Trump’s Former FCC Head Ajit Pai Asks Supreme Court to Uphold TikTok Ban

Ajit Pai, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in Donald Trump’s first term, is breaking away from his old boss and encouraging Supreme Court to issue ban On TikTok to move forward. According to Business InsiderPai and former Treasury Department official Thomas Fedo filed a brief last week encouraging the justices to uphold the law that would ban TikTok’s operations within US borders despite pressure from Trump to end the ban.

Pai’s primary argument is that there is existing legal precedent to support the legality of the law, which was passed by Congress last year to require TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the platform or cease operations in the United States. That precedent: the crackdown on Pai’s own Chinese companies.

Back when Pai was head of the FCC, he designated two agencies headquartered in China National security threats. The agency also banned cellular providers from using government subsidies to buy telecom equipment from manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, on the grounds that those companies could collaborate with the Chinese government to spy on Americans — a concern that was at least partially backed up by the findings. journalist And intelligence community.

Pai called the approach taken to protect apps like TikTok in the Foreign Adversarial Controlled Applications Act “extremely similar” to his own efforts to deal with China’s telecom equipment suppliers, noting that “Congress and the executive branch have routinely identified in law or regulation that China’s control Companies that remain pose a particular national security risk.”

Pai finds himself in conflict with 2024 Donald Trump, who has filed his own brief Requesting the court to delay ByteDance’s January 19 deadline to sell TikTok is still in line with Trump’s 2017-2021. Trump was the first to issue the ban and tried to enforce it himself By executive order in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by a federal judge. Trump also gave his support Rules that restrict sales Equipment from companies like Huawei and ZTE is in an effort to block Chinese firms’ access to American technology.

But Trump had a change of heart on his TikTok attack earlier this year after meeting with Jeff Yass, a major TikTok investor and—you won’t believe it!—a big-time Trump supporter who Pouring in about $100 million Conservative causes this past election cycle. His support for the app was further cemented after he won the 2024 presidential election, which he attributed at least partly to Popularity on TikTok. It is also going to come as a big surprise, however, that TikTok has started Indulging Trump’s support And suddenly, in what is surely an unrelated coincidence, the app becomes More friendly to Trump-related content. Wild is exactly how that kind of thing happens.

However, there has been no indication that Pai will return to the Trump administration (he seems perfectly happy in a role at a busy private equity firm Buying telecom companies), so it’s probably safer for him to take a stand against his former boss. If anything, Pai’s position is far more principled than Trump’s, so credit where credit is due.