The latest turn in the ongoing saga over TikTok in the United States has brought the balance of power among the three branches of government into the spotlight.

History repeats itself, quickly it seems, as U.S. President Trump confirms that Microsoft is indeed in the running to buy TikTok. Over the weekend, we shared reports that Microsoft and Oracle were both vying to lock down TikTok.

President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that halts the ban on TikTok. But is TikTok actually "saved?"

TikTok held firm and refused to be sold, Congress blinked, and now everyone is scrambling to avoid a backlash from its younger user base.

After hearing arguments on Friday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold the law, meaning that TikTok will be banned effective if the parent company ByteDance does not sell the company by Sunday.

We (sort of) answer the burning questions about TikTok, which is back online in the United States (sort of). TikTok is back online — sort of. But also it’s still banned. Huh? You probably have some questions about this whole thing with TikTok. I (sort of) have answers.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew was seated on the dais at Trump’s inauguration Monday, signaling a budding alliance with the president. Massie, the Republican who co-sponsored the bill to repeal the ban, posted a photo he’d taken of Chew from the crowd on X. “Tick tock, the TikTok ban is about to end,” Massie wrote.

DeepSeek, the Chinese-owned ChatGPT rival, could pose the same national security concerns that Congress has about TikTok, Philip Elliott writes.

The popular video app went dark in the United States late Saturday and then came back around noon on Sunday, even as a law banning it took effect.

The fate of the Chinese-owned app is uncertain, but the effects of banning it would ripple through campus communities. Journalism professor and First Amendment lawyer J. Israel Balderas sat down with Inside Higher Ed to explain why.

As for Apple’s unprecedented action, this was spotted by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in a post on X, who pointed out that Apple issued a support document about TikTok, titled “About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. Apps in the United States.”

The new president is tossing out some of the biggest names in the tech world as possible buyers of TikTok’s US operations, most recently Microsoft. 'I like bidding wars because you make your best deals.