The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Title II of Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 95–223, 91 Stat. 1626, enacted October 28, 1977, is a United States federal law authorizing the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. The act was signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 28, 1977.
Howard Morgan Griffith is an American lawyer and politician who has been the U.S. representative for Virginia's 9th congressional district since 2011. The district covers a large swath of southwestern Virginia, including the New River Valley and the Virginia side of the Tri-Cities. He is a member of the Republican Party and the Freedom Caucus.
In the United States, internet censorship is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship.
Jeffrey Neale Jackson is an American politician, attorney, and military officer serving as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 14th congressional district since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the 37th district in the North Carolina Senate from 2014 to 2022.
Joshua David Hawley is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Missouri, a seat he has held since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, also known as the 2016 omnibus spending bill, is the United States appropriations legislation passed during the 114th Congress which provides spending permission to a number of federal agencies for the fiscal year of 2016. The bill authorizes $1.1 trillion in spending, as well as $700 billion in tax breaks. The bill provides funding to the federal government through September 30, 2016.
Michael John Gallagher is an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Wisconsin's 8th congressional district for the Republican Party between 2017 and 2024.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Brendan Thomas Carr is an American lawyer who has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2017. Appointed to the position by Donald Trump, Carr previously served as the agency's general counsel and as an aide to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai. In private practice, Carr formerly worked as a telecommunications attorney at Wiley Rein.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 10 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app.
Carl John Nichols is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and a judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
The United States federal budget for fiscal year 2020 ran from October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020. The government was initially funded through a series of two temporary continuing resolutions. The final funding package was passed as two consolidated spending bills in December 2019, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 and the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020. A series of supplemental appropriations bills were passed beginning in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is a United States federal law, passed during the 117th United States Congress. It implemented several changes to the mental health system, school safety programs, and gun control laws. Gun control laws in the bill include extended background checks for firearm purchasers under the age of 21, clarification of Federal Firearms License requirements, funding for state red flag laws and other crisis intervention programs, further criminalization of arms trafficking and straw purchases, and partial closure of the boyfriend loophole. It was the first federal gun control legislation enacted in 28 years.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 is a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill funding the U.S. federal government for the 2023 fiscal year. It includes funding for a range of domestic and foreign policy priorities, including support for Ukraine, defense spending, and aid for regions affected by natural disasters. It also includes provisions related to advanced transportation research, health care, electoral reform, and restrictions on the use of the social media app TikTok.
Throughout the United States, the social media service TikTok has faced partial and attempted bans. The platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government. Efforts in 2020 by the Trump administration to ban the app or force its sale were stopped by the courts and later his successor Joe Biden. As of June 2023, federal employees and state employees in 34 out of 50 states have been prohibited from using the app on government devices. In March 2024, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 7521 which would effectively ban TikTok unless ByteDance makes a qualified divestiture of its subsidiary. The bill is currently pending on any future actions from the Senate.
The RESTRICT Act is a proposed law that was first introduced in the United States Senate on March 7, 2023.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is a proposed bill in the United States Congress. Introduced by representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the bill would make it illegal to distribute, maintain, or update social media applications designated as being controlled by United States foreign adversaries, unless exempted under a qualified divestiture as determined by the president of the United States.
