosphere of fear,” the Trump administration has threatened the state’s economy.
Ms. Petrova’s attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, has argued that customs officials overstepped their authority by revoking her visa.
Though Customs officials may, in some cases, determine that an individual is inadmissible, he said, they must identify the legal grounds for doing so, such as criminal activity or health concerns. He said failing to declare scientific samples did not meet that test.
“It shouldn’t make her any more inadmissible than cutting in front of the line when she was waiting to be inspected,” Mr. Romanovsky said. “What the government is doing is saying, ‘If you’re an immigrant or a noncitizen and you’re not on your best behavior, we will punish you. We are going to use various immigration provisions to get rid of you.’ ”
Adam Sychla, a postdoctoral research fellow who organized a group of roughly 20 Harvard students and faculty members who traveled from Cambridge to the courthouse in Burlington, Vt., said he had never met Ms. Petrova, but had immediately decided to make the drive.
“Whether I know her personally or not, is immaterial,” he added. “I easily could have met her last week to start a collaboration. Instead, Kseniia is being unfairly detained.”
Miles J. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass.
While Democrats have largely ridiculed President Donald Trump‘s decision to accept a $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family on behalf of the U.S. government, Republicans have raised national security concerns and admitted they have not been briefed on the details of the deal.
Fox News Digital asked Senate Republicans for their reaction to Trump deciding to accept the luxury Boeing jet from Qatar. While Trump continues his diplomatic trip through the Middle East, House Republicans are busy finalizing his “big, beautiful bill” at committee markups on Capitol Hill.
“I actually haven’t paid attention to it,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said. “I’m sorry to be so out of the loop on that. I’ve just been thinking about Medicaid and about what the House is sending over.”
And Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, another Trump ally, said she didn’t know enough about the deal to comment on it when pressed by Fox News Digital.
DEMS CONDEMN TRUMP’S JET DEAL, CALL $400M GIFT ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL’
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and President Donald Trump speak to each other at the Royal Palace in Doha May 14, 2025. Trump, right, touched down at Hamad International Airport in Doha. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“I need to find out from the administration what exactly is going on,” Ernst added.
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Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Eric Schmitt of Missouri also admitted they don’t know the details of the deal.
However, Collins, a Republican with a willingness to buck the party on certain issues, seemed to align more with Democrats’ reaction to the gift, saying she suspected there could be issues within the GIFT Act, which prohibits federal employees from accepting gifts from foreign governments.
Democrats have pointed to the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution as proof the Qatari gift is “unconstitutional.” The emoluments clause states that no elected official should accept a gift from a foreign country without consent from Congress.
“My concern is his safety,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, told Fox News Digital. “Qatar supports Hamas. The Hamas leaders live in Qatar, so my concern is the safety of the president. How are we going to know that the plane is safe?”
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Doha, Qatar, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The U.S. Department of Defense is expected to retrofit the Boeing 747-8 luxury jet to be used as Air Force One. Some Republicans still have national security concerns.
“Qatar has a relationship with China, a relationship with Hamas. That would scare me,” Scott admitted.
But Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo, said a “free plane” sounds like a “good deal for the government.”
The Trump administration has continued to defend Qatar’s gift to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it was not “Trump’s plane” and that it was donated to the U.S. Air Force.
A Qatari Boeing 747, right, sits on the tarmac of Palm Beach International airport after Trump toured the aircraft Feb. 15, 2025. (Getty Images)
On Wednesday morning, Trump signed a series of agreements with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, Qatar, which included a Qatari purchasing agreement for 160 American Boeing planes, defense agreements and a declaration of cooperation between the countries.
Trump defended his decision to accept the Qatari jet Tuesday, saying it would be “stupid” not to and emphasizing that he accepted it on behalf of the U.S. government, not himself.
“The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME! It is a gift from a Nation, Qatar, that we have successfully defended for many years. It will be used by our Government as a temporary Air Force One, until such time as our new Boeings, which are very late on delivery, arrive. Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done,” Trump said on Truth Social Tuesday.
“This big savings will be spent, instead, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump added.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about plans to discuss the deal with Congress.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump met Wednesday with Syria’s new leader, praising him as a “young, attractive guy” and urging him to rid his country of “Palestinian terrorists.”
Trump also urged Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to sign onto the historic Abraham Accords brokered during Trump’s first term.
The meeting in Riyadh came as Trump concluded the Saudi Arabian leg of his Middle Eastern trip and headed to Qatar, the second destination of what has so far been an opulence-heavy tour of the region.
The meeting with Al-Sharaa, which lasted roughly half an hour and was the first time in a quarter of a century that the leaders of the two nations have met, marks a significant victory for Al-Sharaa’s fledgling government, coming one day after Trump’s decision to lift long-standing sanctions from the war-ravaged country.
It also lends legitimacy to a leader whose past as an Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi leader — Al-Sharaa severed ties with the group in 2016 — had made Western nations keep him at arm’s length.
The sanctions were imposed on Syria in 2011, when the now-deposed President Bashar Assad began a brutal crackdown to quell anti-government uprisings.
Al-Sharaa headed an Islamist rebel coalition that toppled Assad in December, but the Trump administration and other Western governments conditioned the lifting of sanctions on his government fulfilling certain conditions.
Yet as is his custom, Trump cut through protocol and relied on personal relations, lifting the sanctions at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a long-time supporter of Syria’s rebellion, who joined the meeting via phone.
Speaking on Air Force One en route to Qatar, Trump described Al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”
“He’s got a real shot at holding it together,” Trump added. “I spoke with President Erdogan, who is very friendly with him. He feels he’s got a shot of doing a good job. It’s a torn-up country.”
According to a readout shared by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X, Trump urged Al-Sharaa to sign onto the Abraham Accords, tell “foreign terrorists” to leave Syria and deport “Palestinian terrorists,” help the U.S. in preventing Islamic State’s resurgence and assume responsibility for detention centers in northeast Syria housing thousands of people affiliated with Islamic State.
The Abraham Accords were the centerpiece of Trump’s foreign policy achievements in his first term. Brokered in 2020, they established diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — without conditioning them on Palestinian statehood or Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.
Under Assad, Syria maintained a decades-old truce with Israel, despite hosting several Palestinian factions and allowing Iran and affiliated groups to operate in the country.
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