
Will TikTok be banned? Trump says there's a new group of buyers
"We have a buyer for TikTok by the way," Trump said in the interview, which was released June 29. "I think I'll need probably China approval, and I think presidency will probably do it."
He said the buyer is "a group of very wealthy people" without providing additional details.
Ten days ago, Trump signed a 90-day extension preventing a TikTok sell-or-ban law from going into effect after it was passed by Congress. Lawmakers have said they're worried the company was using the mega-popular video platform to spy on Americans.
The latest delay was the third time Trump has moved to keep the law from going into effect using an executive order.
Congress approved the ban of the app if was not sold to a non-Chinese company last year, and former President Joe Biden signed it into law. The Supreme Court has since upheld the potential ban's constitutionality, but since returning to office, Trump has directed the Department of Justice not to enforce it. His executive orders have kept the app from going dark.

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NBC News
42 minutes ago
- NBC News
Supreme Court takes up major new challenge to campaign finance restrictions
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday took up a new challenge to campaign finance restrictions in a case brought by Republicans seeking to overturn limits on party committees spending money in coordination with individual candidates. It is the latest in a long-running sequence of cases that have eroded campaign finance restrictions since Congress sought to strictly limit them in the 1970s. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has long been skeptical of campaign finance restrictions on free speech grounds, with its most notable ruling being the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that paved the way for unlimited independent expenditures by outside groups. However, in a 2001 ruling, the court upheld the restrictions at issue in the new case, meaning the justices would have to overturn that decision for the Republicans to win. The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in its next term, which begins in October. The challenge was brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the campaigns of two candidates in the 2022 elections: now-Vice President JD Vance, who was running as a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, and former Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican congressman from the same state who lost his re-election bid. The Federal Election Commission, under the direction of the Trump administration, has sided with the challengers, saying it agrees the restrictions violate the Constitution's First Amendment. The restrictions, first imposed via the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971, will now be defended by the Democratic National Committee and associated committees, which filed a motion to intervene in the case. The case does not involve other campaign restrictions, such as limits on how much individuals can donate to a candidate or party. Under current law, amended over the years by the Supreme Court and Congress, parties can make unlimited independent expenditures in support of a candidate but cannot exceed limits on coordinated spending. This can include such spending as hiring a venue or fundraising consultants, or paying for a candidate's travel, the Republicans said in court papers. The current limit varies based on voting-age population in a specific House of Representatives or Senate election, but it can be as much as almost $4 million for Senate races and $127,000 for at-large House seats. With the flood of spending that resulted from the Citizens United ruling, giving rise to the creation of independent "super PACs" to funnel unlimited money into elections, the existing caps have had increasingly little effect in addressing the original intent of keeping money out of politics to avoid corruption or the appearance of it. 'The court's reasoning upholding these party spending limits has been undermined by more recent court campaign finance cases,' said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA School of Law. 'The status quo—where outside groups like super PACs can raise unlimited sums but political parties face much more severe limitations—may create worse conditions in terms of empowering unaccountable groups and increasing negative ads,' he added.


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Senate opens debate on Trump's bill estimated to add $3.3tn to US debt
The US Senate opened debate on Donald Trump's sprawling domestic policy legislation on Sunday, the package of tax cuts, increased spending on immigration enforcement, and drastic reductions in funding for healthcare and nutrition assistance that the president calls his 'big beautiful bill'. Formal debate on the measure began after Democrats forced Senate clerks to read the entire 940-page bill aloud, to underscore their argument that the public is largely unaware of what the package Trump branded 'beautiful' actually contains, and to delay a final vote until Monday. After the debate, amendments could be brought up for consideration in a marathon session colloquially known as a vote-a-rama. The changes made to the bill in the Senate would pile trillions on to the nation's debt load while resulting in even steeper losses in healthcare coverage, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new analysis, adding to the challenges for Republicans as they try to muscle the bill to passage. The CBO estimates the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3tn from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1tn increase over the House-passed bill, which CBO has projected would add $2.4tn to the debt over a decade. The analysis also found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law, an increase over the scoring for the House-passed version of the bill, which predicts 10.9 million more people would be without health coverage. The stark numbers are yet another obstacle for Republican leaders as they labor to pass Trump's bill by his self-imposed 4 July deadline. After the new cost of the bill was released, Trump used his social media platform, Truth Social, to cajole and threaten lawmakers from his own party. In a Sunday evening post, the president urged Republicans concerned about adding to the debt not to 'go too crazy', and reminded them that elected officials who cross him tend not to stay in office long. 'REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected', the president wrote. Wavering Republicans probably understood Trump's comment loud and clear, coming just hours after one of their number, Thom Tillis, a North Carolina senator, voted against advancing the bill on Saturday and was subjected to a torrent of threats and attacks from the president. Tillis announced on Sunday that he would not stand for re-election in the 2026 midterms. Even before the CBO's estimate, Republicans were at odds over the contours of the legislation, with some resisting the cost-saving proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid and food aid programs, even as other Republicans say those proposals don't go far enough. Republicans are slashing the programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8tn in Trump tax breaks put in place during his first term. The push-pull was on vivid display on Saturday night as a routine procedural vote to take up the legislation in the Senate was held open for hours as Vice-President JD Vance and Republican leaders met with several holdouts. The bill ultimately advanced in a 51-49 vote, but the path ahead is fraught, with voting on amendments still to come. Still, many Republicans are disputing the CBO estimates and the reliability of the office's work. To hoist the bill to passage, they are using a different budget baseline that assumes the Trump tax cuts expiring in December have already been extended, essentially making them cost-free in the budget. The CBO on Saturday released a separate analysis of the GOP's preferred approach that found the Senate bill would reduce deficits by about $500bn. Democrats and economists decry the GOP's approach as 'magic math' that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks. In addition, Democrats note that under the traditional scoring system, the Republican bill would violate the Senate's Byrd Rule that forbids the legislation from increasing deficits after 10 years. In a Sunday letter to Jeff Merkley, an Oregon senator and the top Democrat on the Senate budget committee, CBO director Phillip Swagel said the office estimates that the finance committee's portion of the bill, also known as Title VII, 'increases the deficits in years after 2034' under traditional scoring.


BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
NYC mayoral frontrunner Mamdani: 'I don't think we should have billionaires'
Mamdani ran an energetic campaign focused on affordability, promising free buses, universal childcare, a $30 minimum hourly wage, a rent freeze and city-run supermarkets - all paid for with higher taxes on the top 1% of earners. On NBC's Meet the Press programme on Sunday, he was asked whether billionaires have a right to exist. "I don't think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality," he replied. New York's mayor has the power to propose a hike on property taxes, but revenue increases ultimately require approval from the state legislature and the governor. NBC interviewer Kristen Welker asked Mamdani about a policy proposal on his campaign website to shift the tax burden "to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods". Asked whether he might alienate key constituents by invoking race, he denied the policy was driven by race and said: "I think I'm just naming things as they are." In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, President Trump threatened to cut off federal funding for New York City if Mamdani wins, calling him a "pure communist". Who is Zohran Mamdani? How Mamdani stunned New York Rama Duwaji: Who is the wife of Zohran Mamdani? Mamdani denied being a communist, adding: "I have already to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I am fighting for." He said New York is "the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty". Millionaires in New York pay 41% of all personal income tax, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. In last week's Democratic primary, Mamdani defeated his main intraparty challenger, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor in 2021 after sexual harassment allegations. Mamdani has been under scrutiny for his stance on the Israel-Gaza war, after voicing strong support for Palestinians and accusing Israel of genocide, which it denies. He was asked about these views in the NBC interview, and whether he would condemn the term "globalise the intifada". Many Jews argue this slogan is an antisemitic call for violence, but pro-Palestinian activists say it is a call for international solidarity with Palestinians. "That's not the language that I use," said Mamdani, adding that he condemns antisemitism. When pressed, he said it was not the role of the mayor to "police speech". On NBC, he sought to draw a contrast between himself and the Trump administration, whom he criticised for detaining Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University and a lawful US resident. Mamdani has described "globalise the intifada" in the past as "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights".