Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is pressing forward with his demands for information on the Trump administration’s alleged TikTok deal.
Since taking office in January, Trump has been brazenly defying a bipartisan law that prohibits TikTok from operating in the U.S. without American ownership. According to an executive order Trump signed in October, the framework of a deal establishes a big role in TikTok’s U.S. operations for billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, who has publicly suggested that “citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything.”
Markey, who voted for the TikTok ban last year, doesn’t like the idea of Trump negotiating a TikTok deal without congressional input. Markey and other Democratic senators urged Trump in March to work with Congress on a measure to postpone the deadline and noted that Trump’s independent negotiations broke the law.
The Trump administration has been so tight-lipped about its purported deal that several lawmakers who helped pass the ban have no clue where things currently stand with the app, The Verge reported last week.
On Monday, Markey sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding details on the state of negotiations, Reuters reported:
Senator Ed Markey said the White House has not answered numerous questions and has not followed the 2024 law. ‘Your repeated unlawful extensions of the divestment deadline and vague comments about the deal raise significant questions about whether you have been able to secure an agreement that keeps TikTok online and addresses the national security concerns posed by ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok,’ Markey said in a letter to Trump on Monday. ‘Congress and the American people need to understand the terms and status of this supposed agreement.’
The senator also raised questions about whether China had approved the deal, as administration officials have claimed, and he sought specifics as to whether China-based platform Bytedance will still maintain influence over the algorithm for the U.S.-based TikTok app:
‘If TikTok U.S. is licensing the algorithm from ByteDance and retraining it, is this a one-time transfer of the source code or does TikTok U.S. have to renew it at regular intervals?’ Markey asked. ‘Will any changes to the algorithm by ByteDance affect the algorithm that is licensed to TikTok U.S.?’
Democratic senators like Markey aren’t inclined to take the president at his word that such a deal serves the American people’s interests — if a deal has been reached at all.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.