Trumps TikTok ban is a gross abuse of power

For months, President Trump has been teasing some kind of ban on TikTok, keeping the specifics vague and details thin — so when the official executive order came down last week, no one knew quite what to think. The order calls for a complete halt of all US transactions with TikTok’s parent company by September 20th, a severe response to national security concerns that are still abstract. Many observers have sidestepped the alarming implications of the order, treating it as a tactical threat to speed along talks with Microsoft. But if the TikTok ban is a bargaining tactic, it’s an incredibly dangerous one.

The Microsoft acquisition could fall through in half a dozen different ways. (As recently as last week, the companies were still...

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