One person’s fight? No. We’re in this together.

When people play to their strengths to defend the rule of law, we can have their backs.

By Jacob Kovacs-Goodman

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump purported to suspend enforcement of a TikTok ban, which had been passed by a vanishingly rare bipartisan consensus in Congress and upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court. Now, corporations can pick and choose whether to comply with laws passed by the American people.

Congress had determined that the Chinese-owned company, which hoovers up troves of data on 1/3 of all Americans, poses serious national security risks. There is consensus that the Chinese Communist Party has access to TikTok’s data and deploys propaganda campaigns through its algorithms. The ban imposes hefty penalties on app stores and other web hosting services—up to $5,000 per instance—for allowing users to access or even update TikTok. Yet late last week, Trump issued a third executive order punting the ban, setting “a bad precedent, wherein the president feels like he can simply ignore a congressional statute,” as Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington law school, said.

The executive orders stalling the TikTok ban present a straightforward separation of powers crisis, yet the legislative and judicial branches appear nonplussed by the executive’s defiance of their authorities. TikTok is still live and accessible on app stores today. Why does the rule of law not apply to TikTok and the tech giants hosting it?

According to Google, the search monopolist does not need to listen to either Congress or the Supreme Court. Only the president’s word matters. They wrote as much in their response to a demand letter from lone citizen Tony Tan: “To the extent you have concluded that an executive order is not a law, you cite no legal authority for this proposition.” Tan is singlehandedly bringing a shareholder claim against Google, requesting its justification for violating federal law. He is an engineer concerned about his profession’s broader role in upholding—or eroding—democratic values.

Tan hired a lawyer in Delaware to demand a records inspection under that state’s corporate law for shareholder accountability, Section 220. He wanted to know why a company in which he invests is engaging in systematic unlawful conduct, so he asked for Google’s deliberations with respect to the ban and Trump’s executive order. Lawyers have analyzed how Section 220 decisions in the Delaware courts amplified stockholders’ rights to inspect books and records. After corporate backlash, Delaware this year amended the law to narrow shareholders’ access. The big law firm representing Google has stonewalled Tan’s requests, including with the insinuation that its client should follow an executive order instead of federal law. As a result, Tan filed a lawsuit seeking the records at issue. This follows on the heels of his federal Freedom of Information Act request asking for the letter that Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to tech companies pursuant to Trump’s executive order on the ban.

This administration is practicing trickle-down corruption. The president gives prime personal access to those who buy the largest shares of his memecoin, turned the White House front lawn into a Tesla commercial, and flouts the Emoluments Clause regularly. To curry favor with him, the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Tesla, OpenAI, and TikTok all paid for seats on the dais of the inauguration. The kleptocracy now sits in the front row and smiles at the cameras. It’s no coincidence Trump is scratching TikTok’s back. He credits the app with cementing his appeal with young voters—“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said just after the election.

But the relationship between Trump and big tech is symbiotic. The more extraordinary online content is, the more users will slow their scroll and interact with the post. The more that users engage with or even linger on certain content, the more big tech algorithmically amplifies that content. These companies profit based on the amount of time they have eyeballs on screens.

In the 1960s, media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously wrote “the medium is the message.” What Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for radio and John F. Kennedy was for TV, Trump is for memes. His outrageous statements, actions, and nominees drive clicks, retweets, traffic, and profits. He invents birther conspiracy theories, creates belittling nicknames for his rivals, and announces international policies in all-caps. This strategy, which fixates on appearances and impressions, extends beyond him to his movement. The Republican National Committee last year spearheaded an influencer “Creator Hub.” Trump’s first campaign ran hundreds of thousands of test ads online to find out which ones landed best with voters based on race and gender. His third campaign pursued a similar dark-money online strategy that did not aim to increase his overall number of votes but rather to decrease Democratic turnout by tricking voters with misleading portrayals of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president. Online political ads on big tech platforms face almost none of the requirements imposed on their counterparts on TV or radio.

Commentators and pundits have speculated at length about when this administration’s actions would cross the “red line” of court defiance. Trump and his acolytes have tiptoed around court orders while denouncing their disfavored judges on social media. Yet Trump answered the “red line” question when he ignored the two other branches on his first day in office. The real question is what we are going to do about it.

America and the lofty ideals it once stood for can only bear so much of this strain. It will take the efforts of the many to seize democracy back from the clutches of the few. After Americans trust-busted their way out of the corruption of the Gilded Age, the U.S. encountered one of its greatest eras of growth and opportunity. No effort toward ending our current Gilded Age is too small. Whether it’s taking to the streets (what historian Timothy Snyder calls a form of practicing corporeal politics), organizing collective action within small circles, or going out on a limb like Tan, we can have each other’s backs. Individuals can play to their strengths to defend the rule of law. The financial and social burdens on those like Tan, who stand up seemingly alone against authoritarianism, are no doubt significant. Every day, it seems like the things that were our bedrock principles are dissolving to sand. But they can be as strong as we build them together.

Jacob Kovacs-Goodman is counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund.

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