Attorney General Bondi's TikTok-related letters rest on a view of presidential power that has no support in even the most capacious understandings of the "unitary executive" theory.
So with the understanding that Bondi is clearly not smart enough to understand the intricacies of these legal maneuvers, who exactly is advising her on all this that she is declaring to others as legal? Under whose tutelage is she proceeding with every aspect of Project 2025 to decimate actual justice through the DOJ?
I’m a broken record on this point. At some time, there has to be a realization that the Court is corrupt, that its intentional directions are malign. These are no longer judges. They are enabling agents of the new authoritarianism regime.
Not only is the lawless Tik-Tok EO the most destructive to democracy to date of the all the Trump actions, it may be the most exasperating: the Tik Tok stature was enacted at Trump's insistence (during his first term). It was Trump who insisted that China's laws and the ownership structure of TikTok made it an incredible threat to national defense. Trump tried to demand divestiture by executive order, but the courts ruled he had not authority to do so, so Congress enacted the law (after Trump was defeated by Biden, who agreed with Trump on the national security risks of TikTok being controlled by China). Then TikTok played a role in Trump willing in 2024, so he flipped his opinion 180 degrees. But the courts have already ruled that congress -- not Trump has total control on divestiture. That's what Article I says. But Trump regards himself as entirely unconstrained by anything congress or the courts say. So he ignores them. And the TikTok EOs are the clearest example. He actually orders Bondi to lie (saying the companies are not in violation of the law). And she does! (A grievance should be filed with the bar association over her). And his justification is that he doesn't agree with the Supreme Court opinion or congresses bill (signed by President Biden). But who's going to complain -- not TikTok's 180 million U.S. users nor anyone else with standing.
The TikTok letters aren’t just constitutionally incoherent—they represent the soft normalization of monarchical thinking under the guise of legal nuance. What Bondi exercised here isn’t interpretation; it’s attempted exemption. A revival of the pre-1689 dispensing power dressed up as modern executive discretion.
The frightening part isn’t the legal failure—it’s the strategic ambiguity. It functions not by persuasion or precedent but by decay: eroding constitutional limits through bureaucratic improvisation. And because the mechanism is subtle and litigation-resistant, it thrives on inertia and public fatigue.
Congress’s silence doesn’t just signal complicity. It reinforces the pattern we’ve seen for months now: institutional abdication in exchange for political expediency. We’re watching legislative oversight collapse not through direct confrontation—but by ghosting its constitutional duty.
If this becomes precedent, we’re not just looking at executive overreach—we’re looking at the collapse of the very framework that allows law to mean anything at all.
There's one group who could at least take a shot across the bow of Trump and Bondi's lawless, unconstitutional power grab, congressional Democrats. They could send their own letters to tech companies who are defying the law informing them that they are in violation regardless of Bondi's letter and, if and when Democrats retake control, they will seek to hold the companies liable for such violation. It's disastrous that it has come to this, but every opportunity for opposition to Trump's efforts to become king must be exercised. Too bad if the tech companies are caught in the middle - they almost all supported Trump so deserve any consequences of their actions.
(Not clear when the statute of limitations might run out but, given notice by Democrats that each new violation e.g., implementing a TikTok software update, represents a new violation, offenders might be liable well into the next presidential term.)
I have been thinking that Democrats should do that. Undermine any future legal defense the companies will try by pointing out "no, you were clearly informed that what you were doing was illegal and that Trump's promises have no legal authority"
I'm wondering if it is just me but aren't the SCOTUS majority and in this case the AG, repairing more and more often to British common law to substantiate their position. I'm thinking of Alito in Dodd's going back th medieval times, which is apt given the decision. Amy Coney Barrett in citing the British Chancery Courts and here Bondi citing a "dispensing power" which terminated with the Glorious Revolution? While I do believe that international law can offer additional insights for the American judiciary, I think it is wildly unrealistic to accept that powers or limitations on the judicial power that existed under a Monarchy have anything to teach us about rights or equity or the law. If I'm not mistaken we fought a war to gain our independence from exactly. that type of system.
It is important that, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, they sue the tech companies for the full damages in the TikTok statute. Future Democratic governments need to prove to corporations that the President does not have this claimed authority to suspend law on a whim.
The statute specifies fines of up to $5,000 per user - for 120 million US users, total liability runs to $600 billion dollars. Which gives the government plenty of space to negotiate that down to something that imposes a real and appropriate penalty for tech companies that ignore the law to make profit. I continue to be shocked that tech companies have been willing to take on that liability by violating the law, and the onus is on future administrations to prove that was a mistake and deter future corporate lawlessness.
isn't Bondi's letter just verbiage that is actually saying "wink wink, we won't prosecute you?" The penalties are a per user fine on those who ignore the statute. Unless there is a special statute of limitations in the Tik Tok statute, the time for bringing a civil enforcement action is 5 years. Just think--with the number of Tik Tok users, fines on the folks allowing the app could erase the national debt 🙄 Just think: a world in which Apple, Google, and Amazon are bankrupted?
(Tongue is in cheek, but it really just needs a new administration to get some serious funds)
Ah, I see from previous comments that great minds think alike.
Is Boyd to any extent still good law? 🧩💃🏻🤸🏾♂️🤾🏼♂️🥁💫✨🌟🗽🗽🗽🌅
And talk about textual analysis!
The originalism vs living constitutionalism era left generations of jurists suspicious of reading the text the way Article VI requires - as one law.
I’m not going to shock you by suggesting the government prove a foreign state is violating national security in the way claimed before statutorily extending our foreign commerce jurisdiction to commerce conducted entirely beyond the high seas and opened to Americans and American advertisers as a courtesy.
I won’t be annoying by suggesting that, as the US owns our radio and TV airwaves, Congress acted out of sour grapes because they didn’t think of building a public social medium, as many other nations do.
I could, but considering the makeup of this Court, will not mourn the missed opportunity to review a question of some significance that’s been bothering Americans for a very long time:
Whether public conduct has a right of privacy, and if so, where either the laws of nations or the Constitution excepts us from them. Not though the check on our geographical jurisdiction surely also enacts “enemies in war, in peace friends” as a check on the creation of public adversaries, supported by the impermanence of our army.
Goddess knows I would never suggest that even had we an adversary, peaceful acts of that adversary could be entitled to the equal protection of the laws.
I might mention in passing a noticeably unmet need to prove that a social medium best known for dancing and silly dares so bulges with state secrets that securing it to local ownership outweighs the Takings clause.
Bondi is in over her head, flailing about like a just-landed fish. She was Trump's second pick for her position; Matt Gaetz, a disgusting pig, "withdrew" his name from the nomination. She has "swallowed the kool-aid" of Trump's Big Lie and defended him at his impeachment hearing and subsequent impeachment trial. She is loyal to a fault.
Does the language in Art. IIi, sec. 2 of the Constitution that the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdictiion ... WITH SUCH EXCEPTIONS AND UNDER SUCH REGULATIONS AS THE CONGRESS SHALL MAKE.... mean that, for instance, Congress could pass political funding laws restricting corporate spending and including a provision that that political funding restriction is not reviewable by the Court?
Could you explain how Bondi's letters differ from, say, an FDA announcement of an intent to exercise enforcement discretion? I usually see it used when FDA sees a need to delay something based on industry's ability as a whole to comply with a new regulation derived from a recent Act, but there are plenty of examples that can be found by searching FDA's website for "enforcement discretion". It would make more sense to me in the context of Agency regulations that support a law but aren't necessarily directly implementing measures, but much like the Bondi letters, I've often wondered why the enforcement discretion intention isn't a separation of powers issue if the driving statute is supposed to be in effect.
Non-enforcement is a temporary (and, to all accounts, un-enforceable) promise to not bring an enforcement action during a specified period of time. It does nothing to adjust the subject's underlying liability—or their amenability to an enforcement action once that period of time (say, the president's term) has expired. And at least in some cases, non-enforcement can be tied to the president's constitutional discretion over enforcement.
Dispensing is permanent—and, at least as it was exercised by pre-1689 kings, served as a form of categorical immunity bestowed by the Crown. So unlike refusing to enforce FDA regulations (where a new President in 2029 could presumably bring enforcement actions still within the statute of limitations), what Bondi is trying to do is foreclose even that possibility (presumably because, without such a promise, the companies wouldn't risk it).
With respect to standing, can the minority Congressional party sue without official Congressional support? Could Schumer and Jeffries bring suit on their own or does it have to be an officially sanctioned Congressional activity?
Hyper immigration-fixated right wingers would contend that Democratic governments failed to enforce border security laws. Or went lax on enforcing drug laws
I still struggle to see the difference between dispensing power and choosing not to emphasize certain statutes. Administrations choose to do it all the time. The two seem different in naming and degree, not in kind.
Non-enforcement is a temporary (and, to all accounts, un-enforceable) promise to not bring an enforcement action during a specified period of time. It does nothing to adjust the subject's underlying liability—or their amenability to an enforcement action once that period of time (say, the president's term) has expired. And at least in some cases, non-enforcement can be tied to the president's constitutional discretion over enforcement, since, e.g., we've never had the ability to comprehensively enforce every single immigration law to the fullest extent.
Dispensing is permanent—and, at least as it was exercised by pre-1689 kings, served as a form of categorical immunity bestowed by the Crown. So unlike refusing to enforce certain immigration laws (where a new President in 2029 could presumably bring enforcement actions still within the statute of limitations), what Bondi is trying to do is foreclose even that possibility (presumably because, without such a promise, the companies wouldn't risk it).
Thank you for the great reply. What might the mechanism that Bondi could use that extend a subject’s immunity from prosecution beyond a president’s term? Presumably the non-prosecute letter she wrote to companies wouldn’t be binding on a future President, would it?
I think the question is whether a recipient of the letter could invoke it as the basis for some kind of estoppel in defending against an enforcement proceeding by a future President. The answer *ought* to be "no," but it would certainly be a question of first impression...
I wasn't that bothered by the decisions to limit enforcement of border security and drug laws at the time, but in retrospect I think I was mistaken. In theory enforcement discretion can improve the quality and justice of the application of law, but in practice we see now how dangerous it is to give the President tools to usurp authority from congress. I don't think any future Democratic president should ever choose again to limit enforcement of statute for policy reasons.
So with the understanding that Bondi is clearly not smart enough to understand the intricacies of these legal maneuvers, who exactly is advising her on all this that she is declaring to others as legal? Under whose tutelage is she proceeding with every aspect of Project 2025 to decimate actual justice through the DOJ?
I’m a broken record on this point. At some time, there has to be a realization that the Court is corrupt, that its intentional directions are malign. These are no longer judges. They are enabling agents of the new authoritarianism regime.
Not only is the lawless Tik-Tok EO the most destructive to democracy to date of the all the Trump actions, it may be the most exasperating: the Tik Tok stature was enacted at Trump's insistence (during his first term). It was Trump who insisted that China's laws and the ownership structure of TikTok made it an incredible threat to national defense. Trump tried to demand divestiture by executive order, but the courts ruled he had not authority to do so, so Congress enacted the law (after Trump was defeated by Biden, who agreed with Trump on the national security risks of TikTok being controlled by China). Then TikTok played a role in Trump willing in 2024, so he flipped his opinion 180 degrees. But the courts have already ruled that congress -- not Trump has total control on divestiture. That's what Article I says. But Trump regards himself as entirely unconstrained by anything congress or the courts say. So he ignores them. And the TikTok EOs are the clearest example. He actually orders Bondi to lie (saying the companies are not in violation of the law). And she does! (A grievance should be filed with the bar association over her). And his justification is that he doesn't agree with the Supreme Court opinion or congresses bill (signed by President Biden). But who's going to complain -- not TikTok's 180 million U.S. users nor anyone else with standing.
The TikTok letters aren’t just constitutionally incoherent—they represent the soft normalization of monarchical thinking under the guise of legal nuance. What Bondi exercised here isn’t interpretation; it’s attempted exemption. A revival of the pre-1689 dispensing power dressed up as modern executive discretion.
The frightening part isn’t the legal failure—it’s the strategic ambiguity. It functions not by persuasion or precedent but by decay: eroding constitutional limits through bureaucratic improvisation. And because the mechanism is subtle and litigation-resistant, it thrives on inertia and public fatigue.
Congress’s silence doesn’t just signal complicity. It reinforces the pattern we’ve seen for months now: institutional abdication in exchange for political expediency. We’re watching legislative oversight collapse not through direct confrontation—but by ghosting its constitutional duty.
If this becomes precedent, we’re not just looking at executive overreach—we’re looking at the collapse of the very framework that allows law to mean anything at all.
There's one group who could at least take a shot across the bow of Trump and Bondi's lawless, unconstitutional power grab, congressional Democrats. They could send their own letters to tech companies who are defying the law informing them that they are in violation regardless of Bondi's letter and, if and when Democrats retake control, they will seek to hold the companies liable for such violation. It's disastrous that it has come to this, but every opportunity for opposition to Trump's efforts to become king must be exercised. Too bad if the tech companies are caught in the middle - they almost all supported Trump so deserve any consequences of their actions.
(Not clear when the statute of limitations might run out but, given notice by Democrats that each new violation e.g., implementing a TikTok software update, represents a new violation, offenders might be liable well into the next presidential term.)
I have been thinking that Democrats should do that. Undermine any future legal defense the companies will try by pointing out "no, you were clearly informed that what you were doing was illegal and that Trump's promises have no legal authority"
I'm wondering if it is just me but aren't the SCOTUS majority and in this case the AG, repairing more and more often to British common law to substantiate their position. I'm thinking of Alito in Dodd's going back th medieval times, which is apt given the decision. Amy Coney Barrett in citing the British Chancery Courts and here Bondi citing a "dispensing power" which terminated with the Glorious Revolution? While I do believe that international law can offer additional insights for the American judiciary, I think it is wildly unrealistic to accept that powers or limitations on the judicial power that existed under a Monarchy have anything to teach us about rights or equity or the law. If I'm not mistaken we fought a war to gain our independence from exactly. that type of system.
It is important that, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, they sue the tech companies for the full damages in the TikTok statute. Future Democratic governments need to prove to corporations that the President does not have this claimed authority to suspend law on a whim.
The statute specifies fines of up to $5,000 per user - for 120 million US users, total liability runs to $600 billion dollars. Which gives the government plenty of space to negotiate that down to something that imposes a real and appropriate penalty for tech companies that ignore the law to make profit. I continue to be shocked that tech companies have been willing to take on that liability by violating the law, and the onus is on future administrations to prove that was a mistake and deter future corporate lawlessness.
Ah. But what will we do when Kate Barlow can no longer use TikTok to report live on decision days at SCOTUS?
Set up an Owncast server so that she can own her infrastructure end to end?
isn't Bondi's letter just verbiage that is actually saying "wink wink, we won't prosecute you?" The penalties are a per user fine on those who ignore the statute. Unless there is a special statute of limitations in the Tik Tok statute, the time for bringing a civil enforcement action is 5 years. Just think--with the number of Tik Tok users, fines on the folks allowing the app could erase the national debt 🙄 Just think: a world in which Apple, Google, and Amazon are bankrupted?
(Tongue is in cheek, but it really just needs a new administration to get some serious funds)
Ah, I see from previous comments that great minds think alike.
Is Boyd to any extent still good law? 🧩💃🏻🤸🏾♂️🤾🏼♂️🥁💫✨🌟🗽🗽🗽🌅
And talk about textual analysis!
The originalism vs living constitutionalism era left generations of jurists suspicious of reading the text the way Article VI requires - as one law.
I’m not going to shock you by suggesting the government prove a foreign state is violating national security in the way claimed before statutorily extending our foreign commerce jurisdiction to commerce conducted entirely beyond the high seas and opened to Americans and American advertisers as a courtesy.
I won’t be annoying by suggesting that, as the US owns our radio and TV airwaves, Congress acted out of sour grapes because they didn’t think of building a public social medium, as many other nations do.
I could, but considering the makeup of this Court, will not mourn the missed opportunity to review a question of some significance that’s been bothering Americans for a very long time:
Whether public conduct has a right of privacy, and if so, where either the laws of nations or the Constitution excepts us from them. Not though the check on our geographical jurisdiction surely also enacts “enemies in war, in peace friends” as a check on the creation of public adversaries, supported by the impermanence of our army.
Goddess knows I would never suggest that even had we an adversary, peaceful acts of that adversary could be entitled to the equal protection of the laws.
I might mention in passing a noticeably unmet need to prove that a social medium best known for dancing and silly dares so bulges with state secrets that securing it to local ownership outweighs the Takings clause.
But I’m just a lay analyst.
“exempts us from honoring it.” Sorry.
Was Bondi's position advocated in Project 2025, or was it cooked up more recently?
Bondi is in over her head, flailing about like a just-landed fish. She was Trump's second pick for her position; Matt Gaetz, a disgusting pig, "withdrew" his name from the nomination. She has "swallowed the kool-aid" of Trump's Big Lie and defended him at his impeachment hearing and subsequent impeachment trial. She is loyal to a fault.
Does the language in Art. IIi, sec. 2 of the Constitution that the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdictiion ... WITH SUCH EXCEPTIONS AND UNDER SUCH REGULATIONS AS THE CONGRESS SHALL MAKE.... mean that, for instance, Congress could pass political funding laws restricting corporate spending and including a provision that that political funding restriction is not reviewable by the Court?
Could you explain how Bondi's letters differ from, say, an FDA announcement of an intent to exercise enforcement discretion? I usually see it used when FDA sees a need to delay something based on industry's ability as a whole to comply with a new regulation derived from a recent Act, but there are plenty of examples that can be found by searching FDA's website for "enforcement discretion". It would make more sense to me in the context of Agency regulations that support a law but aren't necessarily directly implementing measures, but much like the Bondi letters, I've often wondered why the enforcement discretion intention isn't a separation of powers issue if the driving statute is supposed to be in effect.
Non-enforcement is a temporary (and, to all accounts, un-enforceable) promise to not bring an enforcement action during a specified period of time. It does nothing to adjust the subject's underlying liability—or their amenability to an enforcement action once that period of time (say, the president's term) has expired. And at least in some cases, non-enforcement can be tied to the president's constitutional discretion over enforcement.
Dispensing is permanent—and, at least as it was exercised by pre-1689 kings, served as a form of categorical immunity bestowed by the Crown. So unlike refusing to enforce FDA regulations (where a new President in 2029 could presumably bring enforcement actions still within the statute of limitations), what Bondi is trying to do is foreclose even that possibility (presumably because, without such a promise, the companies wouldn't risk it).
Thanks!
With respect to standing, can the minority Congressional party sue without official Congressional support? Could Schumer and Jeffries bring suit on their own or does it have to be an officially sanctioned Congressional activity?
Hyper immigration-fixated right wingers would contend that Democratic governments failed to enforce border security laws. Or went lax on enforcing drug laws
I still struggle to see the difference between dispensing power and choosing not to emphasize certain statutes. Administrations choose to do it all the time. The two seem different in naming and degree, not in kind.
Non-enforcement is a temporary (and, to all accounts, un-enforceable) promise to not bring an enforcement action during a specified period of time. It does nothing to adjust the subject's underlying liability—or their amenability to an enforcement action once that period of time (say, the president's term) has expired. And at least in some cases, non-enforcement can be tied to the president's constitutional discretion over enforcement, since, e.g., we've never had the ability to comprehensively enforce every single immigration law to the fullest extent.
Dispensing is permanent—and, at least as it was exercised by pre-1689 kings, served as a form of categorical immunity bestowed by the Crown. So unlike refusing to enforce certain immigration laws (where a new President in 2029 could presumably bring enforcement actions still within the statute of limitations), what Bondi is trying to do is foreclose even that possibility (presumably because, without such a promise, the companies wouldn't risk it).
Thank you for the great reply. What might the mechanism that Bondi could use that extend a subject’s immunity from prosecution beyond a president’s term? Presumably the non-prosecute letter she wrote to companies wouldn’t be binding on a future President, would it?
I think the question is whether a recipient of the letter could invoke it as the basis for some kind of estoppel in defending against an enforcement proceeding by a future President. The answer *ought* to be "no," but it would certainly be a question of first impression...
I wasn't that bothered by the decisions to limit enforcement of border security and drug laws at the time, but in retrospect I think I was mistaken. In theory enforcement discretion can improve the quality and justice of the application of law, but in practice we see now how dangerous it is to give the President tools to usurp authority from congress. I don't think any future Democratic president should ever choose again to limit enforcement of statute for policy reasons.