TIKTOK BAN UPHELD By Scotus, In UNANIMOUS Decision Supreme Court Says Tiktok MUST Divest From China
27:30 Share

Will, talk to me. ABC Tuesday. They took his daughter. She's coming home alive. Will Trent, the series critics are calling powerful must-see TV, continues to thrill. Shouldn't we strategize before we go in there? If we screw up this case, a cop killer walks free. With a riveting conclusion to a two-part season premiere. Will Trent, all new Tuesday on ABC and stream on Hulu.

Massive breaking news. Ladies and gentlemen, the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, surprisingly, with liberal justices joining conservative to be like, yo, Congress has spoken. The national security threat was clearly articulated. Both parties agreed. They passed a law. The president signed it. Thank you and have a nice day. Now there's an argument as to whether or not this will actually get enforced because Joe Biden's administration said, you know what? We're

We're not going to enforce this. It's up to Trump. And Trump has said we don't want to enforce it. The only problem, the law would affect third parties like Apple and Google and any hosting providers in the country. And they may not want civil or criminal liability, regardless of whether or not the executive branch seeks to uphold the ban. Not to mention their insurance companies may not allow it. It is looking like.

TikTok may shut down for good. Check this story out from CNBC. They report the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold the TikTok ban. Wow. I did not think we'd get a decision on a Friday, ladies and gentlemen, although President-elect Donald Trump...

could choose not to enforce the law. It's unclear whether third-party internet service providers will support the app. Under the terms of the law, service providers like Apple and Google will be penalized for supporting TikTok after the law's deadline. So let me clarify once again, my friends.

Trump might come out and outright say, don't worry, we won't enforce this. But with fines and penalties and criminal liability still racking up on these digital service providers, they might be like, so what happens if you get out of office and someone else comes in? We're going to have this huge litany of charges and penalties against us. Not interested. Not to mention, as I said, the insurance companies are going to be like, I don't care if they enforce it or not. You can't break the law. They report.

Supreme Court on Friday upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban. ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many U.S. users could lose access to the app this weekend. The app may still work for those who already have TikTok on their phones, although ByteDance has also threatened to shut the app down. In a unanimous decision. This is crazy.

The Supreme Court cited the Biden administration upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which Biden signed in April. Quote, The Supreme Court's opinion said,

But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok's data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.

I would like to add full disclosure, Timcast and Timcast IRL were banned without notice for breaking no rules and with no recourse from TikTok. I am not a fan of this platform. I have never been a fan of this platform. Even when we were critical of the platform, we were still operating on it. I would not be surprised if the reason we got banned from the platform is because I have largely agreed from the get-go

that a foreign adversary should not operate mass media in the United States. So maybe it was punishment. I don't know. I tweeted at TikTok policy, unbanned Timcast IRL. Not that it matters at this point. Looks like they're going to nuke the platform. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote concurrences. I can't believe the liberals actually made sense on this one.

TikTok's fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who originally favored a ban during his first administration, but has since flip-flopped on the matter. In December, Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the law's implementation and allow his administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.

Trump began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican mega donor Jeff Yass. Yass is a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of, in Trump? He owns a stake in Truth Social, I think they're trying to say. Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, one day after the TikTok deadline for sale. TikTok CEO Xiao Chu is one of several tech leaders expected to be in attendance seated in the dais.

The nation's highest court said in the opinion that while data collection and analysis is a common practice in the digital age, the sheer size of TikTok and its susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, poses a national security concern. Full stop! It's not just that, ladies and gentlemen. It is the algorithm. They don't show this garbage to their kids.

If even 1% of our younger generation are being exposed to psychotic imagery and nonsense ideas, it is going to have a negative impact on this country in the future to the benefit of our adversaries. Our own platforms are bad enough with this stuff. We don't need TikTok doing the same thing. Under the terms of the law, third-party internet service providers like Apple and Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the January 19th deadline.

If service providers and the app store owners comply, consumers will unable to install the necessary updates that make the app functional.

So basically, you'll have the app. You'd be able to use it. That's about it. Here's the issue. It's going to be off the app store, so no new users. But TikTok is saying, so what? We're going to shut it down. The rumor is TikTok will direct all American users to a screen that just says we have been shut down. Blame your government. And you know what? It'll piss a lot of people off, but I'm excited for it. Young people are addicted to these short form platforms, and I think it is good and healthy to force them off. I got to be completely honest.

If the algorithm was healthy and promoting good news and information, I'd support it. But I don't trust what China is doing, a data collection and the message they're sending to young people, largely woke garbage. Trump only reversed course because they finally started allowing certain, certain mega influencers. Meanwhile, you go to X and you can see a wave of prominent Trump supporting personalities saying they were banned from the platform for no reason. So what does it look like?

If you're a prominent personality, you supported Trump, you got nuked on TikTok. If you are a smaller personality, perhaps, and no disrespect, less prominent, then you seem to be okay.

What this does is prevents powerful celebrity from forming in the Trump sphere while still giving general flat support to make it look like Trump's being supported in general. Trump falls for this. The people around him are lobbying, and it is a bad idea. Meanwhile, on X, you have many political celebrities who are able to rise up and influence people. That is a good thing.

Merit determines your message works. It's successful. I hope the Trump admin gets the message. It is a good thing, in my opinion, that TikTok is being forced to divest. And the fact that they don't want to speaks volumes. You will make money in the sale. You can make the sale. The business will operate. Profit to be had. Why deny that? Because in my view, it's a weapon against us.

They're going to say reps from TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated President Biden's support for the law in a statement saying TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law. Make no mistake, my friends. Many people are basically saying that there's true information we can get from TikTok we can't get in the U.S.,

But there are other apps you can use that have free speech. Rumble allows people to say largely anything. You have a bit shoot. X is largely free speech. I said largely. It's not perfect. The issue I see with TikTok is that we can't access. We have no recourse. And it is not. We don't know what their intentions are. China may allow certain conversations largely on Israel-Palestine.

But you know they're not doing it because they want you to get good information. They're doing it because it is disruptive to the U.S. Now, a lot of people in this country are dissenters, and they want to rely on foreign adversaries for access to dissent. Americans have a right to speak, and X affords you that ability. It's imperfect, but it's good. It works. You're allowed to be on there. Even many of these people who are very anti-Israel, who are complaining about losing their verification badges, can still post. And you can go on Rumble much the same.

Quote, given the sheer fact of timing, this administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next administration, which takes office Monday. I mean, that makes sense. What are they going to do? They have one day? Kent Ruan, the director for the Center for Democracy and Technology Nonprofit, criticized the decision, saying in a statement that it harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world. No, it doesn't, because TikTok is the number one sensor of information that challenges the machine.

A lot of people are cheering it on because they allowed free Palestine hashtags. Yet for a lot of people that criticized the war machine, wokeness, or other narrative machine garbage on the corporate press, they found themselves censored. Why? Because it benefited the Chinese narrative. I'm not interested. In December, members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, urging the executives to begin preparing to comply with the law.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from lawyers repping TikTok content creators in the U.S. government. TikTok's lead lawyer, Noel Francisco, argued that the law violates the First Amendment rights of the app's 170 million American users. Meanwhile, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Preligar claimed the app's alleged ties to China pose a national security threat, and they do. Many TikTok creators have been telling their fans to find them on competing platforms like YouTube and Meta's Facebook and Instagram.

Zuckerberg just came out and said they're removing restrictions. Instagram is available. Imperfect. But guys, rumble. Use rumble. You can still do it. Imagine if 170 million Americans signed up for rumble instead. What's the argument? People are saying, well, you can't get discovered the same way. Yes, you can. If every TikTok user went to rumble, you'd have no issues. Let's go, baby. Make the change. Be the change.

Should ByteDance decide to sell TikTok to a U.S. company or group of investors, potential buyers may have to pay up between $40 billion and $50 billion. Why are we giving China an adversary access to this massive resource? Control of a large economic position in our country and a mass media platform.

I know that Xinhua exists in the United States. That's Chinese news. But they're not monopolistic. It's scale that matters. TikTok has become too massive and it's too censorious to allow. I get pissed at Twitter censoring people. I've been arguing the whole time. Facebook censoring people, YouTube censoring people. But guess what? As Americans, we have the ability to sue, file FOIA requests, take them to court and expose them. And we did and we won. We can't do that with ByteDance.

make ByteDance divest, bring TikTok to America, and then we can complain with accountability. Ladies and gentlemen, this is huge news. I'll wrap it up there. Smash the like button. Share the show with everyone you know. We'll be back tonight at youtube.com slash timcast IRL, and we will see you all then.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Sometimes the most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting in crowded waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy, that's painful. Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy remove those painful parts of getting better with things like 24-7 virtual visits and prescriptions delivered to your door. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.

You know, to be honest, I do blame a lot of Democrat policies for this, but I feel bad for Walgreens. The Walgreens CEO reveals anti-theft measures of locking up product had the opposite effect. Yikes. Now, while we sit here and gloat and laugh and say, ha ha ha, Walgreens, I don't blame them for this.

To be fair, a certain element of the people who are working for these companies, they live in these big cities and they're voting for Democrat policies that ultimately result in this nightmare scenario. When you decriminalize shoplifting, this is what you get. Now, again, Walgreens is trying to mitigate the problem caused by failed Democrat policies. It's not their fault that it doesn't work.

Hopefully, this is a big wake-up call for very wealthy individuals who are going to stop donating to garbage Democrat causes which make the problem worse. Now, I ain't going to sit here and tell you that Republicans have all the answers, but Republicans ain't running these big cities. So the only thing I can tell you is, heck, put a libertarian in charge. I don't know. They might make the problem worse, but I'll tell you this. The policies of these Democrats have only made it worse.

I guess we don't really know what to expect, but maybe try something different for once in your lives. Here's a story from Fox Business. Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth conceded that locking up products in order to combat retail theft had a negative impact on stores. During an earnings call on Friday, executives reported a 52% increase in shrink. What? Jeez.

or a loss of inventory that can't be accounted for through sales. The increase in loss of inventory comes after the pharmacy giant's efforts to crack down on shoplifting, which Wentworth suggested may have actually backfired. When you lock things up, you don't sell as many of them. We've kind of proven that pretty conclusively, Wentworth said. It's likely a reference to viral images of items, including ice cream, being locked up to deter shoplifters. I think I have something on this.

Let me see if I can find this. Here we go. I got a video for you guys. It's a video that I took. Let me tell you about this store that I went to. Here you go. You ready? The absolute state of modern crime. I cannot buy ice cream. It is locked.

Oh, well, didn't need it anyway. To be fair, I didn't need the ice cream and it's probably better that I didn't eat it. But I see this photo where they got all the ice cream locked up and I'm like, that happened to me. I can't remember where we were. Where were we in Phoenix? I think we were in Phoenix or Tempe or something during the TPUSA event. And we went to a CVS. Yo, I needed nail clippers. I had a hangnail. And I was like, I got to get this thing off. And I walk over and it was locked up. And I'm like, I got to be honest.

I'm not going to go up to the counter and be like, can you come over here and unlock the nail clippers for me? So defeated, I said, well, now that I'm really sad and just bit it off, I'm going to treat myself to some delicious ice cream. And the ice cream thing was locked. So you know what I did? Nothing. I bought nothing. I was like, I don't know, whatever. To be honest, it's kind of good for me. Like I said, I didn't need the ice cream, and it's better that I didn't have it.

But I was like, let's get some ice cream and bring it back with us. Here you go. They're going to try new solutions. I got a solution for all you guys. It is, this could be, this could be big. It is, as I would describe, law enforcement. Okay, hear me out. Excuse me. What you do is you give some guys the authority to use physical force against people who break laws. You can see where I'm going with this.

But my friends, it's not just this failure that we're seeing in all of these stores. And I feel again, look, I really I really mean it when I say I feel bad for Walgreens and these other stores that had to do this. They're losing sales. Apparently their shrink went up, which is like we don't know where the stuff went. But I blame the policies of Democrats. Take a look at the story from Post Millennial. Seattle's new $20 minimum wage claims sixth restaurant casualty since the new year. Duh.

I lived in Seattle, my friends. Let's read this story. Before we do, head over to TimCast.com and click join us. I'll tell you why.

As a member at TimCast.com, you make everything we do possible. And you get access to this massive content library. The Discord server, which is run largely by... We do a staff running the Discord server, but it's mostly a community-driven space with morning shows, nightly shows, after shows, over 20,000 people hanging out. Like-minded. If you feel lost, if you're trying to make friends, you want to meet people...

You join Timcast.com. Why? First, you're helping us produce this show and all the news we do. And we work really, really hard because we believe in it. We believe in you. But I do appreciate you guys watching. But largely, you get access to the Uncensored show and the entire Discord community where you will make friends, help build culture. And that's the mission.

As an aside, Cast Brew Coffee, we are getting set up with all these franchises and physical locations because we believe in creating these physical spaces. So TimCast.com, help us out. If you believe in the work we do, $10 a month, and you will keep this mission going. Post Money Out reports, Seattle's new $20 minimum wage for 2025 has caused a sixth restaurant to close since the new year. Pike Place Market Bakery, the confectioner, closed on Sunday after 18 years in business. That's a bummer, man. That makes me sad.

Owner Destiny Sund told Kiro News Radio, I wanted my team to have a wonderful holiday season, so I didn't mention to them that we would be closing until after New Year's Day. So this has been a long week for all of us at the confectioner. The minimum wage for employees in the city limits, regardless of business size, jumped to $20.76 on January 1st.

Last year, if a worker earned at least $2.72 per hour in medical benefits or tips, the business only had to pay its employees $17.25. But now, for those businesses that feature tips, the change to the minimum wage was a 20% increase. The Emerald City's increase is $4 more than Washington State's minimum wage requirement.

Sund added that allowed businesses 50 employees or under to subtract two from the minimum wage if they could make it up in tips and or benefits. And employees did did make that up in tips. She continued. And just doing the math with the additional increase in the loss of the tip credit, it would cost my business an additional eighteen thousand dollars. And that's just not sustainable.

At least five other restaurants in Seattle have closed or are closing just days after the city council's new minimum wage law went into effect. Just days.

Last week, the owner of the Belgado Bakery in West Seattle posted a sign in his door announcing that they were closing, saying our revenues, unfortunately, are not able to cover the close to 20 percent increase in mandated wages, salaries and payroll taxes put into effect by the Seattle City Council Effective 1-1-25. This ruling has made continuation of our bakery operations untenable.

Jackson's Catfish Corner, which has served Seattle Central District for 40 years, closed last week. With owner Terrell Jackson saying in an Instagram video announcing the closure, I just cannot do it anymore. I'm maxed out, y'all. This stuff breaks my heart, man. Hearing about legacy businesses and small business is amazing. And these people are so dumb, they don't know what they're doing. I've told this story before. Not everybody's heard it, so bear with me. I know you all out there super fans. You've heard all the stories. But when we were getting TimCast set up,

I met with an accountant, sat down in his office at his own firm. And he said, we are losing like a third of our clients right now. An accounting firm for small to medium business. How are you losing so many clients? What happened? Are you a bad business? Why should I sign with you? And the dude told me, well, Jersey enacted a minimum wage increase. And it was like 50 cents, one, like three months. And then it like went to a dollar 50 or something. And he was like, if you run a small diner,

And you as the owner are making $30,000, $40,000 a year because you're taking the profit. That's all you're getting. When they say overnight you have to pay all of your employees 30% more, you can't afford it. And so what's happening is these business owners are deciding just to sell off and shut down because even when they say we're going to taper at $0.50 a year, then $0.50 a year, you can't accommodate all of your prices that way. One day someone walks in, they look at the menu and they go, pancake's too expensive, and they leave.

When you increase prices to cover that change, the individual isn't caught up. The customer isn't caught up. Let me tell you about when I was in Spain. I went to Spain 10 years ago. It's like 11 years ago. And I asked one of my friends why the Spanish economy was so bad. Here's what she said. Spain used to be on the peseta. That was their currency. And then the EU happened and they all went on the euro.

You'd wake up in the morning and for one peseta, you'd grab a newspaper. For one peseta, you'd grab a croissant and a coffee. They went on to the euro. The next day when everything converted, the newspaper was one euro. The coffee was one euro. So what's the big deal? In order for Spain to acquire euro, it was three to one.

The conversion rate for the Paseta, because their economy wasn't as good, wasn't caught up to the euro. So overnight, all the people of Spain saw their purchasing power drop by 60 some odd percent. And they began to struggle. And it created a chain, a ripple effect. So when you look at what's going on with these Democrat policies, we're going to make it so that everybody gets paid more. It don't work that way. The businesses closed down because they can't just pay more. They don't have the money in the bank.

Dude, it's like these Democrats working in government, they've never run businesses. The money has to be in the bank to pay the employees more, which means in anticipation of this, they have to raise the prices beforehand. Then the customer says, I'm not going to buy it because the customer doesn't get a wage increase until it goes into effect. Sales go down. The coffers go down. And then the business says, we have no money to give a pay raise.

Stupid policy. And it's burning down our good small businesses and our big ones like Walgreens. So while we sit here, my friends, and we lament the tragedies and the failures, look, I feel bad for Walgreens, man. We can gloat and we can laugh, but it ain't their fault. Maybe we need police or maybe just societies of scale don't work. I have no idea.

I'll leave it there, my friends. You should be over at youtube.com slash Timcast watching the Culture War podcast. Why anxious? I'll see you there. Thanks for hanging out. We got more segments probably today and we'll see y'all then.

Are you 50 or older? This news is for you. The CDC now recommends you get vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia. Even if you're healthy, your age puts you at risk. People 50 or older are over six times more likely to be hospitalized with pneumococcal pneumonia compared to adults 18 to 49. Just one shot can help protect you. Learn more and schedule at VaxAssist.com. That's V-A-X-Assist.com.

Sponsored by Pfizer.