The morning after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to override a federal TikTok ban, Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox — who in recent years has been a vocal proponent of regulating social media companies — said in an interview that he was “disappointed.”
“I don’t think it’s constitutional,” Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I didn’t like it when President Biden wouldn’t implement the things that Congress said he was supposed to — I don’t like it when any president doesn’t do that.“
Congress passed a law last year that was meant to force Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok amid national security concerns tied to data collection and Chinese influence. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law earlier this month.
Hours after TikTok went dark early Sunday, Trump announced on his social platform Truth Social that he would sign an executive order to delay implementation of the act. TikTok subsequently restored access to users with the app already downloaded, accompanied by a note: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
His order instructs the attorney general’s office not to enforce the ban for 75 days to give the Trump administration “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.”
“The purpose of that ban was if it was sold, then it could come back online, and if the president is working on making that happen, that’s a good thing,” Cox said. “If we can get that out of Chinese control I think that’s good for all of us.”
Cox endorsed Trump ahead of the president’s election to his second term in the White House and attended his inauguration Monday.
Utah is currently suing TikTok for what the state has characterized as an addictive algorithm, and for allegedly misleading Utah consumers “about the degree to which TikTok remains enmeshed with and under the control of ByteDance, its China-based parent company.”
In December 2022, Cox prohibited Utah employees from downloading TikTok on state devices, and Salt Lake County followed a few months later.
In the interview, Cox also voiced doubts about the constitutionality of a separate Monday executive order from Trump that refuses to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children of immigrants without legal status.
“That’s a constitutional issue,” Cox said. “I don’t think with the stroke of a pen that presidents can change the Constitution, so I don’t see that happening.”
The order goes against more than a century of legal precedent interpreting the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to every child born on U.S. soil, with limited exceptions.
Nearly two dozen states filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block the order. Utah was not among them.
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