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Ajit Pai, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the first term of Donald Trump, separates from his old employer and encourages the The Supreme Court to allow a ban on TikTok to move forward. According to Business InsiderPai and former Treasury Department official Thomas Feddo filed a brief last week urging the justices to uphold the law that would ban TikTok’s operations within US borders despite Trump’s push to stop the prohibition
Pai’s primary argument is that there is an existing legal precedent to support the legality of the law, approved by Congress last year, which would require the TikTok company ByteDance to sell the platform or cease operations in the United States. That precedent: Pai’s own crackdown on Chinese companies.
When Pai was head of the FCC, he designated two companies based in China as threats to national security. The agency has banned cell phone suppliers 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 that was at least partly supported by the results journalists and the intelligence community.
Pai called the approach taken to limit apps like TikTok in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act “extremely similar” to his efforts to crack down on equipment providers Chinese telecommunications, noting “Congress and the Executive Branch have routinely identified in specific legislation or regulation. companies under the control of China that pose a particular risk to national security.”
While Pai finds himself in conflict with 2024 Donald Trump, who presented his own brief asking the court to delay The January 19 deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok is still very much in line with 2017-2021 Trump. It was Trump who first floated the ban and tried to do it all by himself via executive order in 2020, which was eventually blocked by a federal judge. Trump also supported it rules that restricted sales of equipment to companies like Huawei and ZTE in an attempt to cut off Chinese companies’ access to American technology.
But Trump had a change of heart about his attack on TikTok earlier this year after meeting with Jeff Yass, a major investor in TikTok and – you won’t believe this! poured in nearly $100 million to conservative causes this past electoral cycle. His support for the app was also cemented after his victory in the 2024 presidential election, which he attributed at least in part to his popularity on TikTok. This will also be a big surprise, but TikTok has started courting Trump’s support and suddenly, in what is surely an unrelated coincidence, the app became way more friendly to Trump’s content. Wild as this kind of thing just happens.
However, there is no indication that Pai will return to the Trump administration (he seems perfectly happy to play a role at a private company that is busy). buy telecommunications companies), so it is probably safe for him to take a stand against his former boss. If anything, Pai’s position is more principled than Trump’s, so credit where it’s due.
